Banana Split

Banana split

A traditional banana split as served at Cabot's Ice Cream and Restaurant in Newtonville, Massachusetts
Course	Dessert
Place of origin	United States
Region or state	Latrobe, Pennsylvania
Serving temperature	Cold
Main ingredients	Vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry ice cream Bananas Pineapple topping Strawberry topping Chocolate syrup Nuts Whipped cream Maraschino cherries
Variations	Multiple

A banana split is an ice cream-based dessert. In its canonical form it is served in a long dish called a boat. A banana is cut in half lengthwise (hence the name) and laid in the dish. There are many variations, but the classic banana split is made with three scoops of ice cream (one each of vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry.) served between the split banana. A sauce or sauces (chocolate, strawberry, and pineapple are traditional) are drizzled onto the ice cream, then crushed nuts (generally peanuts or walnuts) and whipped cream, then topped with a maraschino cherry.

David Evans Strickler, a 23-year-old apprentice pharmacist at Tassel Pharmacy, located at 805 Ligonier Street in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, who enjoyed inventing sundaes at the store's soda fountain, invented the banana-based triple ice cream sundae in 1904. The sundae originally cost 10 cents, twice the price of other sundaes, and caught on with students of nearby Saint Vincent College. News of a new variety of sundae quickly spread by word-of-mouth and through correspondence and soon progressed far beyond Latrobe. A popular recipe published in 1907 called for a lengthwise split banana, two scoops of ice cream at each end and a spoon of whipped cream in between with maraschino cherry on a top, with one end covered with chopped mixed nuts and another with chopped mixed fruits.

Strickler went on to buy the pharmacy, naming it Strickler's Pharmacy, while keeping his office on a top floor.

The city of Latrobe celebrated the 100th anniversary of the invention of the banana split in 2004 and, in the same year, the National Ice Cream Retailers Association (NICRA) certified the city as its birthplace. It is the place of an annual Great American Banana Split Celebration and a keeper of the original soda fountain where the first now famous throughout the world confection was made.