When is a banana loaf not just a banana loaf? When it is a baked memory.
Any pub quiz afficionado can tell you that smell is the sense that triggers the strongest memories, but much has also been written about the emotional connection between your perception of a specific taste and a memory. In Remembrance of Things Past, author Marcel Proust famously wrote that the taste of lime blossom madeleines transported him vividly back to the town where he grew up and specifically his aunt’s house where he ate madeleines as a child. This famous passage gave rise to the expression “a Proustian moment”, used to describe the evocation of vivid memories by a sensory experience.
In Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy wrote: “In this moment, the bread tasted as it did in my childhood, a taste that bridges time.” And as it turns out there is scientific backing for this seemingly fanciful statement. How we taste and react to food starts in the mouth with your tastebuds (assisted by your olfactory receptors where the airways and the oesophagus meet at the back of the mouth). These signals are sent to the brainstem for analysis and processing. The brainstem is essentially your lizard brain that will generate a physical reaction in a split second. You may, for example, reflexively retch or spit out something perceived as deeply unpleasant or associated with a negative experience – a nifty trick designed to keep our ancestors alive when foraging – or you may experience a rush of pleasure. But more interestingly, the brainstem is also connected to the amygdala: the part of the brain responsible for emotional memory. This explains why foods like Kraft mac ‘n cheese, fish finger sandwiches, candy floss, Angel Delight or jelly and custard can transport even adults who regard themselves as foodie connoisseurs into misty-eyed reverie. (If you are South African, this list might also include Wilson’s cola toffees, Steri-Stumpies, Flings, Melrose cheese triangles, Anchovette and NikNaks!)
I recently spent a month visiting my brother Anton and his family in South Africa and as one does on holiday, we did a fair amount of cooking. I always try to make some of our childhood favourites which his time included seven-layer salad, cheese olives, glazed gammon, and Mamma’s dairy-free dark chocolate mousse. While I was there, he asked me whether I had Mamma’s banana bread recipe, which was legendary and which I was sure I would find in her own looping cursive handwriting in her recipe index book when I got home. We both have such vivid memories of her baking it regularly and of arguing over who got to lick the beaters and who got to lick the mixing bowl. But when I got home and leafed through the book, it wasn’t there. Neither was her famous chicken curry recipe – probably the recipe she is most remembered by amongst my friends. She evidently made both of them so frequently that she felt no need to write them down, and now all we can do is try to reverse-engineer a recipe from a decades-old sensory memory. I am very grateful that she taught me her scone recipe off by heart before I was even in high school as that is also not in the book – and I felt a deep pang of regret that I had not thought to ask for all her other standby recipes when she was alive.
Having considered where else she might have sourced her recipe from, I settled on the idea that it was most likely from that bible of South African cooking, Kook en Geniet (Cook and Enjoy It), self-published by Ina Rossouw in 1951 after South African publishers had expressed indifference. It is the kind of book that you send your kid off to university with, covering everything from general principles of nutrition, menu planning, cooking methods and conversions, through recipe basics like how to poach, boil or scramble an egg through to classics like bobotie or tomato bredie, and more traditional South African puddings than you can shake a stick at. Needless to say, the book was a slow-burn hit and by 1961 Ina had a publisher. To date, well over a million copies of both the original Afrikaans and the English translation have been sold.
So it was the Kook en Geniet recipe that I eventually decided to try in an attempt to recreate a memory. The only thing that seemed missing from it was the chopped nuts that my mom always added – but that was easily remedied by the addition of chopped pecans. When the loaf came out of the oven, I could barely wait for it to cool so that I could have a taste, but when I did… my very own Proustian moment. I was instantly 8 years old again, in my childhood home, sitting at the melamine kitchen table with the cool lino floor underfoot, eating a slice of Mamma’s warm banana bread. The emotional memory was intense enough to make me close my eyes and sit with those feelings, turning them over in my mind, trying to make them last as long as possible. Who needs a time machine if you have a banana loaf?
If you have made it this far, I have two takeaways for you:
- Don’t assume that you will remember or that there will be a written record of all your older relatives’ family favourite recipes – go and ask them today for the recipes that mean the most to you. Write them down, put them online, bind them on a book for the family – whatever you prefer. But record them while you still can.
- Make this recipe, without delay. It is absolutely delicious and you can thank me later 😉
Why not try some of my other easy bakes:
- Banana choc chip muffins
- Gingerbread cookies
- Plum upside-down cake
- Raspberry and white chocolate cupcakes
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Did you make this recipe? Please let me know how it turned out for you! Leave a comment and star rating below or share a picture on Instagram tagging @Cooksister and using the hashtag #cooksistereats.
A simple but delicious banana loaf packed with caramelly banana and nutty pecan flavours
- 115 g butter
- 210 g golden granulated sugar
- 5 ml vanilla essence
- 2 large eggs
- 500 g plain flour
- 10 ml baking powder
- 2.5 ml salt
- 4 very ripe bananas
- 250 g chopped pecan nuts
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Preheat the oven to 180C and grease a loaf tin.
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In a large mixing bowl, use an electric beater to cream the butter and sugar together till pale and fluffy, then beat in the vanilla essence.
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Add the eggs one by one and beat thoroughly after each.
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In a second bowl, sift the dry ingredients together and then add them to the egg mix. Combine well.
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Mash the bananas and stir into the mixture, then stir in the pecans.
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Spoon the mixture into the loaf tin and bake for about an hour or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean.
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Allow the loaf to cool before turning out of the tin. Keeps for up to a week in an airtight container.
- You can substitute chopped walnuts for the pecans if you prefer a hint of bitterness to balance the sweetness in the loaf.
- You can use wholewheat flour instead of plan flour to make the loaf healthier and add a nutty flavour.
- If your bananas are very ripe and sweet, you can experiment with reducing the amount of sugar in the recipe to make it healthier.
- This loaf will keep (and improve) for up to a week in an airtight container or tightly wrapped in foil at room temperature, and the flavour will improve.
- The loaf freezes well, either whole or sliced.
- Although it is delicious as it is, this loaf is also delicious when toasted with a generous smear of butter.
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