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Banana Croquettes

Banana croquettes are fried banana sticks coated in egg and breadcrumbs.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and bread are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 22,662 recipes. Both carry (e)-2-octenal, which smells fatty, green. The science ↓

Banana Croquettes

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the bananas

  1. Remove the skin and coarse threads from the bananas.

  2. Trim the pulp of each banana into long croquettes.

Coat and fry

  1. Beat the egg with cold water in a bowl.

  2. Roll each croquette in the egg mixture, then in seasoned bread crumbs.

  3. Fry in hot oil for 30 seconds.

  4. Drain on paper towels.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Egg + breadtop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together22,662 recipes

    Shared aroma: (e)-2-octenal (fatty, green).

  2. Banana + peppertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together483 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Bread + peppertop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,964 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Banana + breadtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together67 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  5. Banana + eggtop 29% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together1,920 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Ripe bananas
Provide the sweet, soft pulp that forms the core of each croquette.
Egg
Binds the bread crumb coating so it adheres to the banana during frying.
Bread crumbs
Form a crisp, golden coating that browns in the hot oil.

The step that matters

Fry in hot oil for 30 seconds. Frying at a high, steady temperature crisps and browns the crumb coating quickly, so the soft banana inside warms without becoming greasy or falling apart. Oil that is too cool lets the coating absorb fat and separate.

Swap the banana

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (egg, bread, pepper):

  1. Lemonfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Red currantfits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, bread, pepper. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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