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CHAPTER XIII: Serve
Serve with a pitcher of cream. The cake may be hot or cold, but it is best when freshly made.
BANANA WHIP 1 banana 1/3 cup of double cream 1/4 cup of sugar 2 pistachio nuts 1 tablespoonful of lemon juice Peel the banana, scrape off the coarse threads and press the pulp through a sieve; add the sugar and lemon juice and cook over the fire, stirring constantly until the mixture boils; remove from the fire and let become chilled. Beat the cream till firm to the bottom of the bowl. Fold the chilled banana and cream together and turn into two glasses. Pour boiling water over the nuts, let stand about two minutes, pour off the water, add cold water and push off the skins from the nuts. Chop the blanched nuts fine and sprinkle over the mixture in the glasses.
BAKED BANANAS, SULTANA SAUCE 2 bananas 1 teaspoonful of cornstarch 1/4 cup (or less) of Sultana rai- 1 teaspoonful of butter sins 1/2 teaspoonful of vanilla or 1 cup of boiling water 1 tablespoonful of lemon juice 1/3 cup of sugar or sherry Pull down a section of a banana skin, then loosen the pulp from the rest of the skin; remove all coarse threads and replace the fruit in its original position in the skin. Set the bananas, in an agate dish, in a moderate oven, to bake until the skin is blackened and the pulp is soft. It will take about ten minutes. Take the pulp from the skins without injury to the shape and dispose in saucers in half circles. Pour over the sauce. Serve hot as an entree with meat or as a dessert dish. Cook the raisins in the water until tender. Stir in the cornstarch and sugar mixed together, let simmer six or eight minutes, add the butter and flavoring and the sauce is ready to serve. The water will evaporate during the cooking of the raisins. Add more as needed but do not have more than half a cup in the dish when the cornstarch is added. GRAPEFRUIT JELLY 1 tablespoonful of granulated 1 1/2 cups of grapefruit, pulp gelatine and juice together 1/4 cup of cold water 2 or 3 tablespoonfuls of sherry 1/4 cup of boiling water or maraschino at discre- 1/3 to 1/2 cup of sugar tion 1 tablespoonful of lemon juice 6 or 8 candied cherries Soften the gelatine in the cold water and dissolve in the hot water; add the sugar and stir occasionally until cold, then add the fruit and juice, also wine if used. Set five small moulds in a pan of ice and water to become chilled. Cut the cherries in slices to form rings. With a steel skewer dip the cherry rings in the grapefruit mixture, and set them on the chilled sides and bottoms of the moulds, to which they will adhere. Then fill the moulds, little by little, with the grapefruit mixture.
SLICED FIGS IN SHERRY WINE JELLY 1 tablespoonful of granulated 1/2 cup of sherry wine gelatine Juice of 1/2 a lemon 1/4 cup of cold water 5 or 6 figs 3/4 cup of boiling water Whipped cream 1/2 cup of sugar Soften the gelatine in the cold water and dissolve in the boiling water; add the sugar and stir occasionally until cold. Add the wine and lemon juice. Let a mould holding a scant pint become chilled in cold or ice water. A fluted mould is good for this dish. Cut the figs in slices, dip some of these in the jelly mixture and use them to decorate the mould; then fill the mould, alternately, with slices of figs and the mixture, letting the jelly "set" partially, each time, before adding the slices of figs. When the jelly is unmolded garnish with whipped cream, put on with bag and tube, and bits of fig.
SWEET-PICKLE JELLY (To serve with roast chicken, lamb or beef) 1/4 package (1 tablespoonful) 1/4 cup of cold water of granulated gelatine 1 orange (juice, and pulp in 1 cup of syrup from sweet bits) pickle jar (scalded) 2 tablespoonfuls of maraschino 1 cup of sweet pickle, cut in cherries in small pieces, at small pieces (peach, pear, discretion melon or pin-money man- 3 tablespoonfuls of liquid from goes) the cherries, at discretion Soften the gelatine in the cold water and dissolve in the hot syrup; let cool, then add the other ingredients; if mangoes be used add both outside and filling. Carefully discard the orange seeds. Stir the mixture in a pan of ice water until it thickens enough to hold up the bits of fruit, then turn into small molds or one of larger size. This recipe will serve six people.
Five small-batch dessert recipes from a two-person household book, all built on fruit and on the then-novel convenience of packaged granulated gelatine. The gelatine quantities and the pistachio blanching are the parts most likely to trip up a modern cook.
- Gelatine measureOne tablespoon of granulated gelatine is one standard envelope (1/4 oz, about 7 g), which is what the book means by "1/4 package." That will set roughly two cups of liquid to an unmoulding firmness; the grapefruit and fig jellies both fall in that range.
- "Double cream"In an American book of this period this means heavy or whipping cream, not British 48% double cream. One-third cup whips to about two-thirds cup, enough to lighten one banana for two glasses. Chill the bowl; a small quantity warms fast under a beater.
- Moderate ovenSomewhere around 350F on a modern dial. The book allows "about ten minutes"; in practice it may take longer than that before the skin blackens and the pulp goes slack, so judge by the skin rather than the clock.
- Agate dishAgate ware is speckled enamelled steel, the everyday ovenware of the period. Any shallow metal or ceramic baking dish does the same job; the skins will weep sugar, so line it.
- Blanching pistachiosThe two-minute hot-water soak is to slip the skins so the green shows against the pale whip. Modern shelled pistachios are usually roasted and salted, and their skins will not release cleanly — buy raw ones if you want the colour.
- Cook the banana purée, and chill itBoiling the sieved pulp with sugar and lemon is what keeps the whip from browning and turning thin. Fold it in only when it is cold, or the cream will slacken.
- Chilled moulds and the skewer trickSetting the small moulds in ice water is not optional in either jelly. The cherry rings and fig slices adhere only to a cold, slightly tacky surface; on a room-temperature mould they slide to the bottom.
- Pin-money mangoes and pickle syrup"Pin-money pickles" were a commercial Virginia brand, and the mangoes are pickled stuffed muskmelons, not tropical mangoes — no longer sold. Use any sweet mixed pickled fruit and its syrup, scalded as directed to kill off yeasts from the open jar.
- YieldThe banana whip fills two glasses and the baked bananas use two bananas; the fig jelly calls for a mould holding a scant pint; the grapefruit jelly fills five small moulds and the sweet-pickle jelly is stated as serving six.
These pages appear to come from Janet McKenzie Hill's Cooking for Two, one of a run of early twentieth-century books written for the small urban household — young couples in flats, with a gas range and an icebox rather than a cook and a cellar. Several of the dishes here depend on two things that were relatively new to the American kitchen in Hill's lifetime: packaged granulated gelatine, far easier than boiling calves' feet, and cheap bananas, which arrived in quantity through Gulf and Atlantic ports as the Central American fruit trade industrialised. That helps explain the slightly showy technique — cherry rings pressed onto chilled mould walls, fig slices layered in sherry jelly — which is Boston Cooking-School style through and through: elaborate presentation achieved with modest ingredients and no staff. The sweet-pickle jelly, served with roast meat, sits in a long line of American sweet-sour condiments and is a reminder that the savoury moulded salad, later a mid-century cliché, was already established before the First World War.