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Dessert

Banana Pie

A pie made with sliced bananas, sugar, vinegar, butter, nutmeg, and pie crusts.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Banana and nutmeg work together. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 273 recipes. Both carry acetic acid, which smells sour, vinegar. The science ↓

Banana Pie

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Peel and slice enough bananas to fill the pan.

  2. Sprinkle the bananas with sugar, vinegar, butter, and nutmeg.

Bake

  1. Bake between two pie crusts.

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 + nutmegtop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together273 recipes

    Shared aroma: acetic acid (sour, vinegar).

  2. Banana + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,536 recipes

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

  3. Sugar + vinegartop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together20,806 recipes

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

  4. Butter + nutmegtop 16% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together24,377 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Bananas
Form the filling, providing moisture and natural sweetness as they soften.
Sugar
Adds sweetness and helps the filling caramelize and brown slightly as it bakes.
Vinegar
Adds a sharp acidity that balances the sweetness of the bananas and sugar.
Pie crusts
Enclose the filling on both sides, holding its shape and moisture as it bakes.

Swap the nutmeg

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Tarragonfits about as well
  3. Peppermintfits about as well
  4. Nutmegthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, sugar, vinegar, 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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