The banana split, that hallowed American ice cream treat draped in whipped cream, decorated with crushed nuts and crowned with a cherry, turns 90 this year.
Soda fountain annals reveal that it was in 1904 that a young man named David Strickler, an aspiring pharmacist from Latrobe, Pa., was inspired on a trip to Atlantic City by the soda jerks making sundaes. When he got home to Latrobe, he created what would become the Mt. Everest of ice cream sundaes.
Strickler’s original was made with three dips of ice cream on a split banana, topped with chocolate syrup, marshmallow, nuts, whipped cream and a cherry-all for a dime.
The banana split’s fame spread quickly, and it wasn’t long before other enterprising soda jerks, including one Stinson Thomas of Butler’s Department Store in Boston, made the claim that they were the devisers of the dish.
Thomas tried to pull it off in 1905, with a version that included a banana split lengthwise and topped with two small scoops of vanilla ice cream, each topped with a cherry. A few slices of peach, a bit of pistachio and crushed walnuts finished it off.
Naah, that’s not a banana split.
Much of this banana split lore comes to us courtesy of Bryce Thomson of Eaton Rapids, Mich., who calls himself “the world’s oldest soda jerk.” After many years in the ice cream business in Eaton Rapids, Thomson became editor of the Sundae School Newsletter, a monthly publication that goes to members of the National Ice Cream and Yogurt Retailers Association.
Thomson, 77, has been producing the newsletter for 13 years from his home, where he has an old-fashioned ice cream parlor in his basement.
Thomson admits his preference is for the tin roof sundae rather than the banana split. “Too time-consuming to make,” he says from the standpoint of a former soda jerk-one who rose to become president of an ice cream company before he retired.
Thomson backs up Strickler’s claim as the originator. “Ice cream researchers and historians officially recognize Latrobe as the birthplace of the banana split,” he says. “Until other documentation is found, Latrobe will continue to be officially recognized.”
The banana split has actually become the symbol of that Pennsylvania city, and, in particular, of the liberal arts college located there, St. Vincent. Prospective students are wooed with banana split lore in the school’s recruitment literature, and each fall the school year kicks off with a Banana Split Bash, St. Vincent’s version of a freshman orientation program, at which participants converge on a do-it-yourself banana split buffet.
These days, the generally recognized toppings are chocolate, strawberry and pineapple. No one, not even ice cream scholar Thomson, knows what happened to the marshmallow topping David Strickler put on his original split.
Thomson says the most accepted way to prepare the dish is with the trio of chocolate, strawberry and vanilla ice cream, toppings of chocolate, strawberry and pineapple, and, finally, whipped cream, nuts and a cherry.
Surely the young David Strickler wouldn’t have guessed what he had unleashed when he innocently put the first banana split together. In later years, he became Doc Strickler and continued serving banana splits until 1965, when he sold the store.
