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Dessert

Banana Cream Pie

A pie with a crust filled with sliced bananas, a custard of egg yolk, sugar, orange extract, and cream, topped with meringue.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 8 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 Cream Pie

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the filling

  1. Line a pie plate with the crust.

  2. Fill the crust with sliced bananas.

  3. In a bowl, beat the egg yolk with the sugar.

  4. Add the orange extract and cream or milk, then pour over the bananas.

  5. Bake until set.

Top with meringue

  1. Make a meringue by beating the egg whites until stiff, then gradually add the powdered sugar and orange extract.

  2. Spread the meringue over the pie and bake until golden.

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. Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  3. Banana + sugartop 19% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together3,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).

  4. Sugar + orangetop 20% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together19,212 recipes

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

  5. Egg + sugartop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together122,807 recipes

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

Sugar and orange barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 19,212 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

Egg yolk
Thickens the cream filling as it sets in the oven.
Egg whites
Whipped into a foam that forms the light, stable meringue topping.
Cream or rich milk
Adds fat and moisture, giving the filling a smooth, rich texture.
Bananas
Provide the main fruit flavor and sweetness in the filling.
Powdered sugar
Dissolves easily into the whipped whites, sweetening and stabilizing the meringue.

The step that matters

Bake the filling until set. Egg yolk thickens as its proteins coagulate with heat. Underbaking leaves the custard runny, while overbaking can make it weep or curdle, so watch for it to set just firm.

Swap the orange

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

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

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