Name: Banana Pie
Ingredients: 3 bananas, sliced; 2 teaspoons sugar; 1 tablespoon cream; whipped cream (costing about 10 cents)

Why it works: Sugar and cream are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 9% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 43,450 recipes. Both carry 2,3-butanedione, which smells butter, sweet. The science ↓

Banana Pie

Ingredients

3 bananas, sliced
2 teaspoons sugar
1 tablespoon cream
whipped cream (costing about 10 cents)

Directions

Slice the bananas and place them in a pie dish.
Sprinkle the sugar over the bananas.
Drizzle the cream on top of the bananas.
Top with whipped cream before serving.

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.

Sugar + creamtop 9% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together43,450 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).
Banana + sugartop 19% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together3,102 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-penten-3-one (fish, pungent).
Banana + creamtop 23% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together1,180 recipes

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

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

What each ingredient does

Bananas: Form the fruit base, providing sweetness and a soft, tender texture.
Sugar: Adds sweetness and draws moisture out of the bananas.
Cream: Adds richness and moisture over the fruit.