Why a Jewish banana cake?
On why my family’s only prized recipe, the one passed down from generation to generation from my Russian-born great-grandmother to my own daughter, is not a latke or brisket or even a babka.
Last week, I wrote about my great grandma Sophie’s heavenly chocolate banana cake, which is now being lovingly baked by Sophie’s great great grandchildren from Santa Fe, New Mexico to West Hartford, Ct; and why bananas are so darn cheap. You can read it here, if you missed it. This week, I’m going to explore another question: Why a Jewish banana cake?
It turns out that embedded in my great grandma Sophie’s banana cake (now passed down five generations) is not just an ungodly amount of vegetable oil and sugar, but the history of Jewish immigrants in America, and that of the banana itself.
The banana first came to America around the time my own great-grandparents’ arrived, and also appeared first in Philadelphia. In 1876, at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia, the banana debuted to a public that had mostly never seen one.
Wrapped in tinfoil, sliced, and sold for a dime apiece (about $3 in today’s money), it was treated as a luxury item, eaten with a knife and fork rather than by hand. Supposedly this was because it was considered uncouth for a lady to be seen chomping on a banana in public.
The banana remained a luxury in America for years, until a Jewish immigrant from Russia arrived with nothing and found his fortune in the not-quite-as-perfect-version of the banana, which nobody else seemed interested in selling.
Samuel Zemurray landed in Alabama as a teenager in the early 1890s and made his way to the banana docks of Mobile, where he watched the dominant importer of the day, the Boston Fruit Company, unload ships and toss aside any bunch that had ripened too far during the crossing from Central America.
A banana with a couple of brown freckles, a “ripe,” was essentially worthless, so companies dumped them as garbage at port before they could rot further on the long train ride inland. Zemurray saw inventory. He spent $150 to fill a boxcar with the culls the company had discarded, then spent six days racing the fruit to grocers in nearby towns before it spoiled, clearing a $40 profit on the whole venture, enough to launch his next purchase of ripes.
By 1899 Zemurray had sold 20,000 bananas; four years later that number had climbed past 500,000, and grocers up and down the rail line knew him as Sam the Banana Man. He eventually built his own import company, planted his own fields in Honduras, and decades later took the reins of the very corporation whose detritrius he had once resold.
My own family came from Russia around the same time as Sam the Banana Man, with the same goal of fleeing pogroms and finding prosperity.
While they didn’t think to start a banana empire (and if they had, I’d like to think they’d have been more humane about it), they were similarly drawn to grocering, one of the few sectors Jews could get a foot in the door of during these antisemitic times.
Jews had been barred from land ownership and many guild-controlled trades for centuries in Europe, which pushed generations toward commerce and retail instead, and the same pattern followed many immigrants to America, where elite universities imposed quotas on Jewish students, law firms wouldn’t hire Jewish lawyers, and whole professions and social clubs closed their doors. Grocering, by contrast, required little capital and no one’s permission.
My great-grandfather and great-grandmother, Philip and Sophie, started by selling pickles one barrel at a time on the streets of Philadelphia, much the way Sam sold bananas one bundle at a time, buying only as much as he could afford to move before it spoiled.
They eventually turned the pickle stand into a small corner grocery. It turns out that my great-grandmother Sophie, who managed the family grocery in Philadelphia and is responsible for keeping my grandmother and her siblings housed and clothed, was also interested in the food she sold and what her customers did with it.
Bananas were the rage of the time, recently introduced at the Philadelphia Expo and even more recently made affordable through Sam the Banana Man’s efforts. Sophie asked her customers what they did with this newly abundant fruit. One customer (let’s take a respectful moment of silence for this stranger’s memory) shared a recipe for the banana cake that would lead me, decades later, to sneak down the stairs one night and lick tin foil clean in the shameful glare of the refrigerator light.
And that is how this Jewish family’s most prized recipe turns out to be neither matzoh ball soup or latkes. But, rather, a simple, affordable banana cake.
Sophie's Banana Cake
A scrumptious banana cake passed down five generations...While I love my Ms.Moneyheads, I share only the cake recipe
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 1 hour
Total time: 1 hour 30 min
Serves: 1 - 6
Equipment: Stand mixer, hand mixer, sifter, tube cake pan
Ingredients
6 large eggs
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup oil
2 cups flour
3 bananas
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp baking soda
Preparation
Preheat oven to 350-degree F.
Beat egg yolks on medium.
Add sugar.
While beating, sift flour three times.
Beat egg whites with small electric beater until stiff.
Mash bananas. Add sifted baking powder and baking soda to bananas and mix well.
Switch large mixer to lowest speed and add egg whites to yolks.
Line tube cake pan with tin foil on the bottom and outside. Oil pan. Wipe off extra oil with paper towel.
Turn mixer back to medium.
Turn mixer back to medium speed. Add banana mixture. Don't beat for too long. Scrape bananas off mixer and continue mixing for no more than 45 second.
Turn mixer back to lowest speed and add flour 4 tablespoons at a time alternating with oil and ending with flour. Turn mixer back to medium for very short time.
Pour mixture into cake pan evenly and bake for about 1 hour. When cake is done, turn upside down on cooling rack and let cool completely before icing.
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