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Honey and Banana Sandwich
Mixed strained honey with mashed ripe bananas; place between thinly cut slices of buttered white bread.
A one-line filling from a book of sandwich formulas, written for cooks who needed no hand-holding. The only real decisions are the ratio and how soon it gets eaten.
- Strained honeyThis meant honey extracted and filtered from the comb, as opposed to comb honey sold still in the frame. Any liquid supermarket honey qualifies; if yours has crystallised, warm the jar in hot water until it pours.
- ProportionsThe original gives none. Start with about 1 tablespoon honey to one medium banana and taste — too much and the filling slumps out of the bread. Two bananas fill roughly four sandwiches.
- Mash, do not pureeA fork gives a filling with some body. A blender or food processor turns banana into a thin liquid that soaks the crumb within minutes.
- Why the butter mattersButtering both faces is not decoration here; it is the moisture barrier that keeps a wet fruit filling from turning thin bread to paste. Use butter soft enough to spread without tearing the slice.
- BrowningMashed banana discolours quickly. A squeeze of lemon juice in the mash slows it, and these are best assembled within half an hour of serving rather than made ahead for a picnic.
- BreadThe original says only "thinly cut" white bread, meaning a close-crumbed sandwich loaf; about a quarter inch is a reasonable modern reading, though the text gives no measurement. If serving as tea sandwiches, crusts can be trimmed and the sandwich cut into triangles or fingers after filling.
Sandwich books proliferated in America between about 1900 and 1920, when the sandwich shifted from a chance use of leftovers to a category with its own literature — afternoon tea, club luncheons, card parties and packed lunches all wanted small, tidy, sliceable food. Bananas belong to that same moment: steady steamship imports from Central America had, by the 1890s, moved the fruit from an expensive novelty to something a city grocer stocked year round, and cookbooks of the period put it in salads, fritters, pies and fillings with a confidence that would have been impossible a generation earlier.