Home › Pies of All Kinds › Banana Pie
Banana Pie
Line a deep pie tin with rich paste.
Into this slice 1 large banana, or two small ones. Pour over it a boiled custard made with 1 pint rich milk, 2 beaten eggs (yolks) 2 tablespoons sugar and a little salt. Bake slowly in a moderate oven and finish with a meringue of whites of eggs, or stiffly whipped cream.
A plain custard pie with banana sliced under the filling, from the era when "boiled custard" meant a stirred custard cooked over water rather than one actually boiled. Two things decide whether it works: the state of the crust when the filling goes in, and how gently it bakes.
- The hinge: don't let the custard boilA "boiled custard" is a stirred custard, cooked over simmering water and pulled at around 175F when it coats a spoon. Actual boiling scrambles the yolks and no amount of straining fully recovers the texture.
- "Bake slowly in a moderate oven"Read this as 325-350F. The custard is done when the outer inch is set and the centre still wobbles slightly; it firms as it cools. Overbaking weeps liquid into the crust.
- Blind-bake the shellThe recipe assumes the wet filling goes into raw pastry, which reliably gives a pale, soggy base. Bake the lined tin at 400F until dry and lightly coloured, then reduce the oven for the custard.
- "Rich paste"A short pastry with a high proportion of butter or lard to flour — closer to 1 part fat to 2 parts flour than a plain lining paste. Enough for one deep 9-inch tin.
- QuantitiesThis is a Canadian book, so the pint is most likely an imperial pint of 20 fl oz, about 2 1/2 cups; if you are working to US measure a pint is 2 cups. "Rich milk" means whole milk, or milk with a little cream added. Two yolks to a pint is a soft set.
- Bananas darkenSlice them straight into the shell just before the custard goes over, so the cut surfaces are covered. Exposed slices brown quickly and the flavour of the fruit goes flat if it bakes long under direct heat.
- The meringueBeat the two reserved whites with about 2 tablespoons sugar per white to stiff peaks, spread it so it seals to the crust all round, and brown it at 350F for 12-15 minutes. Sealing the edge is what stops it shrinking and sliding.
- Cream insteadIf you take the whipped-cream option, the pie must be fully cold first, and it then needs refrigeration and same-day eating.
- YieldOne deep 9-inch pie, six to eight slices. Best the day it is made — the crust softens overnight.
Banana pie belongs to the moment when the fruit was becoming an everyday item rather than a luxury. Bananas reached North American ports through the later nineteenth century in growing but uneven volumes; by the 1900s and 1910s regular steamer traffic and refrigerated transport had made them widely available in ordinary grocers, and cookbooks responded by dropping them into the formats already at hand — custard pies, fritters, gelatine moulds, layer-cake fillings. This recipe is essentially a standard boiled-custard pie with fruit added, a common way for new ingredients to enter household books of the period: not with a new technique, but slotted into an existing one. The Five Roses Cook Book, published by Lake of the Woods Milling Company and distributed to Canadian households who bought its flour, drew on recipes contributed by those users, which is why its pie chapter reads as a survey of household baking rather than a chef's programme. The banana cream pie familiar today is a close relative, with the custard cooked fully on the stove and poured into a pre-baked shell instead of setting in the oven.