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Dessert

Banana Bread

A sweet loaf made with mashed bananas, sugar, eggs, flour, baking soda, salt, shortening, and walnuts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and walnut match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 508 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Banana Bread

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

Make the batter

  1. Cream the shortening and gradually add the sugar, mixing until well blended.

  2. Beat the eggs well and stir them into the creamed mixture.

  3. Mix in the mashed bananas.

  4. Sift together the flour, baking soda, and salt; then stir this mixture into the banana mixture along with the chopped walnuts.

Bake

  1. Pour the batter into a greased loaf pan and bake for 40 to 55 minutes.

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 + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together508 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Flour + walnuttop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,873 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Sugar + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  4. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Banana + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,725 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Eggs
Bind the batter and add structure as they set during baking.
Baking soda
Reacts with the acidic bananas to release gas, helping the bread rise.
Bananas
Add moisture, sweetness and flavor, and help keep the crumb tender.
Flour
Provides the structure that holds the loaf together as it bakes.
Shortening
Adds fat that tenderizes the crumb and carries flavor.
Sugar
Sweetens the bread and contributes to browning and a moist crumb.

The step that matters

Stirring in the flour mixture. Mixing flour develops gluten, so stirring only until combined keeps the bread tender rather than tough. Overmixing makes a dense, chewy loaf.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Vanillafits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against sugar, egg, flour, walnut. 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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