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Banana Pie II

A deep crust banana pie with custard filling 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 ↓

Banana Pie II

Oven, in the book's wordsA hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Line a deep pie plate with a rich crust.

  2. Fill the crust with sliced bananas.

Make the custard

  1. Pour custard over the bananas.

Bake and finish

  1. Bake until the custard is set.

  2. Frost with meringue made from egg whites and powdered sugar.

  3. Return to the oven to brown lightly.

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

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

  3. Orange + milktop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,696 recipes

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

  4. Egg + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together88,785 recipes

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

  5. Sugar + milktop 18% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together77,875 recipes

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

Sugar and milk barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 77,875 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 fruit flavor and a soft, tender layer under the custard.
Eggs
Thicken the custard as they set, giving the filling its structure.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard, adding moisture and body.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and balances the eggs and milk.

The step that matters

Bake until the custard is set. Eggs thicken as they heat, but overbaking makes the custard curdle, weep liquid, and turn grainy. Remove the pie when the center barely wobbles, since it keeps setting as it cools.

Swap the orange

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

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

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