Moonshine
Beat the whites of three eggs very light, sweeten to taste, then slice in thin pieces of bananas and stir into it; or if you choose, take two oranges and cut in small pieces, sweeten and add to it; do not make it until just before going to table; it is not only a handsome dish but is very delicious.
This is an uncooked egg-white foam served straight from the bowl, and that is the whole problem with it: nothing in the dish ever reaches a temperature that would kill Salmonella.
- Raw whites, never heatedThe three beaten whites are the entire body of the dish and they are never cooked, baked or scalded at any stage. Shell eggs can carry Salmonella enteritidis in the white as well as the yolk, and beating aerates and warms the mixture rather than sterilising it.
- Held at room temperatureThe recipe says only to make it "just before going to table"; it gives no reason, and whatever the motive, the effect is a raw protein foam standing on the table for the length of a meal. Sugar and fruit acid do not preserve it. A current recipe using pasteurised whites should be used instead.
- Who it was served toNineteenth-century invalid and nursery cookery leaned heavily on raw and barely-cooked egg. This recipe does not say who it was intended for, but raw egg carries the greatest risk for children, the elderly and the convalescent.
- "Sweeten to taste"No quantity is given at all; the amount of sugar is left entirely to the cook.
- YieldThree whites beaten stiff make roughly a bowlful; no yield is stated. A sweetened raw-white foam of this kind weeps and slumps fairly quickly, which is presumably why the recipe insists it not be made until just before going to table.
"Moonshine" here has nothing to do with illicit spirits — in American cookbooks of the later nineteenth century the name is attached to a pale, glossy dish of beaten white heaped up and served cold, cousin to the older English "snow" puddings and to oeufs à la neige without the custard. The bananas suggest a fairly late date: bananas became a common sight on American tables only after steam shipping and the Central American fruit trade brought prices down in the 1880s and 1890s, and their appearance alongside oranges suggests a dish showing off fruit that would once have been a luxury. The recipe's appeal is that it is cold, quick and assembled at the last moment, and valued as much for looking "handsome" on the table as for tasting good.