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Dessert

Fried Bananas

Fried bananas are banana halves coated in a batter of eggs, flour, baking soda, and water, then fried in lard and dusted with powdered sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Fried Bananas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the batter

  1. Cut the bananas in half lengthwise.

  2. In a bowl, mix the eggs, flour, and enough water to create a smooth, thick paste. Add the baking soda and mix thoroughly.

Fry and serve

  1. Dip the banana halves in the paste.

  2. Heat lard in a pan and fry the bananas until they are bright yellow.

  3. Drain the fried bananas and sprinkle with powdered sugar before serving.

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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, 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

Bananas
Provide the sweet, soft filling that cooks through inside the coating.
Eggs
Bind the flour and water into a coating that holds onto the bananas.
Flour
Forms the thick paste that becomes a crisp, golden coating when fried.
Baking soda
Releases gas in the batter, helping it puff and turn light when fried.

The step that matters

Frying the coated bananas. Lard must be hot enough that the batter sets and browns quickly. If the fat is too cool, the coating absorbs oil, becomes greasy, and may slide off the bananas before it sets.

Swap the banana

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

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

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