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Dessert

Banana Pie

A baked pie with sliced bananas, apple sauce, and meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 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

Oven, in the book's wordsA quick oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a quick oven”. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the crust

  1. Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).

  2. Line a deep pie tin with the pie crust and bake until golden, pressing down with a knife if it rises.

Make the filling

  1. In a bowl, beat the egg yolk and ½ cup sugar until light and foamy.

  2. Mix in the strained apple sauce and season with lemon juice.

  3. Fill the baked crust with sliced bananas and pour the apple sauce mixture over them.

  4. Bake in the oven until set.

Top with meringue

  1. Make a meringue by beating the egg white until stiff, then gradually add ½ cup sugar.

  2. Spread the meringue over the pie and brown lightly in the oven.

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. Banana + appletop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together435 recipes

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

  3. Apple + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,501 recipes

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

  4. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

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

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

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

Sugar and vanilla 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

Eggs
The yolk thickens the apple sauce filling and the white whips into the meringue topping.
Apple sauce
Provides the moist, set body that holds the custard-like filling around the bananas.
Bananas
Add natural sweetness and soft texture to the filling beneath the topping.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps stabilize the whipped egg white meringue.
Lemon juice
Adds acidity that brightens the sweet filling and balances its flavor.

The step that matters

Beating the egg white until stiff before adding sugar. Egg white must be whipped to firm peaks and the sugar added gradually so the meringue holds its shape and browns lightly instead of weeping or collapsing.

Swap the lemon

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

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Pearfits better
  3. Figfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, sugar, egg, apple, sauce, vanilla, 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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