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Banana Bavarian
2 tablespoons granulated gelatine cup cold water cup boiling water 4 bananas 2 tablespoons orange juice cup sugar whip from two cups cream Mash the bananas. Soak gelatine in cold water; dissolve in boiling water; add sugar, banana pulp and orange juice. When mixture begins to thicken, cut and fold in the whip from the cream. Mold, chill, and garnish with beaten cream, bananas and cherries.
A classic gelatine Bavarian, simple in structure but written in a shorthand that has lost some of its numbers in reprinting. Get the gelatine and the folding stage right and the rest follows.
- The missing fractionsThree measurements print here as bare "cup" — cold water, boiling water and sugar — because the fraction glyphs dropped out. Comparable Bavarians of the period use about 1/4 cup cold water to soak, 1/2 cup boiling water to dissolve, and 1/2 to 3/4 cup sugar; treat those as reasonable but unverified, and taste the base before folding in the cream.
- Granulated gelatineTwo tablespoons is roughly two and a half envelopes of modern unflavored powder, which is a firm set intended for unmolding rather than a spoonable cream. Soak in the cold water until it swells and looks translucent, then dissolve completely in the boiling water — undissolved grains show up as gritty threads.
- "Whip from two cups cream"The period method was to whip cream with a whisk and skim the stiff froth off the top as it formed, returning the unwhipped liquid to the bowl. With a modern mixer, simply whip 2 cups of heavy cream to soft peaks; you want it barely holding shape so it folds without deflating.
- The hinge: fold at the right momentFold the cream in when the banana mixture has thickened to the consistency of raw egg white. Too warm and the cream melts into a soup that sets in layers; too cold and the base sets in lumps you cannot fold out. If it stiffens on you, warm the bowl briefly over hot water and stir smooth.
- Browning bananasMashed banana darkens within minutes. The orange juice is there partly for flavour and partly as acid — mash and dress the fruit immediately before combining, and expect the finished cream to be beige rather than white.
- Mold and unmoldRinse the mold with cold water before filling and do not oil it. Chill at least four hours, preferably overnight; to turn out, dip the mold to its rim in warm water for five to ten seconds and invert onto a chilled plate.
- Yield and garnishA 1 1/2 to 2 quart mold, serving eight. The cherries were most likely candied or maraschino rather than fresh, though the recipe does not say; slice the garnish bananas at the table so they do not brown on the plate.
Bavarian cream — bavarois in French kitchen usage — is a custard or fruit purée set with gelatine and lightened with whipped cream, and its association with Bavaria is traditional rather than documented; nineteenth-century French chefs simply inherited the name. By the time Lowney's Cook Book appeared in the early twentieth century, published by the Walter M. Lowney chocolate company as one of the many manufacturer-sponsored cookbooks of the era, the Bavarian had become a staple of the American company dessert: it could be made a day ahead, it turned out of a mold in a shape that looked like effort, and it required no baking. The banana version reflects a genuinely new convenience. Refrigerated steamships and the Central American fruit trade had, within a generation, moved bananas from an expensive novelty to something a household cook could buy by the dozen, and cookbooks of the 1900s put them into everything from fritters to salads.