So, the garnish on the top probably gives it away, but guess what the mystery ingredient in this salad is?
That’s right, it’s bananas.
Because this is Mystery Salad!
AuthorRetroRuth
From The Dole Banana Bonanza, 1977
Tested Recipe!
[cooked-sharing]
Cover unpeeled bananas with water, heat to boiling, and cook 10 to 12 minutes, just until tender when pierced with a slender skewer. Drain, cool sufficiently to handle, peel and slice into a bowl. Add vinegar, turning to coat on all sides. Combine all remaining ingredients and mix lightly. Add to bananas and vinegar, and mix well. Serve warm or at room temperature. Do not refrigerate.
Yield: 3 to 4 servings
Ingredients
Directions
Cover unpeeled bananas with water, heat to boiling, and cook 10 to 12 minutes, just until tender when pierced with a slender skewer. Drain, cool sufficiently to handle, peel and slice into a bowl. Add vinegar, turning to coat on all sides. Combine all remaining ingredients and mix lightly. Add to bananas and vinegar, and mix well. Serve warm or at room temperature. Do not refrigerate.
Yield: 3 to 4 servings
Notes
This glorious recipe comes from The Dole Banana Bonanza, which was published in 1977.
It has lots of great, classic recipes for most of the book, and then a bunch of savory recipes pop up, jammed way in the back next to the diet recipes. Which is always a big red flag. It was honestly a toss up between this one and an avocado banana dip that had onions in it. *shiver*
But I’ve never been one to shy away from a recipe that has “mystery” in the title. In fact, they usually end up being my favorite. Though the red flags in this one may have been waving a bit harder than normal, since we have already experienced mixing mayo with bananas and what kind of scariness can happen from that. But since these bananas were going to be boiled first (what? what?) I thought we could take a chance on this one.
So, if you hadn’t figured it out by reading the recipe, the contents of this bowl should clue you in to what this recipe is trying to do. It’s trying to be potato salad. Which, when you think about it, isn’t exactly crazy, since green bananas are quite starchy. Though it is pretty darn close to crazy.
When I posted this picture on the Facebook page, I had some comments about how this is a common way to cook green bananas and plantains in Caribbean cooking. Which is good. I was relieved to hear there was a precedent for this instead of it just being something that the cookbook authors were trying to copy from foreign cuisine and gotten completely wrong.
Maybe. I guess we will have to see how this turns out. But I always secretly hope that someone posts in the comments, “My grandmother/mother/aunt used to make this and I love it! Thank you for sharing the recipe.” It’s always fun to stumble on a new (to me) regional classic that has been kicking around in vintage cookbooks for generations.
So if anyone has fond memories of Mystery Salad, don’t be shy! Let me know!
Anyway, the smell was kind of funky and the bananas turned from green to this sort of gray-greenie-purple. It was a little disconcerting, and it made me forget to take a picture of them peeled and cut. I just sort of threw them into the bowl so I didn’t have to touch them anymore. They were soft but still a little firm, and kind of on the slimy side. I don’t know if “al dente” can be used to refer to bananas, but they reminded me a bit of pasta.
Here’s the salad. Just in case you wanted an extreme close-up. You are lucky you can’t smell it, because it smelled awful.
“So what is this? Some sort of salad you feed to people on a dare?”
“Yeah…that sounds about right.”
“Are you smiling?!?”
“Yeah, this isn’t bad at all.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Nope, it kind of tastes like a cross between a regular potato salad and a German potato salad. The eggs in here make it a bit strange, though.”
“Ummm…there are no eggs in there.”
“Oh.”
The Verdict: Strange
Let’s just start off by saying that this did not taste bad. It didn’t. It had this sweet-sour thing going on and ended up being okay. You couldn’t put your finger on what exactly the “potatoes” were when you tasted it, which I guess is the point of the mystery. The vinegar really cut down on the sweetness of the bananas, and masked their flavor a lot. It did taste like German potato salad with mayo in it. Or maybe like egg salad mixed with potato salad. The taste was…something beyond edible, but not quite to good. Palatable, maybe? It was okay, not great. It was very creamy with a hint of veggie crispness. Overall it was interesting, and not at all as bad as I thought it would be. It made me wish I would have tried the cooked bananas before I slathered them with mayo.
“Hey Alex, do you want to try some?”
I don’t blame her.
I am going to try this on my husband-he grew up in a “green banana eating country” and I suspect he’ll like it. Will email you the results. Here in FL there are several different kinds of green bananas you can buy in the Latin or Central American markets. I suspect hubs will like it because I notice he and everyone in his country drench mayo on EVERYTHING. Stay tuned!
OMG. If you had any idea of how much I look forward to your blog entries each week you would charge me admission. This one was stellar. I had tears from laughing. Your husband is such a good sport.
From a Boomer who loves the memories of her childhood, please never stop reminding me of the good old days. They were so innocent, unsophisticated and crazy. People wanted to try different things, but the pantry was so limiting, so let’s just combine crazy stuff. My Gram did all of this stuff and some of it was pretty good. Let’s just add mayonnaise to everything!!!
I’m with Alex…
I suppose after a few entries that were downright appealing it was time to slide back into the ‘edible but weird’ category. At least there was no gelatin in this one!
Cooking bananas isn’t too weird, at least it wasn’t in my family when I was growing up (yes, I’m from the Boomer bunch). In the years before I became vegetarian, my absolute favorite meal was steak with fried bananas. In fact, I still pan-fry bananas in butter these days…..just sans the steak.
I can’t recall if we ever did try anything like this salad but it sure seems like the sort of thing my mother might have done.
I don’t know much of anything about cooked bananas, except that properly made banana pudding involves baking the assembled pudding, bananas and all, and it is AMAZING.
Also, regarding bananas and mayo (I feel I may have said this before so apologies if I’m redundant here), my mother used to make our banana sandwiches with bananas rather than peanut butter. I was at least 12 before I learned how the rest of America was eating them. So I have a peculiar fondness for the combination of bananas and mayo. Every so often I’ll still make myself a banana and mayo sandwich.
On vacation in the Caribbean, I had a salad of lettuce, onions, tomatoes and bananas with a creamy (maybe mayo) dressing. It was wonderful. So I would try this.
banana salad….. it does sound latin/south American tho I would love to make this recipie and others and take a few others from this site to a potluck and get reactions heh
My mother and grandmother used to make banana-mayo sandwiches, too, on good homemade bread. Haven’t thought of those in years!
I’d be willing to bet this would be better with plaintains.
My family made a variation on this! I think we used straight up not-quite-ripe bananas, though. I used to love it as a child!!
Note: my family is Seventh-Day Adventist. Maybe it’s an SDA thing?
I make this with plantains all the time. Try it that way…so much better! I pair it with jerk chicken and it’s really excellent together. My hubby is a picky picky picky eater and even he likes it.
Wow. Just wow. I do love Tom’s comment about the eggs….then you remarking that there are no eggs in the dish. Bless you and Tom for your adventurous palates!
Those are great. I also like banana-mayo-peanut butter sandwiches, but with ripe bananas. I put Mayo on one side, pb on the other.