Updated March 16, 2024
February 23rd is National Banana Bread Day celebrating a perfect pairing of fruit plus bread. Admit it, few things are quite as comforting as walking into the house and smelling a freshly baked loaf of banana bread. It’s certainly a dessert staple in many households, which is probably why so many of us have such a special place in our hearts for this delicious treat. The best things in life deserve an entire day devoted to celebrating their existence.
A moist, sweet, cake-like quick bread, banana bread is made with fully ripe, mashed bananas. There are some recipes where banana bread is made with yeast when it is then usually sliced, toasted and spread with butter.
- 1870 – The United States saw the arrival of bananas in the 1870′s, but it took a while before they appeared as an ingredient in desserts.
- 1893 – The Vienna Model Bakery advertised banana bread as something new in the April 21, 1893, edition of St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
- 1900s – Thanks to the invention of refrigeration techniques, transporting bananas to the U.S. became much easier.
- 1918 – In Hawaii during World War I, there was a surplus of bananas due to very few ships to export the fruit. In order not to waste the fruits, alternative uses for bananas were developed. The bakeries started incorporating the fruit into their bread.
- 1918 – A recipe submitted by Mrs. Dean in the February 18, 1918, issue of The Garden Island paper for a banana muffin might more closely resemble the quick bread we think of today.
- 1927 – Unifruit (a wholesale produce company) offered a free cookbook called From the Tropics to Your Table full of banana recipes including banana muffins and breads.
- 1929 – Money was so tight during the Great Depression that people refused to throw away rotten food — thus ushering in the era of overly ripe bananas in banana bread.
- 1930s – With the popularization of baking soda and baking powder in the 1930s, banana bread first became a standard feature of American cookbooks and appeared in Pillsbury’s 1933 Balanced Recipes cookbook.
- 1930s – The Unifruit cookbook was handy during the Great Depression. Throwing out overripe bananas was not something a family could afford to do.
- 1950 – Banana bread later gained further acceptance with the release of the original Chiquita Banana’s Recipe Book in 1950.
- There are many different variations of the traditional banana bread, a few of which include Banana raisin bread – Banana nut bread – Chocolate chip banana bread.
- Banana trees are considered giant herbs, not ‘trees’ at all.
- A cluster of bananas is known as a hand, each banana are fingers.
- Rubbing the inside of a banana peel on bug bites are said to relieve itching and inflammation.
- Over 95% of American households purchase banana at least once a month.
- Bananas are one of the only fruits harvested every day of the year. They do not grow in regions that have dramatic seasonal changes.
- Thanks to its star ingredient, banana bread helps to normalize blood pressure and regulate heart function because of potassium.
- It’s estimated that the average American eats around 30 pounds of bananas per year!
- Due to the high potassium content, bananas have a slight amount of radioactivity.
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