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Dessert

Banana Pie

A pie with a banana custard filling topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Coffee and milk are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,202 recipes. Both carry 4-heptenal, which smells creamy, biscuit. The science ↓

Banana Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Combine grated banana, corn starch, milk, sugar, and egg yolks in a saucepan.

  2. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until the mixture boils and thickens.

Assemble and bake

  1. Pre-bake the pie crust until golden.

  2. Pour the banana mixture into the pre-baked crust.

  3. Whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form.

  4. Gradually add sugar to the whipped egg whites to sweeten.

  5. Spread the meringue over the banana filling.

  6. Brown the meringue in the oven.

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. Coffee + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,202 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-heptenal (creamy, biscuit).

  2. Corn + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together6,955 recipes

    Shared aroma: hexanal (green, grassy).

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

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

  4. Banana + corntop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  5. Banana + coffeetop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together80 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl pentanoate (yeast, fruit).

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

What each ingredient does

Corn starch
Thickens the milk and banana mixture into a sliceable custard as it boils.
Egg yolks
Enrich and thicken the filling, adding richness and body to the custard.
Egg whites
Whipped into a stable foam that forms the meringue topping.
Banana
Provides the main flavor and moisture of the filling.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the starch thickens into custard.

The step that matters

Cook the filling until it boils and thickens. Corn starch only thickens fully once it reaches a boil; stopping early leaves a thin filling that will not hold its shape when sliced. Constant stirring prevents scorching and lumps on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Bananathe original

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