Stuffed Bananas

History

Bananas are one of the oldest cultivated fruits originating in tropical regions of Southeast Asia, first domesticated over 4,000 years ago. In 1516, Friar Tomás de Berlanga carried banana shoots from the Canary Islands to Santo Domingo, and plantations followed. The commercial banana trade that grew out of that was plantation agriculture, and the fruit's cheapness in North American kitchens rested on the labour of the people who cut and carried it — a fact the usual telling of steamships and shipping volumes leaves out. The fruit remained virtually unknown in North America until the post-Civil War era. Before the American Civil War, most Americans did not have bananas; a few bunches came over from the West Indies in the 1840s and 1850s to places like Charleston and New York.

In 1870, the first company dedicated to importing bananas to America was founded by Lorenzo Dow Baker, who transported bananas from Jamaica to Boston and sold them on the docks, while Baker and a local grocery wholesaler established the Boston Fruit Company, which revolutionized banana importation with the invention of the steamship, significantly reducing travel time and ensuring fresher fruit for consumers. By the end of the 1870s, 4 million bananas were arriving in the country, as steamships and trading firms brought in more from the Caribbean and Central America. The earliest recipe for banana pudding appeared in 1888 in Good Housekeeping, and in the 1890s, banana pudding recipes were everywhere in cookbooks, magazines, and newspapers. By the early 20th century, bananas had become a fashionable luxury ingredient in American home cooking, frequently paired with coconut and citrus.

In the 1914 "Chinese-Japanese Cook Book," biracial authors Sara Bosse and her sister Winnifred Eaton, known by the pseudonym Onoto Watanna, adapted Chinese and Japanese dishes to appeal to white middle-class American women entertaining at home. Stuffed Bananas appears among the cookbook's desserts: baked banana shells filled with a whipped mixture of the fruit's own flesh, coconut, cream, sugar and lemon juice. It is a dessert of its moment, when bananas had become cheap and plentiful in American kitchens. The historical record does not document a specific earlier origin for this particular preparation, and the banana's commercial history above is the fruit's, not the dish's.

Ingredients

• bananas
• shredded coconut
• a little cream
• a little sugar
• a little lemon juice

Instructions

1. Bake long, plump bananas for ten minutes in a medium oven.
2. Remove and split the skin down one side.
3. Scoop out the inside and whip it together with shredded coconut, a little cream, sugar, and a little lemon juice.
4. Return the mixture to the banana shell, and bake for another ten minutes.