Cheese and banana savoury… really?

I’m fascinated by old cookery books, and spend many happy moments looking through them, and often trying some of the old recipes. However there are some recipes which sound so bizarre I’m not sure it’s worth using al the ingredients to try making them as I’m sure it would just be a waste.

The Round the Clock Cookery Book, which I guess was published between the wars, has some lovely recipes, but some very strange ones too. Stuffed cucumber? Maybe but I don’t think anyone would use tinned salmon to stuff it these days, even if they should want to stuff a cucumber. Kidney omelette? Sheep’s head soup… only in Iceland maybe! Ox brain fritters? Tongue balls? The mind boggles!

Weird but not disgusting is a recipe for cheese banana savoury… I’m not sure I would ever make it, but it might just be in a very strange way  sort of interesting…

• 6 strips of brown bread-and-butter
• a little anchovy paste
• 4 oz cheese
• 3 bananas
• a little finely grated cheese

1. spread the bread-and-butter with the anchovy paste
2. thinly slice the cheese and arrange some on each strip
3. peel the bananas, cut each in half lengthways and place one half on each strip
4. sprinkle with grated cheese

Interesting to see bread-and-butter is hyphenated. I think you might find difficulty in finding anchovy paste, apart from Gentleman’s Relish. This is a famous brand of anchovy paste, also called Patum Peperium, which is a mock Latin translation of something like ‘spicy paste’. It was invented in 1828 by  John Osborn, and has a secret recipe which includes anchovies, butter, herbs and spices. So imagine that spread on toast with cheese bananas on top… oh and more cheese. The idea of bananas and cheese is also very strange to our tastes!