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Bananas with Sauce En Casserole

Bananas baked in a casserole with a currant jelly sauce and lemon juice.

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 ↓

Bananas with Sauce En Casserole

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the bananas

  1. Peel the bananas and remove the coarse threads.

  2. Cut the bananas in half lengthwise, then cut each piece in half crosswise.

  3. Place the banana pieces into a casserole.

Bake and serve

  1. Melt the currant jelly in boiling water and pour it over the bananas.

  2. Squeeze the lemon juice over the bananas.

  3. Cover the dish and cook in a 350°F (175°C) oven for about 30 minutes.

  4. Serve from the casserole as a sweet entrée.

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. Banana + curranttop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together39 recipes

    Shared aroma: isoamyl acetate (banana, pear).

  3. Currant + lemontop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together4,270 recipes

    Shared aroma: alpha-pinene (pine, turpentine).

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 of the dish and soften into a tender, sweet filling when baked.
Currant jelly
Adds sweetness and a glossy, fruity glaze that flavours the bananas as they cook.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweetness of the jelly and bananas.

The step that matters

Cover the dish while baking. Covering traps steam so the bananas cook through gently and stay moist, rather than drying out or browning unevenly in the dry heat of the oven.

Swap the currant

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

  1. Orangefits better
  2. Limefits better
  3. Pineapplefits better
  4. Currantthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, 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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