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Iced Banana Soup
Mash four bananas; pass them through a sieve; measure, then add twice this quantity of cold milk, sugar to taste, a pinch of salt, and the grated rind of an orange. Place on stove and when at boiling point add two teaspoons of cornstarch. Cook five minutes; remove and cool, then place on ice. Serve in bouillon bowls, adding to each a few crème de menthe or maraschino cherries.
A chilled sweet soup built on a very light cornstarch custard. The proportions are given by volume rather than weight, so measure the banana purée first and work from there.
- Working out the quantitiesFour medium bananas mash down to roughly 1 1/2 cups of purée, which means about 3 cups of cold milk. Expect four to six servings, or six small ones if you are using true bouillon cups.
- Sieve or blenderThe sieve exists to remove the fibrous strands and give a smooth body. A blender or immersion blender does the same job in seconds, though pushing the purée through a medium sieve afterwards still catches the stringy bits.
- The cornstarch is the hingeTwo teaspoons for three cups of liquid is deliberately slight, just enough to keep the milk and banana from separating in the bowl. Slake it in a few tablespoons of the cold milk before it goes in, or it will seize into lumps the sieve has already removed.
- Heat controlBanana purée scorches readily and milk catches on a thin pan. Use a heavy saucepan over medium-low heat, stir constantly, and take it only to the first shiver of a boil rather than a rolling one. Five minutes after the starch goes in is enough to cook out the raw taste.
- BrowningMashed banana discolours within minutes. A tablespoon of lemon juice added to the purée keeps the colour pale and sharpens what is otherwise a very sweet soup.
- Sugar to tasteRipe bananas bring a good deal of their own sweetness. Start with two tablespoons, taste after cooking, and remember that chilling mutes sweetness noticeably, so season again cold.
- Orange rindGrate only the coloured zest of one orange; any white pith turns bitter after the soup sits on ice. Adding the zest at the end of cooking rather than the start keeps the oils bright.
- "Place on ice"Cool the pot down first, then refrigerate for at least three hours. It should be thoroughly cold, not merely cool, and it will thicken further as it chills; thin with a little more milk if it sets too heavily.
- The cherriesMaraschino cherries are still on the shelf; creme de menthe cherries, which the recipe offers as the alternative, are now hard to find and can be replaced with a few plain maraschinos and a very small spoon of creme de menthe stirred in at the table.
Chilled fruit soups appear as a light course in turn-of-the-twentieth-century cookery writing, sitting somewhere between a first course and a dessert; the instruction to serve this one in bouillon bowls suggests it was presented in the manner of a soup course rather than a pudding. The banana was the newer element: the expansion of the Central American fruit trade and improvements in shipping through the closing decades of the nineteenth century brought the fruit within reach of ordinary buyers, and cookbook and pamphlet writers duly looked for uses beyond eating it out of hand. This recipe reads as an example of that impulse, taking a boiled cornstarch milk pudding, thinning it into a soup, and dressing it with orange zest and coloured cherries.