Except for a few years when I was little, I’ve never met a banana pudding I didn’t like.
Growing up, I went from liking bananas to hating them. I couldn’t stand the taste or the texture. But tastes change. As time went on, I still preferred the custard to the bananas in the pudding, but I gradually became more accepting of the other half of the dessert’s name.
Over the years, I’ve taken banana pudding for granted. But now I want to know more about it. And I knew if anybody could tell me about banana pudding and its place in Southern cooking, it would be the James Beard Award-winning author and chef Martha Foose, whose cookbooks include Screen Doors and Sweet Tea. Plus, she lives in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
Foose told me that Gulfport, Mississippi, on the Gulf Coast is a “super major” banana port. “If it’s got ‘Chiquita’ on it, it’s coming up from the coast,” she says.
As for the origin of banana pudding, Foose says, “Once bananas got their stronghold, and polite society figured out ways to put them in their mouth without it looking like a banana, that’s kind of how banana pudding started gaining popularity.”
She believes banana pudding originally was a “back of the vanilla wafers box” recipe. But banana pudding recipes changed over time. Like when the “fluffy dairy topping” products like Cool Whip and Dream Whip were introduced. This enabled dairy toppings to stay whipped instead of dissolving in desserts like banana pudding.
“Banana pudding is one of those things that keep evolving. There’s a big whipped cream vs. meringue school. I’m a total meringue school. I like meringue. You’ve already got extra egg whites from putting the yolks in the custard if you’re making it homemade.”
Plus, she adds, “I don’t like dairy on top of dairy. The custard is dairy enough.”
Then there’s the “controversy” over vanilla wafers in banana puddings. “There are two schools of thought on the whole Nilla Wafer vs. vanilla wafer.”
Nilla Wafers are the Nabisco brand. The “common man’s” wafers are Jack’s Vanilla Wafers and the cheap generic food service type of vanilla wafers, she says. The food service varieties were the ones used in banana puddings in elementary school cafeterias. They’re “a little more yellow and squishy, where Nilla Wafers have got a little more snap to them.”
There are other options than just using vanilla wafers in banana puddings, Foose says. “If you want to go completely crazy at Thanksgiving, use ginger snaps.”
She adds, “Now the big in-vogue thing is for you to use those little Pepperidge Farm Chessmen.”
These domino-shaped short bread cookies, which are imprinted with chess figures, can be arranged on top of a banana pudding “like a little chessboard.”
Another controversy is the “sweetened condensed milk school of thought” as in “It needs to be in banana pudding,” Foose says. “I think, ‘No.’ Banana pudding should be like it is.”
Foose also isn’t a fan of big pans of banana pudding. She likes the individual serving dishes. Otherwise people are going to pick out the cookies or pick out the bananas. Then you just “end up with a swamp.”
As for the bananas themselves, Foose says the Cavendish banana is the most popular commercial variety. “It’s the quality that makes it shipped the most,” she says. “It’s one that can be shipped green. And its skin is sturdy enough. All those things.”
But Cavendish bananas might not be so prevalent in banana pudding as in the past. “They’re having problems with blight,” says Foose. “They’re trying to find a replacement mass market banana. They’re trying different varieties.”
If you want to whip up your own banana pudding, Foose includes a banana pudding recipe in her Screen Doors and Sweet Tea cookbook.
As for me, I’ve personally never made a banana pudding. I rely on restaurants to do that.
Also, banana puddings, to me, are like barbecue. They all have their nuances that make them different.
Here are my impressions of just a few (there are plenty more) made-from-scratch banana puddings in and around Memphis.
One & Only BBQ: I think Millie’s Banana Pudding is“magnificent.” It’s an over-the-top banana pudding, which is almost like a pie. Everything, from the bananas to the vanilla wafers, tastes fresh. According to the menu, it’s “house-made daily with fresh meringue.”
The menu also states that “last year alone, our guests devoured over 8,000 half-pans of Millie’s Banana Pudding.”
The banana pudding at Mortimer’s reminds me of eggnog at the holidays. There’s no bourbon in it, but I conjure up a taste of that brown water when I eat this delightfully delicious banana pudding. It makes me wonder what banana liqueur would taste like in a banana pudding. I’m sure that’s been done a billion times. The closest I’ve come to that is probably in bananas Foster.
Tyler Clancy, owner of Clancy’s Cafe in Red Banks, Mississippi, says his “secret ingredient” in his banana pudding is sour cream. “We put sour cream in it to kind of give it that cheesecake richness,” Clancy says. And it’s so delicious. Perfection. This is where I began topping his banana pudding with vanilla ice cream. Believe me, it doesn’t need it. It’s great as it is.
Central BBQ: I love the crushed vanilla wafers on top of this delicious, creamy banana pudding. Something about it made me recall the taste of the old banana-flavored popsicles I used to love back in the 1950s.
Makeda’s Homemade Cookies: Of course, this cookie palace isn’t going to use vanilla wafers in its banana pudding. This super creamy pudding is topped with yummy butter cookies. On the bottom is a “crust” made of crushed butter cookies.
The Cupboard Restaurant: This is the banana-iest pudding I’ve run across. It’s loaded with bananas. I think there are more bananas than vanilla wafers in this banana pudding, which is only available on Fridays and Sundays.
I remarked to my server Leodis Williams about the amount of bananas in The Cupboard’s pudding. He replied, “You’ve got to have a lot of bananas, or it wouldn’t be banana pudding.”
Nate Renner delivered the final word — for now — on banana pudding. He told me about the banana pudding at a Tennessee potluck he recently attended. He asked me with more than a trace of disgust in his voice, “Would you believe people would serve you warm banana pudding?”
Banana pudding should be cold, he said. “It should never be warm. Ever.”