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Dessert

Banana Cream Pie

A custard pie made with milk, eggs, sugar, butter, and cornstarch, topped with sliced bananas and a browned meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 7% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 81,283 recipes. Both carry (z)-4-heptenal, which smells biscuit, cream. The science ↓

Banana Cream Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Scald the milk in a saucepan.

  2. In a bowl, mix egg yolks, sugar, butter, and cornstarch.

  3. Add the mixture to the scalded milk and cook until thick.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer cream in the pie crust.

  2. Place sliced bananas on top, then add another layer of cream.

  3. Frost the top with beaten egg whites.

  4. Bake until the meringue is lightly browned.

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. Butter + milktop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

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

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

  3. Butter + bananatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,536 recipes

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

  4. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness as they set with heat.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture into a smooth, sliceable cream when cooked.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps balance the banana flavor.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that thickens when cooked.
Egg whites
Whip into a meringue topping that sets and browns in the oven.

The step that matters

Cook the custard until thick. Cornstarch and egg yolks thicken only when the mixture reaches a simmer and is stirred. Stopping too early leaves a runny cream that will not hold its layers, while overheating can scramble the yolks.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits about as well
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, sugar, butter, 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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