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Banana Cream
Beat the pulp of six bananas, two tablespoonfuls of sugar and the juice of a lemon, to a cream.
Stir into this mixture half a cup of chopped walnut meats. Put into a glass dish and garnish with whipped cream.
A no-cook fruit fool that depends entirely on ripe fruit and speed of assembly. The only real hazard is browning.
- Work fast, and use the lemonMashed banana oxidises within minutes. The lemon juice is not just for flavour; get it onto the pulp as you mash rather than after, and cover the surface directly with film if the dish waits in the refrigerator.
- Banana ripenessSix bananas gives somewhere around 2 1/2 to 3 cups of pulp, depending on size. They should be heavily freckled — firm yellow fruit is starchy and will taste flat against the lemon.
- "Beat to a cream"This means a smooth purée, not an aerated one. A fork or potato masher gives a better texture than a blender, which turns banana slick and gluey.
- Sugar to tasteTwo tablespoons assumes a whole lemon's juice and very ripe fruit. Taste and adjust; the mixture should be tart enough that the whipped cream reads as rich rather than cloying.
- Walnut meats"Meats" simply means shelled kernels. Toasting them for 6 to 8 minutes at 350F sharpens the flavour and keeps them from going soft in the fruit — an improvement the original does not call for but does not exclude.
- The whipped creamThe garnish is simply cream whipped to soft peaks; given how sweet the base already is, keep the sugar in it light or leave it out. Add it at the table.
- YieldServes four to six in small glasses. It does not keep overnight; the fruit darkens and weeps.
Uncooked banana "creams" and fools appear in American cookery from the later nineteenth century onward, as improved shipping brought the fruit from novelty to everyday market goods; by the early twentieth century bananas were among the cheaper fruits available in Northern city markets. The dish belongs to a family of uncooked "creams" that also covers prune, apricot and strawberry versions: fruit pulp beaten with sugar and acid, bulked with nuts, and finished with whipped cream, requiring neither a stove nor ice.