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Dessert

Banana Pie

A pie with sliced bananas, a milk‑cornstarch custard, and a meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,430 recipes. Both carry ethyl isobutyrate, which smells fruity, ethereal. 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

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Line a pie pan with the crust and bake until golden.

Make the custard

  1. In a saucepan, combine milk, cornstarch, and egg yolks. Cook over medium heat until thickened.

  2. Stir in vanilla and sugar, then pour the custard over the sliced bananas.

Top and bake

  1. Whip the egg whites until stiff peaks form, then spread over the custard.

  2. Bake in the oven until the meringue is golden brown.

  3. If desired, add grated chocolate to the custard before pouring it over the bananas.

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 + vanillatop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,430 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl isobutyrate (fruity, ethereal).

  2. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

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

  3. Vanilla + chocolatetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together10,020 recipes

    Shared aroma: sotolon (curry, maple).

  4. Vanilla + sugartop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

Vanilla and sugar barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 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

Cornstarch
Thickens the milk as it heats, giving the custard a smooth, sliceable body.
Egg yolks
Add richness and help thicken the custard as they heat.
Egg whites
Whipped into foam, they form the light, stable meringue topping.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard.
Bananas
Provide fruit flavor and soft texture beneath the custard.
Sugar
Sweetens the custard and helps stabilize the whipped meringue.

The step that matters

Cook the custard until thickened. Cornstarch and egg yolks thicken as they heat, but the yolks can scramble if the mixture boils too hard or too long, leaving a grainy custard.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Coconutfits about as well
  2. Figfits about as well
  3. Cherryfits about as well
  4. Bananathe original

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