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Peanut Butter and Banana
½ cup peanut butter
I/2 cup banana pulp or 2
¼ cup cream or hot water bananas
Lemon-juice
Mix the peanut butter with the cream until smooth and light in color, then combine with banana pulp and lemon-juice, or slice banana over layer of peanut butter on bread.
A sandwich filling from the era when peanut butter was still a novelty food, thinned with cream rather than spread stiff from the jar. The ingredient list runs in two columns and should be read as: 1/2 cup peanut butter, 1/4 cup cream or hot water, 1/2 cup banana pulp (about 2 bananas), and lemon juice to taste.
- Why thin the peanut butterPeanut butter of this period was stiffer than a modern emulsified jarred brand, and thinning it made it easier to spread on soft bread. Beating in cream or hot water is the point of the recipe: work it until the color lightens, as the text directs. Natural, oil-separated peanut butter behaves most like the original; a modern emulsified brand may need only a tablespoon or two of liquid.
- Cream or hot waterCream gives a richer filling that keeps a day in the refrigerator; hot water gives a looser, leaner spread that is best used at once. Add the liquid gradually, not all at once, or the mixture will slacken past spreading consistency.
- Banana pulpMash ripe bananas to a smooth pulp rather than chopping them. The recipe treats 1/2 cup of pulp and 2 bananas as equivalent; bananas vary in size, so measure the pulp rather than counting fruit.
- The lemon juiceNo quantity is given; a teaspoon or so for this amount is enough. Acid slows the browning of the mashed banana and cuts the richness of the peanut butter.
- Two methods, one recipeThe second half offers an alternative: spread peanut butter on the bread and lay banana slices over it, skipping the cream and the mashing. This is likely to hold up better in a packed lunch than the moister mixed filling.
- YieldAbout a cup and a quarter of filling, enough for four to six sandwiches depending on how thickly it is spread. Use a close-crumbed white or wheat sandwich loaf; open, airy artisan bread will not hold it.
Peanut butter reached American tables in the 1890s as an invalid and sanitarium food, promoted as a digestible protein for people who could not chew meat, and it moved into general grocery trade in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Sandwich fillings like this one are how the ingredient was introduced to ordinary cooks. The instruction to beat it smooth with cream may reflect a product that had not yet been stabilized with hydrogenated oil, and the pairing with banana, then an increasingly cheap import thanks to refrigerated steamship trade, appears here without comment.