The Retro Appetizer That Left Us Scratching Our Heads

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There are a lot of retro appetizers that have aged exceptionally well and are universal favorites at get-togethers, holiday parties, or sporting events. These include shrimp cocktail, deviled eggs, French onion dip, and pigs in a blanket. Others didn't fare so well, leaving modern cooks and foodies to ponder the who, what, where, why, and how of many old-school appetizers no one eats anymore. One of the most curious of throwback hors d'oeuvres is ham and bananas hollandaise, a recipe so bizarre that some modern folks can't help but try it for themselves.

The concept is simple, and the ingredients are minimal. You start by spreading yellow mustard on slices of deli ham and wrapping each one around a whole, peeled banana (sprinkled with lemon juice). After baking at 400 degrees for 10 minutes, cover the casserole dish with hollandaise sauce and bake for 5 more minutes. The result is a dish of hot, mushy bananas accented with salty ham, tangy mustard, and lemony-butter sauce. Unlike, say, banana curry, where unripe bananas or plantains are cooked with other savory ingredients, many agree that ham and banana hollandaise sounds weird and unappetizing, particularly the strange combination of banana and sour mustard.

We get the concept of pairing sweet and salty elements together, but more so along the lines of salted caramel and Chicago-style popcorn. To be perfectly frank, we ranked ham and bananas hollandaise as a disgusting food that only our grandparents ate.

Several retro recipe enthusiasts who have revisited ham and bananas hollandaise have cited the recipe from 1973's "McCall's Great American Recipe Card Collection," but there is an earlier version. In 1947, Chiquita released "Chiquita Banana's Recipe Book," and it (along with subsequent editions) included a near-identical recipe for ham banana rolls. Instead of hollandaise, it called for cheese sauce. What was behind the infatuation with unconventional banana appetizers in the middle part of the 20th century? One theory is that Miss Chiquita, the fun, colorful, and lifelike mascot of the Chiquita company, who was introduced in 1944, was used extensively in advertising, urging Americans to eat more bananas.

"Whitcombe's Everyday Cookery" was published in New Zealand in 1943 and featured a recipe for banana soup, made with tomatoes, onions, turnips, Worcestershire, herbs, and brown stock. Other retro recipes called for bananas to be topped with sardines or other tinned fish. A printed 1932 recipe for banana toasts called for toasted rounds of bread to be spread with anchovy paste and butter, topped with sliced banana, and baked. And let's not forget about beer baked bananas, made by baking halved bananas, orange juice concentrate, brown sugar, and macadamia nuts in a deep puddle of beer. With these adventurous concoctions in mind, perhaps ham and banana hollandaise is one of the more appetizing-sounding appetizers of the bunch (no pun intended).