The Banana Split Book: Everything There Is to Know about America's Greatest Dessert

For Turback, author of A Month of Sundaes and an Ithaca, N.Y. restaurateur, the banana split epitomizes America: it's inventive, indulgent and wacky; ""a grand idea that could only have been conceived in a place as grand as America."" He pays tribute to the 100-year-old ice cream concoction in this collection of trivia, recipes, quotes and photos. Despite Truback's lighthearted tone and subject matter, this is actually a well-researched and fact-filled reference. Information on bananas-including nutritional value, historical significance and tips on growing the fruit-gives way to a bio of David E. Strickler, whom Turback credits as the banana split's inventor. Strickler, who worked at a pharmacy that boasted a soda fountain and ice cream well, came up with the dessert in 1904. ""The effect was startling,"" writes Turback, though not as startling, perhaps, as some of the suggestions for sprucing up banana splits that come later in the book. Culled from restaurants around the country, the recipes include Roaring Fork Banana Split (a mess of cinnamon, sugar, deep-fried flour tortillas, bananas, ice cream, chocolate syrup, whipped cream and almonds) and St. Lucia Snooze, which unites vanilla and chocolate ice cream and banana halves with warm buttered-rum sauce, whipped cream and nuts.