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Dessert

Bananna Pie

A fruit pie with sliced bananas, cream, orange juice, and meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and orange are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,118 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Bananna Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare the pie

  1. Make a rich pie crust and line a pie pan.

  2. Slice the bananas thinly and place them in the pan.

  3. Sprinkle the sugar over the bananas.

  4. Beat the cream until thick but not whipped, then pour it over the bananas.

  5. Add the orange juice on top.

Make the meringue and bake

  1. For the meringue, beat the egg whites until soft peaks form, then gradually add the sugar and flavor with orange juice.

  2. Spread the meringue over the pie and bake in a 400°F (200°C) oven until 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 + orangetop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,118 recipes

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

  2. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Banana + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Orange + sugartop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + eggtop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Orange and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Bananas
Form the main filling, providing sweetness, flavor and a soft texture once sliced.
Cream
Adds richness and a smooth, moist layer over the bananas.
Egg whites
Whipped into a meringue that sets and browns on top of the pie.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the meringue become stiff and glossy.

The step that matters

Beat the egg whites until soft peaks form, then add sugar gradually. Adding sugar slowly to whipped egg whites helps them hold stable, glossy peaks. Adding it all at once or over-beating can make the meringue weep or stay grainy.

Swap the orange

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

  1. Vanillafits better
  2. Strawberryfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Orangethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, cream, 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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