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Banana and Walnut Salad
3 bananas 2 tablespoonfuls chopped English walnuts 2 tablespoonfuls cream dressing 1 scant tablespoonful cream 1 teaspoonful sugar Mix the cream dressing with the cream and sugar. Peel and cut the bananas into halves lengthwise. Place one-half of a banana on a lettuce leaf and pour over it a generous spoonful of the dressing. Sprinkle each half with a teaspoonful of the chopped English walnuts.
A fruit salad of the boiled-dressing era, and it depends almost entirely on the dressing and on how fast you get it to the table.
- Cream dressingMost likely not whipped cream but a cooked salad dressing of the type common in American cookbooks of the period: egg yolk, a little flour or cornstarch, vinegar, mustard, sugar and butter, thickened over hot water. Formulas varied, and some books use the name for an uncooked cream-and-vinegar dressing, so look for it elsewhere in the same book. A modern substitute is mayonnaise loosened with a little vinegar and a pinch of dry mustard.
- CreamA scant tablespoon of cream here works as thinning liquid rather than richness; the point is a dressing that pours rather than sits. Any cream will do the job.
- English walnutsThe ordinary walnut of the supermarket. The name distinguished them from American black walnuts, which are far more assertive and would overwhelm the banana. Toasting them briefly sharpens flavour, though the original assumes them raw.
- LettuceThe lettuce leaf is not in the ingredient list but is required by the method. Use whole cups of iceberg or Boston lettuce, one per serving, so each half banana sits in a hollow rather than sliding off a flat leaf.
- BrowningCut bananas darken quickly. Assemble immediately before serving, or brush the cut faces with lemon juice; do not count on the dressing to protect them, since it only coats the upper surface.
- YieldSix servings, one banana half each. The dressing as written comes to only about three tablespoons in all, roughly a teaspoon and a half per half despite the recipe's 'generous spoonful'; and two tablespoons of walnuts is exactly six teaspoonfuls, so measure carefully.
Cookbooks of the first decades of the twentieth century leaned hard on fruit-and-nut salads, and this one is typical: nuts supplying chew, fruit supplying the interest. Bananas had by then become cheap and reliable in American cities through the Caribbean steamer trade, moving from a luxury curiosity to a staple that could be served split on lettuce without comment. The cooked "cream dressing" is the giveaway of the period: a flour-and-egg dressing made on the stove and kept in a jar. Combinations of this kind, sweet fruit under a mildly tart cooked dressing on a lettuce leaf, were the standard salad course of the era and would strike a modern palate as sitting somewhere between a salad and a dessert.