A creamy layered dessert beloved of the southern US – but whose is the definitive version?
Banana pudding wasn’t on my radar until a chance conversation with American food writer Charlotte Druckman, editor of the excellent anthology Women on Food, who alerted me to its existence – plus anything labelled “pudding” has my immediate and undivided attention, anyway. In the US, the term refers to a particular variety of thick and milky dessert – what we might call a custard, or a pastry cream, or even a blancmange, depending on the method used – and this particular banana-studded pudding/trifle hybrid has a long history, first popping up in print in the late 19th century*, by which time the tropical fruit was well established in North America.
Why it became particularly associated with the South in the mid-20th century is a mystery that South Carolina food writer Robert Moss has probed without success, but the fact remains that “you can’t swing a dead cat in a Southern barbecue joint without hitting a bowl of banana pudding”, or, he adds, at a Southern church picnic, holiday gathering or tailgate, for that matter. And there’s a good reason for that: it’s ridiculously good. If you, like me, have a nostalgic fondness for the bananas and custard of childhood, this is the dinner-party version, with just a touch of American glamour. (Oh, and I’m told that, strictly speaking, it’s known as banana puddin’ in the South.)
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