California Figs

This is the tail end of a layered baked banana pudding — a "scallop" of sliced fruit and buttered cracker crumbs — and the page begins mid-sentence, so the fruit quantities and the sauce are on the missing lines above. What survives is workable if you treat it as a method rather than a formula.

• What is missingThe text opens partway through the crumb layer and refers to a sauce "see above," both of which belong to earlier lines. The fruit is not named in what survives, and neither its quantity nor the sauce can be recovered from this fragment.
• Moderate ovenUsually rendered today as about 350F, the middle of the range, hot enough to brown the top crumbs without scorching the sugar; the recipe itself gives no temperature.
• Forty minutesLong enough that soft fruit will break down; check at 25 minutes if you want slices to hold. Cover loosely with foil if the peanuts darken early.
• Cracker-crumbsSoda crackers or unsalted saltines, rolled fine, rather than graham crumbs or dry breadcrumbs. The fragment does not specify buttered crumbs, though a little melted butter tossed through them is common in dishes of this type.
• Chopped peanutsRoasted, unsalted, coarsely chopped. Salted cocktail peanuts will make the dish noticeably savoury against the sugar; if that is all you have, rinse and dry them.
• Two of eachTwo layers of fruit and two of crumbs. The surviving text does not make clear which layer comes first; it only specifies that sugar is sprinkled on top.