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Dessert

Banana Pie

A pie made with banana slices, a light egg-flour mixture, and a browned meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and sugar are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 15% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 92,116 recipes. Both carry phenylacetaldehyde, which smells hawthorne, honey. The science ↓

Banana Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA slow oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a slow oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the crusts

  1. Bake the pie crusts.

  2. Slice the bananas and fill the crusts with them.

Make the filling

  1. Beat the eggs until light, then mix in the flour, lemon juice, and sugar.

  2. Slowly pour boiling water into the egg mixture while stirring until it begins to thicken.

  3. Remove from heat and pour the mixture over the bananas.

Top and bake

  1. Make a meringue with the egg whites and sugar, then spread it over the pie.

  2. Bake in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until the meringue is 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. Flour + sugartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together92,116 recipes

    Shared aroma: phenylacetaldehyde (hawthorne, honey).

  2. Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together106,462 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  3. Banana + lemontop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,134 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  4. Flour + lemontop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together30,404 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  5. Banana + flourtop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,725 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 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

Eggs
Set the filling when heated and add richness; whites build the meringue topping.
Flour
Starch that thickens the filling as it heats with the water.
Bananas
Provide the main fruit body, sweetness and soft texture in the filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilise the meringue.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity to brighten the filling and slows browning of the sliced bananas.

The step that matters

Pouring boiling water into the egg mixture. Adding hot liquid to eggs too quickly can scramble them. A slow pour with constant stirring warms the eggs gently, so the starch thickens the filling smoothly.

Swap the banana

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

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

Fit is the average pairing score against egg, flour, lemon, sugar. 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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