The Questionable Banana Trend From The 1970s We Still Don't Understand

The culinary world, like the real world, offers us many foods that bring comfort, as well as exotic choices that challenge, excite, and even confuse us. It's always good to be open to new experiences, but it's also okay to admit not all of those experiences are for you. For instance, there are a number of vintage cookbooks and recipes that really wanted to blend bananas with meat or fish in entrees. We don't know who those dishes were for, but we're not afraid to admit they weren't for us.

For years now, the internet has known about the ham and banana hollandaise, which can be traced back to a 1973 recipe from McCall's Great American Recipe Card Collection. There's also a recipe for bananas with pickled herring. These recipes emerged from the evolution of banana marketing, as the fruit had been pushed on American consumers for decades and had become big business for a time. Remember, the banana as an everyday food is relatively new. North Americans have only had easy access to bananas for about a century.

When it came to the questionable recipes of the 1970s that involved ham or cheese sauce, companies were basically out of ideas. Earlier recipes had explained what bananas were to people who had never experienced them before, so these later recipes needed to up the ante a little to keep interest. Corporations and advertising firms were behind most of these mid-century cookbooks. Home cooks who wanted to feel modern and learn new techniques might push the envelope sometimes with weird banana dishes in an effort to stay current.

The influence of cookbooks over the culinary landscape has faded considerably. Compare today to 100 or even 50 years ago, and the way we cook and understand food is a lot different. The internet puts the culinary world at our fingertips. We have microwaves and air fryers. We have access to nearly every ingredient produced around the world at almost any time of year. Corporations and ad companies can't present food to us the same way they used to, and we don't need to make banana hollandaise if we don't want to.

Despite being easily dismissed as misguided or terrible, there is evidence that people actually enjoyed these recipes. For instance, in Sweden, the dish called Flying Jacob is an old school classic that is still served and enjoyed by many today. If you've never heard of it before, you may want to sit down before you read this. It consists of shredded chicken topped with sliced bananas, Italian salad seasoning, whipped cream, and chili sauce. You bake it then top with peanuts and bacon bits.

Undoubtedly there was a thrill to trying these recipes. Standing a banana upright and coating it with a mayonnaise drizzle so it looked like a melting candle had to at least be eye-catching. There aren't a lot of contemporaneous food reviews to tell us what people thought, but modern takes on banana Hollandaise have described it as "surprisingly nice." If you're looking for new and unexpected ways to cook with bananas that aren't so extreme, we have some ideas.