Anatomy of a dessert

The success of the banana split was so great that, in a short time, this dessert appeared on the menus of many restaurant chains

Having the banana split on the menu today is a pure homage to the 80s, when there was no ice cream shop or restaurant around the world that didn’t serve this colorful dessert.

But not everyone knows that the banana split turns 120 years old this year! And the ultra-centenary anniversary will be celebrated with a big party, with live music, at the “Campo di Mare” restaurant, on Maputo’s waterfront, on the 21st of April, with the classic recipe: three scoops of ice cream (preferably vanilla, chocolate and strawberry), whipped cream, chocolate syrup, hazelnut crumbs and a cherry as a final topping.

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“Its history has always intrigued me; it’s so bizarre that it was even patented and disputed between two cities in the United States, which of one boast of their supremacy”, says Fabrizio Falcone, the restaurant’s manager. “And it’s also my “Proustian” madeleine memory of when, after the school year was over, I went on vacation and the ice cream shops were open until late so you could spend the whole night there with your friends.”

Well, we have to go back about a century, to the summer of 1904, to find the origins of this fresh and fruity dessert.

The place is a cafe in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, USA, where an American boy, David Evans Strickler, worked.

David had observed an ice cream vendor in Boston serving ice cream with a whole banana.

He liked the idea, but, for the sake of convenience and hygiene, he thought about removing the skin and creating a “personalized” version of that strange street recipe. So, he cut the banana in half, filled it with chocolate and ice cream, and began serving it to customers.

Another version says that the inventor was Ernest Hazard, a restaurant owner from Wilmington, Ohio, who in 1907, disillusioned with his employees who were unable to invent new desserts, cut up a banana and stuffed it. Since that day, the cities of Latrobe and Wilmington have been competing in celebrations: in 2004, Latrobe celebrated the 100th anniversary of the birth of the famous banana split, while Wilgminton sponsors an entirely banana split-themed festival every year.

The success of the banana split was so great that, in a short time, this dessert appeared on the menus of many North American restaurant chains, as a dessert, reaching the rest of the world, through films, in the 80s and 90s, with the same destination: it was served in restaurants and ice cream parlors in the classic boat-shaped saucer, as the “Campo di Mare” restaurant in Maputo bay does today.

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