There are other sundaes, of course—hot fudge, caramel, pineapple, Sriracha maple bacon…um…what?
“People do some crazy stuff, let me tell you that,” observes Joleen Green, an owner of Lucy’s on Lighthouse in Pacific Grove, where they have pretty much cornered the flavors of summer. While the adventurous may try an ice cream version of the caprese salad or—worse, in our estimation—one sprinkled with Fruity Pebbles, nothing quite says summer indulgence like the banana split.
It defines a time revered in America’s rose-tinted memory, one with soda fountains on every corner. Walgreens elevated the banana split to a signature dish at the drugstore giant’s lunch counters. Even today it can be a showstopper.
“When people see them, it’s like ‘Oh my gosh!’” says Green.
Note that you won’t find Fruity Pebbles or Sriracha on ice cream creations at Lucy’s. But they do load up the banana split. Green admits that even the crew at Lucy’s react when someone orders a banana split, although it’s generally in the form of a cringe. “It does take a lot of work,” she points out.
But the result is joy in its most wholesome form. So why is the banana split relegated to an occasional treat?
Traditionally, the dish begins with a whole banana sliced lengthwise—or split—framing a scoop each of vanilla, chocolate and strawberry ice cream. Then come the toppings, which include chocolate, pineapple and often strawberry sauces, along with crumbled nuts and mounds of whipped cream. Did we forget anything? Oh, yeah. Cherries on top.
Yet it is not immune to upgrades. Parlors have played with the lineup over the years. At Lucy’s, they allow customers to make the call on both sauces and ice cream flavors. Chiquita Rip Curl—made by Marianne’s Ice Cream specially for the P.G. phenom—blends peanut butter, fudge and chunks of peanut butter cup into banana ice cream, and the combination could not be more complementary.
There are larger sundaes to be found at parlors, like the massive “kitchen sink.” which seems to come with everything but. However, these tend to be dare-bait. Most sundaes consist of a large scoop smothered in syrup and whipped cream.
“Regular sundaes are more popular,” Green reports. Indeed, according to Tastewise, less than 2 percent of restaurants now bother to include the banana creation on their menus.
America’s affection for the banana split began to ebb in the 1950s. New ice cream flavors distracted people from the vanilla, chocolate, strawberry routine. Soda fountains gave way to chains like Carvel (the last Walgreens soda fountain fell silent more than 50 years ago). And wave after wave of fad diets, followed by a more general health consciousness didn’t help the venerable sundae’s cause.
By the way, what ever happened to the Drinking Man’s Diet?
Anyway, while the banana split never faded from the scene, it became a rare treat. References to the dish in publications peaked in 1948. Of course, they rebounded in recent decades. But that has more to do with the children’s TV show and then movie. Doesn’t count.
Still, the banana split is of such importance that three cities claim it as their own. Residents of Wilmington, Ohio celebrate the annual Banana Split Festival, asserting that the treat was invented in that community in 1907. The National Soda Fountain Magazine favors the story of a Boston man first creating the sundae for convention guests in 1905. But most historians—including Michael Turback, author of the definitive thesis The Banana Split Book—credit a pharmacist named David “Doc” Strickler of Latrobe, Pennsylvania.
The good doc’s 1904 recipe is the most familiar. The Boston variant calls for just two scoops, and only vanilla, with peaches on top. Wilmington brought crushed pineapple into play.
Sundae historians—why wasn’t any of this mentioned in high school classes?—believe the hot fudge sundae was invented around the same time, at an ice cream parlor in Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles, helping to launch the golden age of ice cream.
By the 1930s, there were half a million soda jerks in the U.S. at 90,000 soda fountains. According to a 1939 New York Times article, Americans had consumed 275 million gallons of ice cream the previous year.
The same article also made note of an ice cream backlash, adding that Cambridge, Massachusetts mayor John Lyons “accused Communists of trying to undermine the loyalty of grade school students by ice cream orgies.”
Why didn’t we have ice cream orgies growing up? Communists in our day just handed out pamphlets.
Lyons, by the way, was arrested in 1941 on 66 charges relating to corrupt behavior and spent time in the state pen.
There is some dispute over the origins of the sundae in general, as well. In one version, an ice cream merchant named Ed Berners in Two Rivers, Wisconsin created the first sundae in 1881 by pouring chocolate syrup over vanilla ice cream at the behest of a customer. Berners went to his grave insisting on his rightful place in dessert history (we read his obit).
However, many scholars support the claim of Ithaca, New York. It was there in 1892 that one Chester Platt ladled cherry syrup over ice cream at his soda fountain. An advertisement in the Ithaca Daily Journal from October of that year mentions the “new 10 cent ice cream specialty” called the “Cherry Sunday.”
Turback, who is also the author of A Month of Sundaes, sides with Ithaca. But he’s a Cornell graduate and may be biased.
Evanston, Illinois is often cited as the reason for the spelling change. As the story goes, the city’s deeply pious residents objected to anyone enjoying something so obviously sinful as an ice cream soda on Sunday. With the concoction banned, fountains begin serving ice cream without the soda instead.
To avoid any further desecration of the day, the resulting dish of ice cream and syrup was dubbed a Sundae.
Since Thomas Jefferson was known to drizzle maple syrup over his plain ice cream, there is reasonable doubt to the origin stories.
But that brings us back to the matter at hand. Ice cream. A single syrup flavor. Americans have always tended toward simplicity when it comes to sundaes. Maybe that’s what makes the banana split so special. It stands apart.
And, Green adds, “it makes people happy.”