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Heavenly Hash
Strain the juice from 1 pint of cherries or red raspberries and place in a sauce dish with alternate layers of sliced bananas, sprinkling over each layer 1 tablespoonful of pulverized sugar. Make a custard with 1 pint of milk, 3 eggs, saving out the whites of 2; 1/2 cupful of sugar, 2 tablespoonfuls of corn starch, and a pinch of salt. When cold pour custard over fruit, covering with the whites well beaten with 1/2 cupful of sugar.
A layered fruit-and-custard dessert of the sort that filled the "baked puddings" chapter whether or not it ever saw an oven. The wording is compressed, so a few things are worth settling before you begin.
- What goes in the dishThe wording is ambiguous. Taken literally, it is the strained juice that goes into the dish in alternate layers with the sliced bananas; whether the drained fruit is layered in as well is left unsaid. A pint measure of cherries gives somewhat less than 2 cups once pitted.
- Sauce dishIn this period a sauce dish was a small individual glass or china bowl, not a saucepan. A single shallow glass dish of about 1 1/2 quarts works just as well and shows the layers.
- Pulverized sugarThis is confectioners' or powdered sugar, which dissolves at once on the cut fruit. Modern powdered sugar contains cornstarch; that is harmless here.
- The custard is cooked"Make a custard" assumes the period method: whisk the yolks, whole egg, sugar, cornstarch and salt with a little of the cold milk, scald the rest, combine, and stir over low heat until it thickens and the starch loses its raw taste. It must not boil hard or it will curdle around the starch.
- Cool it properly"When cold pour custard over fruit" matters for two reasons: hot custard turns banana slices to mush and bleeds the fruit juice. Chill with a sheet of plastic pressed on the surface to stop a skin forming.
- The meringue toppingThe recipe says only to cover the dessert with the two whites well beaten with 1/2 cupful of sugar; no baking is called for, and the custard beneath is already cooked and cold. Left as written the meringue is raw, so use pasteurized whites.
- YieldNo yield is stated; the quantities suggest something in the range of four to six servings. It does not keep past the first day, as the bananas darken.