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Banana Splits
Peel and split a banana, lay both halves together on the bottom of a large saucer, on the top of the banana put a cone-shaped measure of ice cream, over this pour a little crushed pineapple, a little whole strawberry, and a spoonful of whipped cream, top with a cherry.
A soda-fountain assembly rather than a cooked dish, so the notes are mostly about proportion, vessels and the fruit syrups a 1900s fountain kept on hand.
- The saucerA shallow dish rather than a bowl. Anything shallow and long enough to take the split banana works; a deep bowl buries the banana and defeats the point of splitting it.
- "A cone-shaped measure"Fountains portioned ice cream with a conical dipper, giving a portion of a couple of ounces or so. One cone is the single serving here, not the three scoops now standard.
- Crushed pineapple and whole strawberryFountains bought fruits ready-packed in heavy syrup for sundae work, and that is likely what is meant. Drained canned crushed pineapple with a spoonful of its syrup, and small whole strawberries macerated in sugar, give the intended sweetness and cling.
- Banana ripenessChoose a banana just fully yellow with no green at the tip. Underripe fruit is starchy and refuses to sit flat; overripe fruit collapses under the ice cream.
- The cherryA maraschino cherry. True maraschinos were preserved in maraschino liqueur, though by this period cheaper imitations in sweetened brine were already common at American fountains.
- Order of workSplit and plate the banana first and have the fruits already spooned out ready. The scoop goes on last and the dish goes out immediately.
- YieldOne split, one person.
The banana split belongs to the moment when bananas stopped being a luxury: refrigerated steamships and the American fruit trade dropped the price through the 1890s and 1900s until a druggist could afford to put a whole one in a single portion. Its invention is claimed by several towns, most persistently Latrobe, Pennsylvania, where an apprentice pharmacist is traditionally credited with the dish in 1904, and Wilmington, Ohio; none of the claims rests on contemporary documentation, and the trade press of the period treats the split simply as one more fountain novelty. What is clear from a book like this is the commercial logic. Soda fountains lived in drugstores and competed on spectacle, and a sundae built lengthwise across a big glass dish, showing off three fruits and whipped cream at once, was worth more than a scoop in a cup for very little extra labour.