Why it works: Banana and pepper work together. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 483 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓
Banana Croquettehes
Ingredients
Directions
The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.
Peel the bananas and cut off the ends to shape them like croquettes.
Season with salt and pepper.
Roll the bananas in beaten egg, then coat with cracker crumbs.
Chill on ice for 1 hour to firm up.
Fry in hot oil at 400°F (200°C) until golden brown.
Serve hot as a side dish with chicken or lamb.
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.
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Banana + peppertop 15% of all pairsSmell alikemoderateCooked together483 recipes
Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
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Banana + eggtop 29% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together1,920 recipes
Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
-
Pepper + eggtop 33% of all pairsSmell alikelowCooked together50,580 recipes
Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).
Pepper and egg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 50,580 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
Swap the banana
How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (pepper, egg):
- Lemonfits better
- Limefits better
- Mangofits better
- Bananathe original
Fit is the average pairing score against pepper, egg. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.
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