No. 3003

Bananas, Cherry Sauce—Fried

Bananes Frites, Sauce aux Cerises

Cut some bananas lengthwise in two, roll them in finely pulverized macaroons and then in flour, and fry in very hot oil until they acquire a good color; drain on a cloth, wipe and coat over with some apricot marmalade (No. 3675), laid on with a brush. Dish them up pyramidically and dredge over freshly peeled and shredded pistachio nuts. Serve a currant sauce, with cherries apart, made by putting four heaping tablespoonfuls of currant jelly in a saucepan and diluting it with a pint of syrup at thirty degrees. Stand the saucepan on the fire, let boil a few times, then strain the syrup through a fine sieve; add to it one gill of kirsch and a good handful of preserved cherries previously washed in hot water.

← No. 3002 Baba with Marsala Hot Entremets — Puddings, Fritters & Soufflés No. 3004 Biscuits, Frascati →

For the Modern Kitchen

Ranhofer's fritter is really three components: a crumb-coated fried banana, an apricot glaze, and a kirsch-spiked currant syrup with cherries. Most of the translation work is in the syrup.

Syrup at thirty degreesThis is a hydrometer reading on the Baume scale used in nineteenth-century pastry kitchens, not a temperature. Thirty degrees Baume is a heavy syrup of roughly 55 percent sugar by weight, boiled until clear — somewhat more sugar than water.
A gill and a pintA gill is half a cup, so one gill of kirsch is 4 fl oz for a pint (2 cups) of syrup. That is a very strong pour by current taste; half of it still reads clearly, and the alcohol is not cooked off since the kirsch goes in after straining.
Pulverized macaroonsThese are almond macaroons ground fine, not coconut macaroons. Dry Italian amaretti, crushed, are the easiest modern stand-in.
Crumb then flourThe order looks backwards. Ranhofer gives no reason; presumably the crumbs take to the banana's moist cut face and the flour dusting sits on top of them. Coat and fry promptly.
Oil temperatureRanhofer says only "very hot oil" and gives no number; something in the region of 350-375F suits. Cooler than that and the macaroon crumbs absorb fat and the banana collapses; the fruit needs only a minute or two a side for color.
RipenessUse bananas that are yellow and firm, not spotted. Fully ripe fruit turns to purée inside the crust during frying.
Apricot marmaladeRanhofer's No. 3675 is a sieved, reduced apricot preserve — the standard pastry glaze. Warmed apricot jam pushed through a sieve gives the same thing, brushed on while the fritters are still hot.
Pistachios"Freshly peeled" means blanched in boiling water and slipped out of their skins, which is what keeps the green bright. Skin-on pistachios read brown against the apricot glaze.
YieldTwo halves per person is a fair portion after a full dinner; the pint of syrup should sauce eight to ten servings at a guess, and it keeps refrigerated.

A Little History

Charles Ranhofer cooked at Delmonico's in New York for over thirty years, and The Epicurean (1894) is his attempt to set down the whole repertoire of that kitchen in about four thousand numbered, cross-referenced entries — hence the reference to No. 3675 for the apricot marmalade, which the reader is assumed to look up. Bananas reached American tables in commercial quantity only in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, as steamship routes from the Caribbean and Central America shortened, and for a while they carried a distinct air of novelty and expense; treating one as a formal entremets, fried, glazed, pyramided and served with a kirsch-and-cherry syrup, is a restaurant's way of dressing an unfamiliar fruit in familiar French clothes. The syrup graded in degrees Baumé is a mark of the same professionalism: a saccharometer and a habit of thinking in Baumé numbers would have been standard equipment in a professional kitchen of Ranhofer's class, much as a modern one thinks in Brix.