THE BANANAS OF HAWAII 11 



bananas were rarely eaten by Hawaiian females, and then only 

 under circumstances of the greatest secrecy and danger. The 

 object of these curious food tabus seems to have been to reserve 

 the choicer foods for the males alone. 



A number of the native varieties are suitable for food only 

 when cooked. These are called ''cooking bananas." Heat 

 breaks down the starches into sugars and produces a delicious 

 sugary syrup which saturates the deUcate flesh, and gives it the 

 flavor of a dessert or a confection. In modern times these \'arie- 

 ties are cooked in a number of different ways — fried, baked, etc., — ■ 

 but in olden times they were invariably cooked in the Hawaiian 

 underground oven or imu. Customarily a number of foods were 

 cooked at the same time, as a matter of convenience and economy. 

 Each kind, fish, pig, bread-fruit, bananas, etc., was wrapped in 

 ti leaves. The pit was lined with porous lava stones, which had 

 previously been heated by means of a wood fire built in the pit. 

 When the fire had burned out the pit was lined with ti leaves, to 

 protect the food from the hot stones and ashes; the food was put 

 in place; a covering of ti or banana leaves was placed over the 

 packages of food; and then all was covered with earth. A small 

 hole was made by means of a stick standing vertically; water was 

 poured into this hole; upon coming into contact with the hot 

 stones it was converted into steam, and thus the food was thor- 

 oughly steam cooked. The food remained in the oven for a 

 number of hours, — the time depending upon the quantity of food, 

 etc., then the cover was opened and the food removed. Bananas, 

 as well as ot^er food cooked in this way, attain a delicious and 

 distinctive flavor that does not seem to be secured by any other 

 method. The cooking bananas are in common use among the 

 white people of the islands, and command a good price in the 

 markets. Their popularity is bound to increase steadily, as 

 their merits become more widely known. 



As intimated early in this paper, there was an epoch in which 

 the native bananas were suffered to fall into abeyance, but that 

 epoch is now happily past. Much interest has been manifested 

 in recent years in the commercial exploitation of the Hawaiian 

 bananas. It is only a question of time until the best of these 



