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Dessert

Cream Banana Nut Pie

A custard pie with sliced bananas, walnuts, and a meringue topping.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 9 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 ↓

Cream Banana Nut Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Make the filling

  1. In a double boiler, bring 1 ½ pints of milk to a boil.

  2. In a separate bowl, mix together 1 cup of sugar, 3 egg yolks, 2 tablespoons of cornstarch, and 3 tablespoons of flour.

  3. Add the mixture to the boiling milk and stir continually until well cooked.

Assemble and bake

  1. Arrange sliced bananas in the bottom of the pie crust and pour the filling over them.

  2. Sprinkle the top with walnut meats.

  3. Prepare meringue and spread it over the top of the pie.

  4. Brown the meringue in a 350°F (175°C) 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. 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. Vanilla + walnuttop 10% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,730 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

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

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

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

Egg yolks
Thicken the custard and add richness to the filling.
Cornstarch
Thickens the milk mixture as it cooks into a smooth custard.
Flour
Adds additional thickening to help the filling set.
Milk
Forms the liquid base of the custard filling.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and balances the flavor.

The step that matters

Stirring the filling while it cooks. Starch-thickened custard can scorch on the bottom or form lumps if it is not stirred constantly. Cooking it until well thickened lets the starch gelatinize fully, so the filling sets properly when cooled.

Swap the walnut

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

  1. Almondfits better
  2. Chestnutfits better
  3. Hazelnutfits about as well
  4. Walnutthe original

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