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Dessert

Banana Custard Pie

A baked pie with banana slices and a thickened milk custard topped with beaten egg whites.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,430 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. The science ↓

Banana Custard Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the crust

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Line a pie tin with the pie crust and bake until golden.

Make the custard

  1. Slice the bananas and place them in the baked pie crust.

  2. In a saucepan, combine milk, cornstarch, egg yolks, sugar, and vanilla. Cook until thickened.

  3. Pour the custard over the bananas.

Top and bake

  1. Beat the egg whites until stiff, then add sugar and spread over the custard.

  2. Return the pie to the oven and bake until the top is slightly 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. Banana + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  4. Banana + milktop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,470 recipes

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

  5. Milk + eggtop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness as they set with the milk.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk into a smooth custard when heated.
Egg whites
Whipped to stiff peaks, they form a light topping that browns in the oven.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard that thickens and sets.
Bananas
Add flavour and soft texture beneath the custard.

The step that matters

Cook the custard until thickened. Cornstarch must reach a boil with the egg yolks to thicken fully. Undercooked custard stays thin and runny, and it may not set once the pie is cooled and sliced.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Figfits better
  2. Peachfits about as well
  3. Blueberryfits about as well
  4. Bananathe original

Fit is the average pairing score against milk, egg, sugar, vanilla. 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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