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Dessert

Banana Fritters No. 2

A batter of flour, baking powder, salt, egg, milk, and banana pieces fried until golden brown.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and banana are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,470 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Banana Fritters No. 2

Ingredients

Directions

Make the batter

  1. Sift together flour, baking powder, and salt in a bowl.

  2. Beat the egg and add milk, then stir into the dry ingredients.

  3. Peel and remove coarse threads from the bananas, then cut into small pieces.

  4. Stir banana pieces into the batter.

  5. Prepare the batter at least an hour before frying.

Fry

  1. Drop spoonfuls of batter into deep fat and fry until golden brown.

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. Milk + bananatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,470 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

  2. Flour + milktop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together78,219 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Flour + eggtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  4. Flour + bananatop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,725 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Flour and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 78,219 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

All-purpose flour
Forms the batter's structure as the starch sets during frying.
Egg
Binds the batter and adds richness and structure.
Baking powder
Releases gas that lightens the batter and helps the fritters rise.
Bananas
Add sweetness, moisture, and banana flavour to the batter.

The step that matters

Drop spoonfuls of batter into deep fat and fry until golden brown.. Oil that is too cool lets the batter soak up grease and turn heavy, while oil that is too hot browns the outside before the inside cooks through. Frying at a steady temperature gives a crisp, evenly cooked fritter.

Swap the banana

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

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

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