Bananas Read online

  6

  EATING

  BananaS

  AT THE BEGINNING OF THE twentieth century, the diet of the average American was transformed by the increasing availability of processed and packaged food, the passage of pure food laws, the expansion of an efficient transportation system, and the growing knowledge of the science of nutrition and sanitation. All this contributed to increasing life expectancy and better health in the United States. Fresh fruit, particularly bananas, were part of the profound alterations to the American diet, to people’s images of themselves, to tension between tradition and change, and to the fabric of daily social life. Within a fifty-year period, bananas lost their novelty and luxury status and became a staple item. Bananas disappeared from formal menus and etiquette books and became the comfort food of childhood and old age.

  Before the 1880s, bananas were a luxury; expensive, they were served only on important occasions and used in small quantities to display wealth and sophistication. A recipe for banana pudding was included with the menu for a Christening Collation in 1876.1 A well-known cookbook author noted that as part of the Christmas dinner “fruits—bananas, white grapes, oranges, and late pears—will probably be partaken of sparingly, but must not be omitted.”2 Another wrote that “a dish of apples, oranges, bananas, and white grapes, placed at one end of the table, and another dish filled with cracked hickory nuts, walnuts, and butternuts, make a pleasant finale to the Christmas dinner.”3 Banana jelly (chopped banana in gelatine) was recommended as a Thanksgiving Day treat.4

  The menu for the thirty-eighth anniversary dinner given on December 22, 1857, of the New England Society—marking the embarkation of the Pilgrims from Delft Haven—listed apples, oranges, bananas, prunes, figs, raisins, almonds, chestnuts, and walnuts as dessert.5 Bananas were also included on the menus of fashionable hotels such as the Hotel Ponce de Leon in Saint Augustine, Florida, and Willard’s Hotel in Washington, D.C., for both breakfast and dessert. In June 1880 the Glen House in the White Mountains included bananas on the dessert menu with English walnuts, almonds, pecan nuts, raisins, assorted cake, vanilla ice cream, wine jelly, and strawberries with cream.6 Bananas were also included as part of an elegant dinner in a discussion of “The Perfection of Table Manners” in 1890:

  These are the dishes that, upon her order, were brought for her dinner: Turtle soup, blue fish, roast beef, cold boned capon, fricasseed chicken, lobster salad, stuffed green peppers, boiled new potatoes, stringed beans, New England pudding, a plate of cake, wine jelly, ice cream, an orange, a banana, and a cup of coffee. Each of these being on a separate dish, altogether they occupied considerable space upon the table. She did not eat the whole of any of them, but she did eat freely of all of them. There was no nonsense or fastidiousness about it. She ate what she wanted and as though she wanted it. And yet she did not appear to be eating at all. This is the perfection of table manners. And she knew how to engage in agreeable conversation meantime.7

  Many Americans turned to etiquette books to find out what to do when confronted with a banana at a formal dinner. It was not considered polite to pick it up, pull back the skin, and bite off a piece of the fruit, particularly by women. Fruit was to be eaten with silver fruit knives and forks.8 Readers of The Correct Thing in Good Society, published in 1888, were instructed that “it is not the Correct Thing to eat bananas with the fingers, except at a very informal meal.”9

  Most cookbooks written before 1880 did not include recipes for bananas. A few recipes appeared in cookbooks published during the 1880s but the banana was still a luxury item. In 1887 the Chicago Women’s Club published a cookbook with the note that “it was not the aim of the compilers of this book to furnish a complete guide to house-keeping, but to collect such rich, rare, and racy, as well as time-honored, recipes as have never been given to the public.”10 The women included a recipe for Banana Cake in which banana slices were used in the filling rather than in the cake batter. There were also recipes for Banana Float, in which mashed bananas were combined with gelatine and milk and served with whipped cream, and for Graham Mush with Bananas.

  The July 23, 1887, issue of Good Housekeeping provided a recipe for

  Heavenly Hash, the newest fashionable dish: oranges, bananas, lemons, apples, raisins, and pineapples are cut up into little bits, worked just enough to thicken their juices, and then served with a little grated nutmeg. But the serving is the pretty part. Cut a hole just large enough to admit a spoon in the stem end of an orange, and through this hole take out all the inside of the orange, which you then fill with the heavenly hash and serve on a pretty little glass fruit dish, with lemon or orange leaves.11

  Bananas appeared more frequently as ingredients in cookbook recipes in the 1890s, but despite their increasing availability, there were still many books that did not include the fruit. One surprising omission was from One Hundred Desserts, published in 1893, since most banana recipes were for dessert concoctions.12 The American Home and Farm Cyclopedia, 1890, had an entry for tropical fruits that included the orange, lemon, lime, banana, and olive, stating that they were “cultivated in the Southern States and California with success, and the interest in their culture is continually increasing.”13 This was the only mention of the banana in the thousand-page work. Some bananas were grown in southern Florida and along the Gulf coast, but there is no other evidence that they were being grown in California in 1890.

  The Encyclopedia of Practical Cookery noted that “it is certain that Bananas as supplied to us here are a very inferior class of fruit, and of little or no use for dessert, cooking, or any other purpose.” Despite this dark assessment of the banana, recipes were provided for baked bananas, banana ice cream, banana cream pie, banana fritters, banana syrup, and a compote of boiled bananas to be served over rice.14

  By 1900 American cooks were experimenting with bananas in a variety of disguises. Deep-fried banana fritters appeared with some regularity as suggested accompaniments to meat, and banana ice cream was popular. A newspaper article in 1916 explained that bananas could be baked and

  placed on a platter and served as a meat. It is not, however, turned out of the skin. When ready to eat it split the skin and banana lengthwise of the fruit; season it with salt, pepper, and a little butter. In warm weather baked bananas may be used to take the place of meat at a meal.15

  The American Domestic Cyclopaedia included recipes for banana cake (slices of fruit between the layers), banana pie, ambrosia (a mixture of pineapple, banana, and coconut), fried bananas, and fruit salad. The fruit salad was described as “a new dish with which epicures tempt fate and give an impetus to stomach anodynes [which] is composed of sliced oranges, sliced pineapples, sliced bananas, sliced hard-boiled eggs, sliced cucumbers, vinegar, and sugar.”16 It is no wonder that some people considered bananas indigestible.

  Fruit in a gelatine mold, the forerunner of Jello, was a popular dessert. One recipe for “Fancy Pudding” instructed the cook with a sweet tooth to

  soak 1 box gelatine in 1 pint sherry, add 1 pint boiling water and 1 cup sugar. Put in a mold, and when beginning to stiffen add 2 oranges sliced, 1 banana sliced, a few figs, cut, ¼ pound candied cherries, and if liked, ¼ pound chocolate creams. Serve with whipped cream sweetened and flavored with wine.17

  Bananas were not always eaten at dinner. They might appear at breakfast “sprinkled with pepper and salt, and served in small, round dishes.” Oranges, bananas, and pineapple, “chopped very fine and served with a rich lemonade” and presented in the orange shell, might also be offered to guests for breakfast.18

  In 1910 an advertisement for Puffed Wheat and Puffed Rice showed a bowl of sliced bananas with a little cereal being spooned over it.19 Soon it became more common to add sliced bananas to a bowl full of breakfast cereal. A 1918 advertisement for the same cereal included a picture of a bowl of cereal topped with sliced bananas.20 Ralston advertised a “Morning Appetite Tempter! Crisp, delicious Shredded Ralston topped with sliced bananas and milk or cream. Energy and flavor in eve
ry bite. Try it!”21

  As late as 1921, an article in Scientific American, focusing on the digestibility of bananas, advised that mixing a banana “with bread or cereal prevents it from forming a mucilaginous mass in the stomach and thus promotes its digestion, while baking it quickly in the skin until soft and juicy renders it perfectly harmless for most persons.”22 A recipe book published by United’s Fruit Dispatch Company in 1924 also promoted the combination of bananas and dry cereal, suggesting

  CORN FLAKES WITH BANANAS

  Fill a cereal bowl half full of corn flakes, and cut one half of a ripe banana on top of this, and serve with heavy cream, and sugar if desired (though it will be found that for the average taste the banana supplies the necessary sugar element in a natural form).

  NOTE: Grape Nuts, Shredded Wheat, Bran Flakes, etc., may also be served the same way.23

  Breakfast cereal packaging continues to show the product with sliced banana as a serving suggestion. In the 1980s United Fruit, in cooperation with Nabisco, promoted bananas as a go-together with breakfast cereal, placing stickers on the fruit advertising Nabisco products. In 1986 Reader’s Digest assumed that Americans ate all their bananas with cereal for breakfast, noting that “sanitation engineers annually haul away more than 13 billion banana peels after we’ve each plunked 22 pounds of the fruit into our bowls of soggy cereal.”24 This is, indeed, perhaps the most common way in which Americans at the end of the twentieth century consume bananas, despite decades of effort by United Fruit and others to get us to include the fruit in all our meals and between-meal snacks.

  A supermarket survey in the Washington, D.C., area in August 1995 found only two kinds of breakfast cereal that paired bananas with the product pictured on the box. One was Health Valley Fiber 7 Flakes and the other was a house brand variety of frosted flakes, neither of them available in other local supermarket chains. Post offered Banana Nut Crunch cereal that was flavored with bananas and Instant Quaker Oatmeal was available with Bananas and Cream flavoring. The most popular fruit displayed with the wide variety of breakfast cereals were strawberries and raspberries. However, Rice Crispy packages sold in Vermont at the same time pictured bananas with the cereal. Cereal companies now offer different packaging to specific regional markets, and depict various fruits with the product depending upon the season and local preferences.

  United Fruit published A Short History of the Banana and a Few Recipes for Its Use in 1904 with the stated object to teach people to use bananas cooked as a vegetable for lunch and dinner in order to expand the use and consumption of the fruit.25 For banana entrees the booklet included three recipes for bananas and hot cereal, four baked and two fried banana recipes, hashed lamb and bananas, banana croquettes with lamb chops, compote of bananas with orange syrup, and banana fritters.

  A Short History of the Banana and a Few Recipes for Its Use (Boston: United Fruit, 1904).

  As bananas became more common and less expensive at the turn of the century, they began to lose their status as a luxury item. In 1889 bananas were recommended as a substitute for pie in the working man’s dinner pail because “if we estimate the ruin wrought upon digestion by pastry and doughnuts, we are ready to affirm that he could better afford hot-house fruits at their dearest, than to satisfy the cravings of nature with these home-made ‘delicacies.’ ”26

  In 1894 an article in Harper’s Weekly noted that “if it wasn’t for the women and children in this country, the banana trade wouldn’t be worth a rap.” Women were credited with the sudden enormous growth in the banana trade. According to the article’s author, although the dealers preferred red bananas, most of the bananas imported were “of the yellow kind.… The women and children like them better.”27 Readers were assured that the “most delicate and nutritious” banana was the great seedless fruit of the world, more of a staple than wheat.

  Sidney Mintz suggests that women have traditionally saved the most nutritious food for the men of the family while they and their small children have eaten the scraps.28 When sugar became widely available and affordable in England, women consumed it in tea and cheap baked goods for quick energy in place of more satisfying but expensive meat. Bananas may have served much the same purpose as sugar for turn-of-the-century American working-class women and children. The fruit was cheap, filling, and nutritious, and soon became known as women and children’s food in the United States. In 1892 the author of A Bill of Fare for Everyday in the Year suggested that “two or three bananas, sliced in a bowl of bread and milk, make a delicious and sufficient lunch,” most likely for women and children.29 In 1896 a suggested ladies’ luncheon menu included bouillon, wafers, banana sandwiches, marshmallow cakes, and tea. According to the contributor, “Banana sandwiches are new and very nice.”30 Not very nutritious by today’s standards, but it would have been considered very dainty and feminine and would have provided plenty of quick energy.

  As the volume of banana imports continued to increase in the twentieth century, the fruit became an integral part of the American diet in all parts of the country. Bananas were offered to immigrants who came through Ellis Island in New York as their first taste of America. Even though the fruit itself was imported, European immigrants equated it with the United States and with what real Americans ate.31

  Yes! 100 Ways to Enjoy Bananas (New Orleans: Bauerlein, 1925).

  Good Housekeeping published an article on bananas in 1917 with the observation that “perhaps no staple article of food is more the subject of strange fancies or more misunderstood—more over-praised for qualities which it does not possess and blamed for defects not its own—than that standby of the corner fruit-stand, the banana.”32 The author estimated that seven billion were consumed each year for an average of nearly 72 bananas for each American. This was a tremendous number of bananas. In 1990 the average banana consumption was 52 per capita, still the most widely-eaten fruit in the country.

  During World War I, despite the disruption of the banana trade to the United States and the loss of European markets, the possibilities of increased use of bananas were seriously explored in the United States as a substitute for cereal and other carbohydrate food.33 An article in Good Housekeeping notified readers that “your government is urging you to substitute other foods for wheat. Did you know that you can use bananas for this purpose?” The article went on to say that “used in conjunction with dried beans or peas or with dairy products, such as milk and cheese or with lean meat, they serve to secure a properly balanced ration,” and included recipes for baked bananas de luxe, banana pickle, banana butter, bananas baked in lemon juice, banana pie, and orange-pecan salad with bananas.34 According to another article, the banana

  is practically the only food which during the last two years has not shown a marked increase in price and to-day will stand comparison with any food upon the market on the basis of caloric costs. Everything points to its continued favor not merely as the “poor man’s fruit” as it has sometimes been called, but as a staple food for universal use, and it is to be hoped that it will be employed in continually increasing amounts whether as a substitute for other foods which have become prohibitive in price or because of its own inherent quality.35

  An article entitled “A Cheap Food We Overlook” in the Ladies Home Journal in March 1918 also recommended bananas as a nourishing food. According to the author,

  bananas have three times the proteid of apples, more fats and a third more carbohydrates. About two pounds and three-quarters of peeled bananas, costing, say, twelve cents, are equal in nutriment to a pound of porterhouse steak. The banana is also rich in mineral salts, containing as much iron as whole-wheat bread and outranking the potato in energy-giving qualities.36

  Recipes were given for banana croquettes (served hot with any kind of roast meat), banana fritters, baked bananas, banana pudding, banana-and-nut mold, spiced bananas, and fried bananas.

  Yet another magazine article, published in 1918 with the title “Cook Your Bananas,” stated that

  the rea
son why the banana is not sufficiently appreciated as a food is that we persist in eating it unripe and raw. We might as well eat raw potatoes as to eat bananas in the condition in which they are usually offered. The remedy is to treat them as we do the potato—namely, cook them.37

  United Fruit Company continued to promote the idea of cooked bananas with a new publication in 1926 that included eighty-three banana recipes. In the entree section suggestions included baked, broiled, and deep-fried bananas, rice and bananas, bananas and poached eggs, banana fritters, and meat loaf with baked bananas and tomato halves. Salad recipes included bananas with other fruit, and bananas in cole slaw. The majority of the recipes were devoted to desserts, ice cream, cakes, and frosting. Under “Special Dishes” are listed banana marmalade recommended to be served with toast, with meat, or as a cake filling, banana muffins, and banana pancakes. These recipes were said to be “absolutely novel and at the same time more delicious in flavor than the old and familiar muffins and marmalade.”38 In 1939 United Fruit claimed that “among the most popular combinations are cooked bananas with meats—roasts, meat loaves, hamburg steak, sausages, frankfurters, hash, chops, steaks—or with any fish or fish cakes.”39

  Cook Bananas … and Win New Hostess Fame! (n.p., c. 1935).

  The company has continued through the years to encourage North Americans to cook their bananas and The Chiquita Banana Cookbook, published in 1974, included sections on Dips and Drinks, Salads, Vegetables, Barbecue, Entrees, Children’s Treats, Baking, Desserts, and Flambés and Fondues.40 The many color illustrations showed banana preparations such as Banana Plantation Salad, Tropical Trifle, Spanish Rum Cake, Chicken Honduras, Fish Fillets Tropical, and Puchero—“the national dish of every Spanish oriented culture”—in tropical, Hispanic settings, clearly not mainstream United States cuisine. Despite the best efforts of banana promoters, cooked bananas have never taken their place on the average menu. Plantains are favored in Central American and African cuisine, but the cooked banana has never become widely popular on the dinner table in the United States, other than in desserts.