Very simple. I made some last night. This is in my handwriting in my own looseleaf cookbook, copied selectively from my mother’s when I moved out in 1966.
Banana Bread
Large loaf dish—better if quantities slightly increased.
3 ripe bananas
3/4 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. soda
(1/2 cup chopped nuts optional)
Crush bananas with silver fork*. Add eggs, beaten light, sugar, flour sifted with salt & soda, and nut meats. Bake 1 hour in moderately slow oven (325 F). Makes one loaf 5” x 9”.
———
*It really does say “fork,” not “folk” as in my question.
Comments
That’s the recipe. Here’s some explanation.
—Grease (with butter) and lightly flour the loaf pans.
—Recipe is easily doubled.
—Bananas can be a bit overripe; in fact, it’s best if they are a bit soft, as long as they haven’t gone bad.
—Standard bananas used to be a lot smaller. I made two loaves using four large bananas.
—“Soda” means baking soda. Add the baking soda and salt to the flour in the measuring cup and sift them together.
—Her “better if slightly increased” note means that she was, as always, stretching things a little. So she added a little more than the specified amount of flour and just made tiny proportionate adjustments to the other dry ingredients.
—You can’t test for doneness as you do with cake, but when it’s done it will be brown on top, a deeper color than golden brown, and the risen, rounded top will split. Depending on your oven, you may want to check it at 50 minutes.