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Bananas à La Patricia
6 bananas 1/4 lb. (1/2 cup) sugar 1 saltspoonful salt 2 tablespoonfuls melted butter 4 tablespoonfuls water 4 teaspoonfuls lemon juice 3 egg whites Mix the sugar and salt together; cut the bananas into halves, lengthways and crossways, and put a layer in an earthenware dish; sprinkle over half of the sugar, add two teaspoonfuls of the lemon juice and one tablespoonful of the melted butter, then another layer of the bananas, with the remainder of the sugar, lemon juice, butter, and water.
Bake in a hot oven for fifteen minutes.
Beat up the whites of the eggs, then gradually beat into them three tablespoonfuls of sugar and a little lemon juice.
Put them on the top of the bananas and color slightly in the oven.
A straightforward baked banana dish under a meringue cap, though the printed ingredient list leaves out the one thing the title promises. A few conversions and one omission to work around.
- The missing bananasThe ingredient list gives sugar, salt, butter, water, lemon juice and egg whites but no bananas at all. The method calls for two layers cut in halves lengthways and crossways, but no quantity is printed, so the amount must be judged by the size of the dish used.
- SaltspoonfulA saltspoon is a quarter of a teaspoon. It is there to sharpen the sugar, not to season.
- Sugar, and more sugarThe 1/4 lb (1/2 cup) is used entirely between the two banana layers. The three tablespoonfuls beaten into the egg whites are additional and are not counted in the list, so have extra to hand.
- A hot ovenRoughly 400-450F by period usage. Fifteen minutes at that heat softens the bananas and reduces the butter, lemon and water to a syrup without collapsing them into purée.
- Colouring the meringue"Color slightly" means a few minutes only, until the peaks take a light tan. A soft meringue of three whites over a hot dish sets fast; left in, it weeps and the bananas turn to sauce.
- YieldTwo layers of bananas in a shallow dish will serve about four to six. Best eaten warm, within the hour, as the meringue softens and the fruit darkens on standing.
Naming a simple fruit dish after a woman was a common convention of turn-of-the-century cookery writing, and "à la Patricia" tells you nothing about its origin beyond the fashion for French-styled labels on very domestic food. What is notable is the banana itself: by the 1900s refrigerated steamships had brought it down from a costly novelty to a cheap and widely available fruit in British and American shops, and cookbooks of the period carry a good many baked, fried and puddinged bananas. The lemon juice does double duty here, brightening a bland fruit and slowing the browning of the cut surfaces, while a meringue lid was a common finish for baked fruit dressed up for the table.