Harper's cook book encyclopædia

Bananas, Baked. — Tear a strip of skin from each banana, and lay the fruit, the peeled side uppermost, in a baking - pan. Pour a very little water in the bottom of the pan, cover closely, and bake the bananas for twenty-five minutes. Remove the skins, lay the fruit on a hot platter, and serve with a sauce made as follows : Rub two heaping table-spoonfuls of butter and a cupful of powdered sugar to a cream, add the unbeaten whites of two eggs, and beat until very light. Into this stir a half-cupful of boiling water and the same quantity of sherry wine. Put into a double boiler over the fire and beat until the sauce froths ; then serve at once. Another way : — Peel the fruit and slice it lengthwise ; roll the pieces in cracker dust and fry in a little butter ; sprinkle with sugar and serve. Or place the bananas in a baking-pan, salt and dredge them with flour ; squeeze a little lemon - juice over them, and add a little water to make a dressing. Bake in a moderate oven. Bananas en Daube. — Peel half a dozen ripe bananas and cut them into slices three-quarters of an inch thick ; put in a saucepan some fresh lard, and when the lard becomes very hot put in the pieces of banana and fry them until a light brown; drain out the fruit, and to the hot lard add a small half-cupful of sugar, a stick of cinnamon, and one cupful of water ; boil until this is a syrup; return the fried bananas to the syrup, and when they are heated remove the cinnamon and serve. Bananas, Stuffed. — Remove the skin from one side of large bananas and scoop out a hollow three-quarters of an inch deep. Chop candied pineapple and cherries very fine, and mix with them granulated sugar and sherry wine. Put the mixture in the bananas, heaping it up ; bake them in a moderate oven for twenty minutes. Serve them in the skins, very hot, and pour a table-spoonful of orange-juice over each banana. For half a dozen bananas allow 2 ozs. of pineapple and the same amount of cherries, four table-spoonfuls of sherry, and two of sugar. Blackberry Froth. —Whites of four eggs, one cupful of blackberry-juice, two cupfuls of boiling water, one cupful of cold water, one-half box of gelatine, one cupful of sugar. Soak the gelatine in the cold water for one hour, stir the sugar into it, and pour the boiling water over them. When they are dissolved add the blackberry-juice, strain, and set on the ice until the jelly is nearly firm. Beat the whites of the eggs stiff, and whip into the jelly a little at a time. Turn into a mould wet with cold water, and let it stand until firm. Serve with sweet cream. Cherries, Compote of. — Take off the stems from the cherries. Make a syrup with 5 ozs. of sugar and half a pint of water for sweet cherries, but allow another ounce of sugar for the extra acidity of sour cherries. Stew 1 lb. of the fruit in the syrup for twenty minutes ; they may be stoned or not. Time, ten minutes to boil sugar; eight to ten minutes for the cherries. Cherries and Tapioca. — One and a half pounds of sour cherries, one cupful of tapioca, and sugar to taste. Wash the tapioca thoroughly, cover with cold water, and soak overnight. In the morning put in a double boiler with one pint of hot water, and cook until the tapioca is clear, like starch. Stir the stoned Cherry Cheese Currant-fool