Almost any stoneless fruit can be cooked in the same way. Gooseberries, currants, strawberries, and raspberries all make excellent compote, but care must be taken that the fruit does not get pulpy: it should be quite soft, but retain its proper shape. Quite ripe fruit is not so desirable as fruit that is just going to be ripe.
Fried Pineapple.
Cut a smallish pine into half-inch slices, paring the skin, of course, and split in half three or four ordinary penny sponge cakes. Fry these latter in the Chafing Dish in a tablespoon of butter till they are light brown on both sides. Take them out and keep them hot. Fry the pine slices in a like amount of butter and their own juice. Pour over them a wine-glassful of brandy and serve on the browned sponge cake. Cream may be added, but it is not at all necessary.
Coffee Chestnuts.
Shell a dozen chestnuts, and boil them for five minutes, then remove the skins. Put them back in the Chafing Dish with enough fresh water to cover them, and a tablespoon of soft white sugar, boil them until they are soft. Take them out and drain them, but do not break them up. Now put in the Chafing Dish the yolk of one egg, another tablespoon of soft white sugar, half a teacup of strong black coffee, a liqueur of brandy and a tablespoon of milk or cream. Keep on stirring till just upon boiling, then pour over the chestnuts, and serve hot.
It is not requisite to add brandy or other spirits to the foregoing dishes. It certainly tends to completeness of flavour, and, especially with cooked fruits, seems to bring out a subtle aroma or bouquet, but many most estimable gourmets dispense with all spirits in cookery, and are none the less well fed. Spirits should never be given in food for the young.
A Surrey curate opened the Sunday School one day with the well-known hymn, “Little drops of water, little grains of sand.” In the middle of the first verse he stopped the singing, and complained strongly of the half-hearted manner in which it was sung. He made a fresh start. “Now then,” he shouted, “little drops of water, and for goodness sake put some spirit into it!” And he wore a blue ribbon in his buttonhole too!
I should have liked to give the full recipe for a seventeenth-century “Quelque-Shose,” according to Master Robert May’s cook-book. The ingredients read temptingly—if somewhat lavish in quantity. Forty eggs are required, which are to be made in the form of omelets, which are to be “rolled up like a wafer” and served with “white wine, sugar, and juyce of lemon.” Another recipe of the same artist was for “Pie Extraordinary, or Bride Pie, which was made of ”severall compounds, being of severall distinct pies on one bottom.” At a rough guess this may have been the forerunner of our latter-day Bride-cakes, with their superimposed layers of almond paste, and consolidated indigestion. It is always marvellous to me that there are so few sudden deaths after a wedding, particularly if the cut cake has been handed about promiscuously.
Bananas contain three times as much nourishment as meat or potatoes, and as a food are declared to be superior to bread. They are as good raw as cooked, and my only advice is to take care to buy the smaller, more delicate kinds, and to avoid the grosser plantains, which are musty and flavourless. The kind known as “Lady’s Fingers” are the best of all.
Banana Cream.