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Banana Meringue Pie
Roll out on a lightly floured table a quarter pound pie paste to size of plate, lightly butter a deep pie plate, then line it with the layer of paste, carefully press down at bottom and sides, trim off edges, and spread three tablespoons of orange marmalade at bottom of plate. Peel and finely slice eight ripe bananas, place in a bowl with two ounces sugar and half teaspoon vanilla essence, mix well in seasoning and arrange over the marmalade. Set in oven for thirty minutes, remove, beat up the whites of three eggs to a stiff froth, adding one ounce sugar and a teaspoon good rum, beat up for one minute, then spread nicely over the bananas. Neatly smooth the surface with the blade of a knife, sprinkle a tablespoon finely grated cocoanut over, reset in oven for ten minutes. Remove and serve either hot or cold.
A single-crust banana pie with a marmalade base and a rum meringue, written for a cook who already knows pastry. The measurements are by weight and the oven temperature is left entirely to your judgment.
- Weights into cupsTwo ounces sugar is about a quarter cup; one ounce is two tablespoons. A quarter pound of pie paste is a thin shell for a deep plate (the recipe does not say what size); 6 to 7 ounces of dough gives a crust sturdier under the fruit.
- No temperature is givenBake the lined shell and fruit at 400F for the thirty minutes, which is hot enough to set the pastry under a wet filling. Drop to 350F for the ten minutes with the meringue on top so it colors without weeping.
- The marmalade is structuralThe marmalade -- Three tablespoons of orange marmalade spread on the raw pastry likely acts as a moisture barrier as well as a flavoring. Keeping it, and keeping it thick, should help stop the bananas soaking the bottom crust.
- Eight bananas is a full pieSliced thin they will mound well above the rim and collapse considerably as they bake. Use firm-ripe fruit; anything soft enough to mash will cook to a puree and slump out from under the meringue.
- The meringue is under-sugaredOne ounce of sugar to three whites is a very lean ratio by modern practice, which favors about two tablespoons per white. It beats up fast but beads and weeps on standing, so serve the pie the day it is made.
- Ingredient namesVanilla essence is vanilla extract. "Cocoanut" here may be either freshly grated coconut or the dried unsweetened kind; sweetened flake is a later product and is liable to scorch in the second bake.
- Seal the meringueSpread it right to the pastry edge all the way around before smoothing. Meringue that does not touch the crust shrinks inward and slides.
- YieldOne deep pie, six to eight servings. Cold slices cut far more cleanly than hot ones.
The International Cook Book belongs to the generation of American cookbooks written by professional hotel and restaurant men, and its habit of specifying ingredients in ounces and quarter-pounds of paste rather than cups reflects a kitchen where things were weighed. What makes this pie a period marker is the bananas: eight of them, treated as an unremarkable pantry item. Bananas had gone from a novelty in the 1870s to one of the cheapest fruits in the American market by the early 1900s, carried north in quantity by steamer and distributed by rail, and banana fritters, banana creams and banana pies are common in cookbooks of the period. The rum in the meringue and the grated coconut on top may nod to the tropical trade the fruit came out of, and a layer of jam or marmalade beneath a juicy filling is a familiar pastry trick for protecting the crust.