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Dessert

Banana Pie

A pie with a sweet milk filling, banana layers, and a whipped egg white topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
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Why it works: Vanilla and banana 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 moderate oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderate oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Make the filling

  1. Cook the sweet milk, sugar, vanilla, egg yolks, and flour together in a double boiler until thick.

Make the crust

  1. Mix the flour, ice water, and lard for the pie crust.

  2. Bake the crust until golden.

Assemble and bake

  1. Layer sliced bananas in the baked crust.

  2. Pour the thick filling over the bananas.

  3. Beat the egg whites with sugar until stiff.

  4. Spread the stiff egg whites on top of the pie.

  5. Bake the pie in a moderate oven at 350°F (175°C) until the topping is browned.

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

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

  4. Milk + bananatop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,470 recipes

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

  5. Vanilla + flourtop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,241 recipes

    Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).

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

Sweet milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard filling.
Egg yolks
Thicken the custard filling as it cooks with heat.
Flour
Thickens the filling and gives structure to the pie crust.
Lard
Adds fat that keeps the pie crust tender and flaky.
Egg whites
Beaten to stiffness, they form a light topping that browns in the oven.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the meringue topping brown.

The step that matters

Cook the filling until thick. Egg yolks and flour thicken the custard only when it is heated enough. Cooking gently in a double boiler helps prevent the eggs from scrambling or curdling, which would leave the filling grainy instead of smooth.

Swap the banana

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

  1. Raisinfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Blueberryfits better
  4. Bananathe original

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