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Dessert

Banana Pie

A pie made with flour, boiling water, salt, butter, banana, and sugar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Flour and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 12% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 124,287 recipes. Both carry isobutyraldehyde, which smells malty, green. The science ↓

Banana Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Make the filling

  1. Mix flour, sugar, and salt in a bowl.

  2. Add boiling water and cook until thickened.

  3. Stir in butter until melted.

Bake and assemble

  1. Bake a pie crust until golden.

  2. Slice bananas and place them in the baked crust.

  3. Pour the thickened mixture over the bananas and let cool.

Make the meringue

  1. Make meringue by beating the egg white and gradually adding powdered sugar until stiff peaks form.

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. Flour + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together124,287 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

  2. Butter + bananatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  3. Flour + bananatop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,725 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

Flour and butter barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 124,287 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

Flour
Thickens the filling as its starch swells and sets when heated with liquid.
Butter
Adds richness and a smooth, silky mouthfeel to the filling.
Banana
Provides sweetness, aroma and soft texture inside the baked crust.

The step that matters

Cook the filling until thickened. Flour starch only thickens fully when heated long enough with the boiling water. Undercooked starch leaves a pasty taste and a runny filling that will not hold its shape when sliced.

Swap the banana

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, butter):

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

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, 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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