Both plátanos and guineos, or ordinary yellow bananas, may be profitably dried or made into flour. This will utilize the surplus fruit and such bunches as are too small to sell to advantage. Frequent mention is made by Stanley, of banana flour in his “In Darkest Africa.” He strongly indorses its nutritive qualities, and wonders that the natives did not appear to have discovered what invaluable nourishing and easily digested food they had in the plátano and banana. He expressed the conviction that, “If only the virtues of banana flour were publicly known, it is not to be doubted but it would be largely consumed in Europe. For infants, persons of delicate digestion, dyspeptics and those suffering from temporary derangement of the stomach, the flour properly prepared would be of universal demand. During my two attacks of gastritis a light gruel of this, mixed with milk, was the only matter that could be digested.”
It is interesting to note that such a high authority as the “Dictionary of Economical Productions of India” says:
The large crop of food produced by bananas and plantains may be preserved for an indefinite period either by drying the fruit or by preparing meal from it. When the nearly ripe fruit is cut into slices and dried in the sun, a certain part of the sugar contained in the fruit crystalizes on the surface and acts as a preservative. The slices thus prepared, if made from the finer varieties, make an excellent dessert preserve, and if from the coarser, may be used for cooking in the ordinary way. They keep well if carefully packed when dry, and ought to form a valuable antiscorbutic for long voyages. The fruit may also be similarly preserved whole by stripping off the skin and drying it in the sun. Plantain meal is prepared by stripping off the husk and reducing it to powder, and finely sifting. It is calculated that the fresh core will yield 40 per cent. of this meal, and that an acre of average quality will yield over a ton.
Plantain meal is of a slightly brownish color, and has an agreeable odor, which becomes more perceptible when warm water is poured upon it, and has a considerable resemblance to that of orris root. When mixed with cold water it forms a feebly tenacious dough, more adhesive than that of oatmeal, but much less so than that of wheaten flour. When baked on a hot plate this dough forms a cake which is agreeable to the sense of smell, and is by no means unpleasant to the taste. When boiling water is poured over the meal it is changed into a transparent jelly, having an agreeable taste and smell. Boiled with water it forms a thick gelatinous mass, very much like boiled sago in color, but possessing a peculiar pleasant odor.
In this connection it may be interesting to note that, according to an analysis published in the American Analyst, New York, February 15th, 1893, the chemical composition of bananas and potatoes is almost identical, as shown by the following comparison:
| Banana | Potato | |
| Water | 75.71 | 75.77 |
| Albumenoids | 1.71 | 1.79 |
| Total carbonaceous matter (non-nitrogenous) | 20.13 | 20.72 |
| Woody fibre | 1.74 | .75 |
| Ash | .71 | .97 |
Nor do the food elements in bananas and plátanos vary greatly, the sum of each being about the same.
In a communication to Kew by Mr. Louis Asser, of the Hague, Holland, it was announced that a syndicate proposes to take up the manufacture of banana and plantain meal and the preparation of dried bananas on a large scale in Dutch Guiana. The communication referred to gives the following list of commercial preparations from the banana and the plátano: