Name: Banana Pie
Ingredients: 2 pie crusts; 4 ripe bananas; ½ cup fine sugar; ½ teaspoon powdered spice (your choice); 1 tablespoon butter; 1 tablespoon apple jelly or cider jelly

Why it works: Banana and apple match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 2% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 435 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-one, which smells mushroom, metallic. The science ↓

Banana 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

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).
Peel and slice the bananas.
Place the sliced bananas in one pie crust.

Fill and bake

Sprinkle the bananas with fine sugar and powdered spice.
Dot with butter and add apple or cider jelly.
Cover with the second pie crust and seal the edges.
Bake for 30-35 minutes until golden brown.

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.

Banana + appletop 2% of all pairs

Smell alikestrong

Cooked together435 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).
Butter + appletop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,706 recipes

Shared aroma: trans-2-nonenal (cardboard, fatty).
Banana + buttertop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,536 recipes

Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).
Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together98,233 recipes

Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).
Sugar + appletop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together16,478 recipes

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

Sugar and apple barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 16,478 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: Provide the main filling, releasing moisture and sweetness as they soften in the oven.
Pie crusts: Form the structure that encloses the filling and browns in the oven.
Fine sugar: Sweetens the filling and helps it caramelise and brown at the edges.
Butter: Adds fat and richness, carrying flavour through the filling.
Apple jelly or cider jelly: Adds fruity pectin and acidity that help the filling thicken and set.