I had some extra rhubarb in my garden this week, so I decided to put it to good use.
And cover it with bananas and ketchup.
This is Major League Rhubarb!
AuthorRetroRuth
From 57 Prize-Winning Recipes, Heinz, 1957
Tested Recipe!
[cooked-sharing]
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Combine the first 5 ingredients. Mix ⅔ of this mixture (1½ cups) with rhubarb in greased 1½ quart casserole.
Peel and thinly slice banana and apple; place in casserole. Combine ketchup, lemon rind, and juice; pour over fruit. Sprinkle with remaining bread crumb mixture. Dot with butter.
Bake, covered, for 1¼ to 1½ hours. Serve warm or cold. Garnish with whipped cream or cottage cheese.
Yield: 8 servings
Ingredients
Directions
Heat oven to 350 degrees. Combine the first 5 ingredients. Mix ⅔ of this mixture (1½ cups) with rhubarb in greased 1½ quart casserole.
Peel and thinly slice banana and apple; place in casserole. Combine ketchup, lemon rind, and juice; pour over fruit. Sprinkle with remaining bread crumb mixture. Dot with butter.
Bake, covered, for 1¼ to 1½ hours. Serve warm or cold. Garnish with whipped cream or cottage cheese.
Yield: 8 servings
Notes
Seriously? And to top it off, they suggest cottage cheese?
Two things that are not supposed to go together. And yet…
So,on the cover of the 57 Prize-Winning booklet a ketchup recipe contest is mentioned. Just for a split second. But inside it never says if this contest is something that you should submit recipes to, or if the recipes in the booklet ARE the contest submissions.
I’m guessing the booklet recipes are the submissions. Which means that someone won a prize for this, once upon a time.
In a galaxy far, far away.
Bananas.
Ketchup ON bananas.
No. No. No. No. No. No. No.
No.
In case you are wondering, this is actually what I was chanting out loud when I was spreading ketchup on bananas. Which I was doing. Right then. Spreading ketchup on bananas. Because ketchup.
I have a feeling this is one of those moments that’s going to stay with me for a long time.
Enter Tom. Completely unaware of the ketchup.
“What are you making? It smells pretty good.”
“Yes. Yes, it actually does. Deceptively good.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Here’s your bowl.”
“What. The. Heck. Is. This.”
“Is it awful?”
“No. It’s not awful. It’s just…zesty.”
“Zesty?”
“Sour. It tastes like I’m eating apple cider vinegar.”
“There’s ketchup in it. I put it on top of bananas. I’m still a little scarred.”
“That explains a lot.”
The Verdict: Zesty
From The Tasting Notes –
Surprisingly, this was not awful. It was edible. With vanilla ice cream it might be just shy of good. It was VERY sour. The lemon was very prominent and the rhubarb was still pretty sour as well. The ketchup gave it an interesting flavor that wasn’t unpleasant. What WAS unpleasant was the horrible ketchup aftertaste. In an interesting side note, bananas, apples and rhubarb weren’t that bad together, and might be worth another try. Without the stupid ketchup, of course.
This recipe just made me sad. Last year I made a rhubarb chutney, and that was delicious, and actually had vinegar in it, but I wouldn’t consider it a dessert – we put it on pork chops.
I’m going to make a big pan of Rhubarb Crisp this weekend. No ketchup, bananas, apples, spices or even oatmeal – just rhubarb, a little lemon juice, sugar, brown sugar, butter, and flour. Darn, it’s good stuff, all about the rhubarb. And I top it with vanilla ice cream, not cottage cheese.
Well, sponsored by Heinz, I suppose you would have to put ketchup in it. Why not, say, a tablespoon instead of half a cup? that would be technically using ketchup.
I just can’t understand how anyone likes ketchup. I don’t want to eat barbecue with homemade sauce made from ketchup — some bad experiences. Ketchup even smells strange to me. Using it as an ingredient takes less repulsion for it or more courage than I have. I’m somewhat in awe of y’all.
I suspect they were hoping the catsup would stand in for sugar. Sounds as if you still need LOTS of sugar for rhubarb.
I think there was a recipe contest many years ago sponsored by …Heinz? … you entered a recipe from one of several categories, using ketchup as an ingredient. Somebody submitted an ice cream recipe using ketchup, and it wasn’t actually good, but it wasn’t all that bad, either.
I do love rhubarb, but it takes a lot of sugar to make it eatable. I’ve often wondered who first cooked rhubarb. I believe it’s actually weed.
My husband gets ill at the smell of ketchup. Literally- threw up once when I waved an open bottle in front of his nose.
So I love when you do these Heinz recipes, so I can describe them and see the abject horror on his face.
The thing is, when I look at the picture, I can smell bananas and ketchup, and I want to puke.
I realize that the 1950s were a time when people were not exposed to as many seasonings as are enjoyed today, but what would make someone combine apple, banana, rhubarb, and ketchup?
Did they create the concoctions as an experiment the way you do, subjecting their families to these culinary horrors before submitting the recipe, giving a slightly smug look to them all as they point out “it can’t be that bad, the people at Heinz thought it was good enough to put in their book”?
On the other hand, I wouldn’t have imagined that tomatoes would work well in a chocolate cake.
I wonder what this would be like with banana catsup? I think maybe that’s what they were going for. It’s really good and I think I’d like to try this with it.
For those that don’t know what it is, it’s a really tasty sauce popular in the Philippines. It’s made from bananas colored red to look like tomato catsup and was popularized during WWII because it hard to get regular catsup.
You know, that totally sounds like what they were going for! Thanks for the info, and now I am going to be on the lookout for banana catsup! 🙂
I have made banana ketchup and its really good.