Loved in the South, banana pudding evokes nostalgia

May 12, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

By Kathleen Purvis

McClatchy Newspapers

CHARLOTTE, N.C.

A summer Sunday food memory, circa 1974: I’m sitting at the table watching while my mother makes banana pudding and my older sister discusses her latest date.

One talks about the frustrations of romance. The other listens, nodding, while patiently, steadily, assembling dessert.

Lining the casserole dish with vanilla wafers from a box. Slicing bananas and placing the circles just so. Spooning on a layer of vanilla-flavored pudding.

Building the layers until the casserole is full, then covering it with a final layer of fluffy, white whipped topping.

The whole thing goes in the refrigerator to wait until supper, while the wafers soften into cakelike layers and the banana flavor tinges both pudding and cookies, melding into something that will be cool and sweet on a hot night.

Watching them, I absorb a little about dating, a little about listening and a lot about taking time for both comfort and desserts.

ONLY IN THE SOUTH

Recently, I set out to explore banana pudding. I looked into instant puddings vs. homemade custards, into vanilla wafers vs. fancier fillers such s pound cake or ladyfingers.

I tried meringue toppings, whipped toppings and simple sprinklings of crushed cookies.

I fell in love with the banana pudding at Savor Cafe in Charlotte, N.C., where Lori Pearson’s vanilla wafers are homemade and the perfectly browned meringue is an impossibly smooth marshmallow creme.

Along the way, I wrestled with a mystery. Every source agrees that banana pudding is quintessentially Southern. It’s so connected to this part of the world that if you join the Southern Foodways Alliance this year, you’ll get a sticker declaring you a “Proud Citizen of the Banana Pudding Republic.”

At Carolinas’ barbecue restaurants, if dessert is offered at all, it is usually banana pudding. It can be made cheaply in big quantities and turned out in sheet pans or disposable aluminum trays at church potlucks.

But why is banana pudding Southern? Bananas are everywhere. In the U.S., they’re ahead of apples and oranges as the most consumed fruit. Nabisco’s Nilla Wafers are sold nationally, with the recipe on the box.

But banana pudding isn’t everywhere. I took an informal poll, checking with food-writing colleagues in four Northern cities.

In Milwaukee, banana pudding doesn’t show up at all, just banana cream pie. I had to explain the difference to my source there. In Minneapolis and Pittsburgh, food editors had seen it only in black-owned restaurants.

It is widespread in Chicago, where many Southern black families moved in search of work during the Depression. But it is still strongly connected to family events.