a dishbanana pudding

Layers of sweet vanilla custard, vanilla wafers and sliced bananas built up in a dish and topped with meringue or whipped cream, then chilled until the wafers soften and the layers run together. It is the barbecue house's dessert in both Carolinas, whole-hog pits and shoulder pits alike: the Barbecue Center in Lexington sells it by the small or large cup, Sam Jones BBQ lists it beside the whole hog, Sweatman's in Holly Hill serves it after hash and rice, and Rodney Scott's in Charleston listed it with the catfish and ribs. It needs no oven, scales up to a crowd and keeps — one theory of how a dessert with no early Southern tie became Southern.

The pudding is older than its Southern accent. Recipes for banana pudding were popular across the United States in the 1890s, most of them built on sponge cake; the vanilla wafer first replaces the ladyfinger in 1920, in a recipe from Mrs. Laura Kerley in the Bloomington, Illinois Pantagraph, and in the 1940s the National Biscuit Company began printing a banana pudding recipe on the Nilla Wafers box, and the box did the rest. Wikipedia finds no consensus on how it became Southern; one theory is the church picnic, the family reunion and the barbecue, where a dessert that needs no cooking, scales to a crowd and keeps has the advantage. Inference — the barbecue house is that gathering made permanent, and the pudding came in on the same logic: a pit kitchen has no pastry oven, but it has a cooler. At Buxton Hall in Asheville, which cooked whole hog until it closed in November 2023, the pudding went out under meringue and Our State said its regulars would swear by that; at Allen & Son outside Chapel Hill, where Keith Allen baked the pies and rolled the cobbler crusts himself, banana pudding was the Friday dessert. Clyde Cooper's in Raleigh, which opened in 1938 without it, added it later and calls it a good old Southern thing. Centerville, Tennessee holds a National Banana Pudding Festival on the first weekend of October.

A vanilla custard is cooked and cooled. In a deep dish the cook lays wafers, then banana slices, then custard, and repeats to the top; the dish is chilled for hours so the wafers absorb the custard and the layers merge, which is the point. The top is meringue browned in the oven, or whipped cream. Counters sell it by the cup — 10 or 16 ounces at the Barbecue Center — and it comes after the tray, not with it.

The Barbecue Center, Lexington: homemade banana pudding, small (10 oz) $4.00, large (16 oz) $6.25 on its online menu (September 2026). Sam Jones BBQ lists it in Winterville and Raleigh; Sweatman's keeps it with hash and rice; Clyde Cooper's keeps it in Raleigh. Lexington Barbecue's dessert list is pies and cobbler, with no pudding.