retro recipe road test: ham banana sandwich

Originally published and reluctantly consumed in 2018.

Oh good god. I don't know why I do this to myself.

I’m not sure where to begin with this one, you guys - I’d been planning on doing recipe tests from books for awhile, and had initially intended to make this one much later in the rotation than I did. I’m not a sandwich fan generally, and I’m especially not a fan of ham and banana as a flavor combination. (Is anyone?)

But sometimes you go to the grocery store and things are just conveniently located by the checkout, and you hear the ghost of Florence A Cowles saying YES. 

PSSSST, MAKE ONE OF MY STRANGE SANDWICHES.

All 1001 of them. They sure are legally sandwiches. I’m not sure why you’d need this many sandwiches, but I can confirm that she does run out of ideas pretty quickly.

I’m not the first historical food blog to cover this book - Four Pounds Flour did an amazing recipe test back in 2013 - but I was here specifically for the HAMNANA. 

The hamnana, the ham banana, whatever weird combo of flavors this is, has haunted my life for over five years. I am fascinated and repulsed by it. Every time I have a conversation with someone about historical and/or vintage food, I can’t help circling back to the hamnana flavor profile - a lot of times it’s the only vintage recipe anyone’s familiar with, because it’s become a little bit of a meme. Infamously, Paula Deen made a truly disgusting looking casserole with ham, cheese and bananas. I was privileged (cursed?) enough to finally try ham and banana with hollandaise for myself at a retro food party I hosted in 2017. In 6 years or so of reading about and researching this stuff, it was the only thing I’ve never been able to finish even a single bite of. And I regularly, willingly, eat bizarre aspics and hotdishes made out of piles of canned spaghetti. It’s legitimately that bad.

Ah, my nemesis. We meet again.

Naturally, earlier this week when @steamchef​ and I were discussing the White House cookbook, I mentioned that there was a recipe for mutton and bananas, and the conversation turned back to THE HAMNANA. 

Thankfully (or regrettably), 1001 sandwich recipes didn’t fail me, and there was a recipe for hamnana sandwich. 

Now, we can’t fully blame Florence for this one. This is a compilation book, and several recipes in here match the text from other cookbooks on archive.org or from my own collection. I’m pretty sure this sandwich is taken from “Bananas in the Modern Manner,” revised 1930, or an earlier banana growers’ promotional cooking pamphlet. There seems to have been a bit of a craze around the 1930s-1940s for meat and bananas as a pairing. The cookbook of the US Navy, both the 1944 and 1945 editions, lists Ham Banana Rolls on page 175 as a food that would’ve been regularly provided to sailors. Yikes.

A banana cart full of Gros Michel bananas, in Detroit.

It’s important to note, for fairness’ sake, that these would’ve been the Gros Michel banana, which went extinct in the 1960s. So there’s no real way one could recreate exactly what the original writers of these recipes intended, but we can do our best!

(Image from Four Pounds Flour, original text from 1001 Sandwiches by Florence A Cowles.)

Some of the hallmarks of Gros Michel vs Cavendish are:

- sweeter

- more complex flavor profile, described alternately as “floral” and “tangy”

- softer texture

- more notable “banana” smell

Additionally, most people in their mid-20s and 30s, at least according to sellers interviewed by the New York Times, currently prefer a firm textured Cavendish banana that’s just barely past green. 

So for our experiment, we’re assuming that Baby Boomers not only preferred a riper banana, but were working with a sweeter, slightly more complex fruit. I happened to have a fairly overripe red banana in my fruit basket, which I thought was acceptably close enough for making a sandwich with. I found several sources referencing The Cabbagetown Store by John V McAree that claimed red bananas were imported to and sold in Toronto even prior to the Gros Michel, but no other primary sources to confirm this. But let’s assume this could be historically accurate.

WITHOUT FURTHER ADO, LET’S TRY THIS WEIRD BANANA SANDWICH.

Note: This recipe test mostly follows the first variation, omitting the lettuce and using the toasted bread suggestion from the original recipe. I used premade ham sandwich spread rather than canned deviled ham, as I needed to purchase it for another recipe test later this week. I didn’t notice much of a significant difference in taste between this and the deviled ham.

The recipe didn’t clarify how much ham to be used with how much banana, so I kind of guesstimated a little bit. An entire banana seemed like a bit much for one person. So, ½ banana : 3 tablespoons of ham salad. Not pictured: a squeeze of lemon.

Mmm. Kind of like cat food. You feel that nagging, tingling feeling at the back of your neck? That’s your self-preservation instinct telling you to please, please not mix this deviled ham with this banana.

All mixed up.

At this point I was starting to really, seriously, doubt my choices. The last time I tried this combo I nearly threw up. I frantically sent a couple selfies of myself, afraid to eat it, for posterity’s sake. If I somehow died from the hamnana, the world deserved to see my last moments.

Impeccable plating. Timeless, really.

I’m not sure there’s a good way to photograph or present this - by its nature, it just kind of looks like chewed gum. I understand now why so much of the recipe required either hiding it under a second slice of bread, or adding lettuce or sautéed banana slices. You have to distract from the weird not-quite-pate texture somehow, especially if you were planning on serving this for guests at tea. I wasn’t planning on having guests though - just myself and the hamnana sandwich.

WAS IT GOOD?

Weirdly? It kind of was.

The lemon juice was essential to making this edible, as was toasting the bread. There’s no way this would’ve been remotely okay texture or tastewise on soggy bread, without the added brightness from the lemon. There’s also absolutely no way this would work with a less ripe, less sweet banana. The chunks of banana would be way too noticeable, and adding the slightly sour flavor of almost green Cavendish would have been totally disgusting.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’d eat it again. It’s never going to be my favorite sandwich, but if you don’t think about the ingredients too hard, it’s an interesting flavor. It’s incredibly difficult to even tell that the banana’s there - it seems to be mostly in this to cut the saltiness of the ham spread, which is definitely necessary. After a few bites, when the bread got soggier, I added potato chips as a topping, and that mostly solved it. I imagine this is best with only a very thin spread of the filling on the toast, and served immediately.

I’d love to try it with the buttered toast triangles and sautéed bananas, and may do so later this week.

I will note, however, that if you have a sensitive stomach or problems with texture, this isn’t the sandwich for you. I had a bit of a hangover today, and this was erring on the side of much too rich and much too heavy for me. I was a little nauseous for an hour or so following it.

5/10 stars. Much higher than expected. I’m genuinely surprised.