Bananas cooked in a pan of butter and sugar until they caramelise, then flamed at the table with warmed rum or Grand Marnier so the alcohol burns off in a sheet of blue flame, leaving a glossy caramel sauce. Served hot, often with vanilla ice cream, it is a simple bistro dessert in the showy flambé tradition — a cousin of crêpes Suzette, with which it shares the tableside flaming and the orange-liqueur or rum finish. Sweet, buttery and warm, with the soft banana melting into the caramel, it is the kind of quick, theatrical pudding made to order in a pan.
Flambéing fruit and crêpes tableside in spirit is a flourish of French restaurant cooking that became fashionable in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the most famous example being crêpes Suzette of the grand Belle-Époque dining rooms. Banane flambée belongs to the same family of quick flamed desserts: bananas, which reached French tables in quantity once steamship and rail brought tropical fruit from the colonies, took readily to the butter-sugar-and-spirit treatment. It is everyday bistro and home cooking rather than a codified grande-cuisine dish, with no single inventor recorded. Its best-known relative abroad is Bananas Foster, created in 1951 at Brennan's restaurant in New Orleans — a documented American descendant of the same flamed-banana idea.
The banana is soft and almost custardy, its starch turned sweet and its edges caramelised dark and sticky where it met the hot pan. Around it pools a glossy butterscotch sauce — butter and sugar gone amber, cut with the warm depth of rum or the orange perfume of Grand Marnier, the raw spirit burned away to leave only flavour. Hot against a scoop of cold vanilla ice cream, the contrast of temperatures is half the dish. It is rich, sweet and buttery, eaten in a few indulgent spoonfuls. Burned too hard the caramel turns bitter; the sugar wants amber, not black.
Three reactions make the dish. First the caramel: sugar heated with butter melts and browns, its molecules breaking down into the hundreds of compounds that give caramel its colour, nutty-toffee aroma and faint bitterness. Second the banana: gentle cooking gelatinises its starch and concentrates its sugars as moisture drives off, turning it soft, sweet and meltingly tender. Third the flambé: warmed spirit poured over the hot pan vaporises, and the alcohol vapour ignites and burns off across the surface — the showy flame is the alcohol combusting, which removes most of the raw spirit's harshness while leaving its aromatic compounds behind in the sauce. The liquor must be warm to vaporise enough to catch, and the pan off direct overhead clutter for safety; the flame dies as the alcohol is spent.
Variations
The spirit is the main variable — dark rum is classic for its molasses depth, Grand Marnier or orange liqueur for perfume, sometimes Cognac or banana liqueur. A squeeze of lemon or orange and a pinch of cinnamon or vanilla round the caramel, and brown sugar deepens it. The bananas may be left whole or halved lengthwise. Vanilla ice cream is the usual partner, exploiting the hot-cold contrast. Its famous New Orleans cousin Bananas Foster adds banana liqueur and serves it expressly over ice cream, while crêpes Suzette applies the very same tableside flaming to orange-butter crêpes.
On the Palate
Where Banane Flambée sits in the French flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 4How it's made
6 steps · 20 min
- 12 min
Peel the bananas and leave them whole or halve lengthwise.
- 24 min
Melt butter in a wide pan, stir in the sugar and let it melt to a light amber caramel.
Watch outTake the sugar off the heat at light amber — it keeps darkening in the hot pan, and one shade too far turns the toffee aroma bitter and acrid.
- 35 min
Lay the bananas in the caramel and cook, turning once, until softened and glazed on both sides.
Watch outThe banana is ready to turn when it looks glossy and just yields to the spatula; push it too long and it collapses into mush.
- 42 min
Warm the rum or Grand Marnier gently in a separate small pan or ladle.
- 51 min
Off the heat, pour the warmed spirit over the bananas and carefully set it alight, letting the flames burn off the alcohol.
Watch outWarm the spirit only until it steams, then light it off the heat — a low blue flame that dies on its own means the raw alcohol has burned away.
- 61 min
Once the flames die, spoon the caramel sauce over and serve hot, with vanilla ice cream if liked.
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