Remove the skins from the bananas, scrape them, and cut them once lengthwise and once crosswise. Sprinkle the pieces with the lemon juice. Make a batter by mixing and sifting the flour, sugar, and salt. Stir in the milk gradually, and add the yolk of the beaten egg and the melted butter. Lastly, fold in the beaten egg white. Sprinkle the bananas with powdered sugar, dip them into the batter, and fry in deep fat until brown. Sprinkle again with powdered sugar and serve.

PINEAPPLES

98. Pineapples are grown in the southern part of the United States, on the islands off the southeastern coast, and in Hawaii. They vary in size according to the age of the plants. It requires from 18 to 20 months for the fruit to develop, and the plants yield only four or five crops. Much of this fruit is canned where it is grown, but as it is covered with a heavy skin it will tolerate shipping long distances very well. It is shipped to the market in cases that contain from 24 to 48 pineapples to the case. Usually, for a few weeks during the summer, the price of fresh pineapples is reasonable enough to warrant canning them.

99. The food value of pineapples is slightly lower than that of oranges and apples. However, pineapples have a great deal of flavor, and for this reason they are very valuable in the making of desserts, preserves, marmalades, and beverages of various kinds. It is said that the combination of pineapple and lemon will flavor a greater amount of food than any other fruit combined. Another characteristic of pineapples is that they contain a ferment that acts upon protein material and therefore is sometimes thought to aid considerably in the digestion of food. The probabilities are that this ferment really produces very little action in the stomach, but its effect upon protein material can readily be observed by attempting to use raw pineapple in the making of a gelatine dessert. If the pineapple is put in raw, the gelatine will not solidify; but if the pineapple is heated sufficiently to kill this ferment, it has no effect whatsoever upon the gelatine.

100. SELECTING PINEAPPLES.--When pineapples are to be selected, care should be exercised to see that they are ripe. The most certain way of determining this fact is to pull out the center leaves of each pineapple that is chosen. As shown in Fig. 16, grasp the pineapple with one hand and then with the other pull out, one at a time, several of the center leaves of the tuft at the top. If the fruit is ripe a sharp jerk will usually remove each leaf readily, but the harder the leaves pull, the greener the pineapple is.