Home › The Banana › Whipped Bananas
Whipped Bananas
To the pulp of five bananas add the juice of two oranges, the grated rind of one, a tablespoon of sugar, a pinch of salt, and one-fourth box gelatine dissolved in a little cold water. Chopped nuts or candied cherries may be stirred carefully in. When cooled on ice beat in lightly a pint of whipped cream or whites of two eggs and place in mould.
A gelatine-set banana whip of the sort that filled moulds at Edwardian luncheons. Two things in the original need translating before it will set: the gelatine measure, and the fact that blooming is not the same as dissolving.
- The hinge: melt the gelatine, don't just soak itSprinkling gelatine over cold water only swells the granules. It must then be warmed — set the cup in hot water until the mixture is clear and liquid — and stirred into the fruit while still warm, or it will seize into rubbery threads in the cold purée.
- "One-fourth box gelatine"Knox-style boxes of the period generally held four envelopes of about 1/4 oz each, so this is most likely one envelope, roughly 2 1/4 teaspoons of powdered gelatine. That sets about 2 cups of liquid to a soft, spoonable firmness — right for a whip, too slack to unmould into sharp edges.
- BananasFive medium bananas give about 2 cups of pulp. Use fruit that is fully spotted; underripe bananas are starchy and taste chalky raw. Mash or blend, then mix with the orange juice at once, since the acid slows browning.
- Raw egg whitesThe two whites are never cooked. If you take that option rather than the cream, use pasteurized whites in carton form; ordinary raw whites carry a small salmonella risk in an uncooked, unfrozen dessert. The whipped-cream version avoids the question entirely.
- "Cooled on ice"Chill the fruit-and-gelatine base in a bowl set in ice water, stirring, until it thickens to the consistency of unbeaten egg white — about 20 minutes. Fold in the cream then. Too warm and the cream deflates; too cold and the base is already set and will break into lumps.
- A pint of whipped creamThe wording is ambiguous: read as a pint measured after whipping it is about 1 cup of heavy cream beaten to soft peaks, though period recipes often meant a pint of cream before whipping. Whip it unsweetened; the tablespoon of sugar in the base is all this needs against sweet ripe fruit.
- Mould and setRinse the mould with cold water before filling and refrigerate at least 4 hours, or overnight. To turn out, dip the mould in warm water for a few seconds and invert onto a chilled plate.
- YieldAbout 5 cups, serving six. Best eaten the day it is made — banana whips grey and weep by the second day.
Banana "whips," "sponges" and "snows" belong to a specific moment: the years after refrigerated steamships and the United Fruit trade made bananas a cheap, year-round grocery in American cities rather than an exotic import, and the years when granulated gelatine sold in boxed envelopes let any household cook set a moulded dessert without boiling calves' feet. Collections of fruit recipes from this period devote whole sections to the banana precisely because it was new to the everyday repertoire and cooks needed telling what to do with it beyond eating it out of the skin. The construction here — fruit pulp, a little gelatine, whipped cream or beaten whites folded in cold — is the standard chilled-dessert formula of the era, applied in turn to prunes, apricots, rhubarb and strawberries; the candied cherries and chopped nuts are the conventional finish for a company dish.