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Dessert

Sliced Banana Pie

A banana pie made with puff pastry crust, sliced bananas, sugar, mace, butter, and wine, baked without a top crust.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Butter and wine are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 13% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,645 recipes. Both carry 2-furfurylthiol, which smells coffee, roasted. The science ↓

Sliced 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.

Prepare the crust

  1. Preheat the oven to 350°F (175°C).

  2. Roll out the puff pastry, making the center thinner than the edges.

  3. Place the crust in a pie pan and press it down around the edges.

Fill the pie

  1. Peel and slice the bananas lengthwise into 2 or 3 pieces.

  2. Layer the banana slices in the pie crust, 3 layers deep.

  3. Sprinkle sugar over the bananas, add broken mace, and dot with butter.

  4. Pour the wine over the filling.

Bake

  1. Bake for 30 minutes without a top crust.

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. Butter + winetop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together8,645 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-furfurylthiol (coffee, roasted).

  2. Banana + winetop 14% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together244 recipes

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

  3. Banana + buttertop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,536 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  4. Sugar + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together98,233 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

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

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

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

What each ingredient does

Puff pastry
Forms a flaky, buttery shell that holds the filling in the pan.
Bananas
Supply the main filling, softening as they bake into a tender, sweet layer.
Sugar
Sweetens the filling and helps the bananas caramelize slightly at the edges.
Butter
Adds richness and fat that carries flavor and promotes browning in the filling.
Wine
Adds moisture and acidity that loosen the juices and balance the sweetness.

The step that matters

Thinner centre in the crust. Rolling the centre thinner than the edges keeps the base from staying raw and soggy under the moist filling, while the thicker rim holds its shape and structure during baking.

Swap the mace

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

  1. Cinnamonfits better
  2. Gingerfits better
  3. Nutmegfits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against banana, sugar, butter, wine. 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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