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Deviled Bananas
Melt one tablespoon butter, add one tablespoon chopped red pepper, two teaspoons chopped pickles, one teaspoon Worcestershire sauce, one fourth teaspoon salt. Add four bananas cut in four equal parts. Cook five minutes.
A quick savory banana saute from an era when "deviled" meant nothing more than sharp seasoning. It comes together in one small skillet and depends almost entirely on the ripeness of the fruit.
- Firm bananas onlyThis is the hinge. Use fruit that is yellow but still green at the tips; a fully ripe banana will collapse into mush within the five minutes given. Slightly underripe fruit holds its shape and stays starchy rather than sugary, which is the point of a savory preparation.
- What "red pepper" means hereIn a 1907 American book this is almost certainly a fresh sweet red pepper, chopped fine, not cayenne or chile. Canned pimiento, common in the period, works and is closer to the soft texture intended. A tablespoon of cayenne would be inedible.
- The picklesChopped cucumber pickle, sour or mixed. Drain it before chopping so the pan does not go watery. Sweet pickle relish changes the balance considerably.
- Cutting in four'Four equal parts' most likely means quartering: either four crosswise chunks, or halve crosswise and split each half lengthwise. Either gives pieces of roughly even thickness.
- Pan and heatA small skillet over medium heat. One tablespoon of butter for four bananas is little fat, so keep the heat moderate and turn the pieces once rather than stirring, which would break them up.
- Five minutes is rightFive minutes is plausible as written and needs no adjustment. The bananas want to be heated through and lightly browned, no more; much longer and they begin to slump.
- Yield and servingThe recipe gives no yield; four bananas cut in quarters make sixteen pieces, which reads as a condiment portion rather than a course, of the kind served alongside curry or salt meats.
- On the section headingNot a keeper -- Nothing here is preserved. Cook it and eat it the same hour; it does not hold well, and reheating softens the fruit further.
"Deviled" in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American cookery meant seasoned hot and sharp, usually with mustard, cayenne, Worcestershire, or pickles, and it was applied freely to eggs, crab, ham, biscuits, and here to fruit. Bananas were a novelty turning commonplace across these decades: improvements in shipping and the growth of the fruit trade gradually pushed them from a luxury toward an everyday item, and cookbook writers were still working out what to do with them beyond dessert. Savory banana dishes of this kind were generally offered as an accompaniment to curry or to salt meats, echoing the Anglo-Indian habit of ringing a curry with sweet and sour side dishes. Lowney's Cook Book, published by the Walter M. Lowney chocolate company, carries a great many chocolate recipes alongside a good many of these brisk, one-paragraph novelties from the period's fascination with tropical imports.