It is likely that bananas have been used as a food since earliest times. Certainly they are mentioned in early Greek and Latin writings, while references to the fruit emerge intermittently in our own literature in more recent centuries as travellers begin to explore exotic climes. Ligon in 1657 in talking of Barbados describes the ‘Bonano’ as ‘…of a sweeter taste than the Plantine… we find them as good to stew or preserve as the Plantine’, while possibly the last word on the flavour of the plantain comes from E.B. Cowell who writing a letter in 1860, describes them as ‘like a very poor pear, grafted on a potato’.