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Dessert

Sweet Banana Pasties

A pastry filled with apricot marmalade and banana, topped with cinnamon sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 7 ingredients
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Why it works: Apricot and banana match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 3% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124 recipes. Both carry 3-methyl-1-butanol acetate, which smells fruity. The science ↓

Sweet Banana Pasties

Oven, in the book's wordsA fairly hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a fairly hot oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the pasties

  1. Roll out the rough puff pastry and cut it into even-sized oblong pieces or squares.

  2. Spread a little apricot marmalade in the center of each piece.

  3. Place half a banana on top of the marmalade and sprinkle with powdered sugar mixed with ground cinnamon.

  4. Wet the edges of the pastry.

  5. Fold the pastry over.

  6. Press the ends to seal.

  7. Brush the top with a little milk.

  8. Sprinkle with more powdered sugar.

Bake

  1. Place the pasties in a buttered paper bag.

  2. Bake on a grid shelf in a 400°F (200°C) oven for 10 to 12 minutes.

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. Apricot + bananatop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together124 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-methyl-1-butanol acetate (fruity).

  2. Milk + buttertop 7% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together81,283 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  3. Apricot + cinnamontop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together618 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4-methoxybenzaldehyde (sweet, anise).

  4. Cinnamon + milktop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together12,655 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Sugar + cinnamontop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together30,779 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Sugar and cinnamon barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 30,779 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

Rough puff pastry
Its many layers of fat and dough puff up in the oven to form a flaky, crisp shell.
Apricot marmalade
Adds sweetness and a fruity flavour that complements the banana.
Banana
Provides soft, sweet fruit filling that softens and becomes moist when baked.
Milk
Helps the top brown evenly and gives the pastry a glossy golden colour.

The step that matters

Sealing the edges. If the edges are not wetted and pressed firmly, they can open during baking, letting the banana filling leak out and the pastry layers fail to puff neatly.

Swap the banana

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (apricot, sugar, cinnamon, milk, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against apricot, sugar, cinnamon, milk, butter. 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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