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Banana Cake
— Mrs. E. G. Beach
One cup of sugar, one-half cup of butter, two well-beaten eggs, one cup of sweet milk, two teaspoons baking powder sifted well through two cups of flour, pinch of salt, one teaspoon of lemon extract; bake in layers.
Filling-Slice up bananas; whip a cup of rich cream to a stiff froth, stir bananas through cream, spread this between the layers and sprinkle top of cake with powdered sugar, or make frosting.
— Mrs. William H. Hollenbeck
A plain 1-2-3 layer cake with an unbaked whipped cream and banana filling. The cake is forgiving; the filling is the part that dictates when you serve it.
- Assemble at the last minuteWhipped cream and sliced banana will weep and slump within a couple of hours, and the cream soaks the crumb. Bake and cool the layers ahead, but fill no more than an hour before it goes to the table, and keep it refrigerated until then.
- Sweet milkSimply fresh milk, specified to distinguish it from the sour milk or buttermilk used in soda-raised cakes. Whole milk is the right substitute.
- MethodNo mixing order is given because it was assumed: cream the butter and sugar, beat in the eggs, then add the sifted flour, baking powder and salt alternately with the milk, and the extract last.
- Oven and pansThe recipe gives no temperature or tin size. Two 8- or 9-inch round pans at 350F for 22-28 minutes, until the centre springs back, suits a batter of this size.
- Butter measureHalf a cup is 4 oz, one stick. Have it properly softened; cold butter will not take up enough air to carry two cups of flour with only two eggs.
- Browning bananasSlice them straight into the cream, or toss the slices with a little lemon juice first. Cut fruit left standing on the board while the cream is whipped will already be grey at the edges.
- Rich creamAt the period this meant unhomogenised cream of a high fat content. Modern heavy or whipping cream is correct; sweeten it lightly if you like, as the recipe adds none.
- YieldThe recipe does not say how many layers; two will serve 8 to 10. The powdered sugar finish is the quicker option; a plain boiled or confectioners' icing suits it equally.
The receipt carries two names, set before the recipe in the way community cookbooks commonly recorded attributions. Banana cakes of this kind appear in American household books from the 1890s onward, once refrigerated steamships and the fruit importers of New Orleans and New York had turned the banana from a costly novelty into something a grocer stocked year-round. The cake underneath is entirely conventional for the period, a butter-and-baking-powder layer cake of the sort that filled dozens of pages in books like this one; the interest lies in the filling, where an expensive imported fruit and a cup of cream were used to dress up a plain everyday batter.