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Dessert

Fried Bananas

Fried bananas are sliced bananas coated in flour and fried until golden.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Fried Bananas

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel the bananas or plantains and cut each into three slices.

  2. Coat the slices well with flour.

Fry and serve

  1. Sauté in hot butter in a frying pan or fry in deep oil until golden.

  2. Drain on paper towels and serve hot.

  3. Alternatively, roll in cracker crumbs, chill for one hour, then fry in hot oil.

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 + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Banana + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,536 recipes

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

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

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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 or plantains
Provide the main body and natural sweetness that caramelises when fried.
Flour
Forms a dry coating that helps the outside turn golden and crisp when fried.
Butter
Adds richness and flavour when the slices are sautéed in the pan.

The step that matters

Fry until golden. Frying in hot fat quickly browns the flour coating and sugars on the surface. If the fat is not hot enough, the slices absorb more oil and turn greasy instead of crisp.

Swap the banana

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, butter. 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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