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Dessert

Banana Patties

A pastry crust filled with sliced banana, sugar, nutmeg, and orange sauce.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Nutmeg and orange match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,746 recipes. Both carry 4'-methylacetophenone, which smells bitter almond. The science ↓

Banana Patties

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the crusts

  1. Line small patty pans with plain pastry dough and pierce the bottoms with a fork to prevent blistering.

  2. Bake the crusts until golden, then turn them out of the pans and let them cool.

Assemble and set

  1. Slice the banana and sprinkle it with sugar and nutmeg, then mix.

  2. Place a portion of the banana mixture in each crust.

  3. Pour 2 cups of Orange Nesnah over the fruit, filling the crusts to the top.

  4. Keep in a moderately warm room for 10 minutes, then move to a cool place for about 20 minutes 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. Nutmeg + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,746 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  2. Banana + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

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

  3. Banana + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together273 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

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

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

  5. Sugar + nutmegtop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together23,364 recipes

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

Sugar and nutmeg barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 23,364 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

Plain pastry dough
Forms the baked case that holds the filling, and pricking prevents it from puffing up.
Banana
Provides the fruit filling, adding sweetness and soft texture to each patty.
Orange nesnah
Forms the set filling that fills the crusts, giving them moisture and a smooth texture.

The step that matters

Pierce the pastry bottoms before baking. Pricking lets steam escape from the dough as it heats, so the crust stays flat and does not blister or puff unevenly in the pans.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Allspicefits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, sugar, orange. 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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