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Dessert

Banana Fritters

A fried snack made from sliced bananas coated in batter and fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 4 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and lemon are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 16% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,134 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Banana Fritters

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Remove skins from bananas and cut them into quarters.

  2. Sprinkle with fruit sugar and lemon juice; cover and let stand for 20 minutes.

Fry and serve

  1. Drain thoroughly, dip in batter, and fry in deep fat until golden.

  2. Drain excess oil, sprinkle with fruit sugar, and serve.

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. Banana + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

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

  2. Sugar + lemontop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together53,532 recipes

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

  3. Banana + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

Sugar and lemon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 53,532 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

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

What each ingredient does

Bananas
Provide the main body and natural sweetness of the fritter.
Fruit sugar
Sweetens the bananas and draws out juice while they stand, adding sweetness on top.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the flavour and helps slow browning of the cut banana.
Fritter batter
Forms a crisp, golden coating that seals in the banana while frying.

The step that matters

Drain thoroughly before dipping. Surface moisture from the macerated bananas will dilute the batter and cause it to slide off or fry greasy. Draining well lets the coating adhere and crisp in hot fat.

Swap the banana

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (sugar, lemon):

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Vanillafits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, lemon. 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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