The Most Searched For Bread Recipe Across America Is Banana Bread

National Banana Bread Day celebrates 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.

• 8000 BC – Possibly the world’s first cultivated fruit, bananas were likely domesticated during this era by people in Southeast Asia.
• 327 BC – When Alexander the Great takes his army to India, he discovers crops of bananas in the Indian Valley. From this trip, bananas make their way back to the Western world
• 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 – Due to the growing popularity of quick-rise items like baking soda and baking powder, Banana Bread (and other quick breads) became popular around this time. The first recipe is published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, but uses banana flour instead of fresh bananas.
• 1900s – Thanks to the invention of refrigeration techniques, transporting bananas to the U.S. became much easier.
• 1918 – Closer along the lines to what is called Banana Bread now, The Garden Island Paper publishes a recipe by Mrs. Dean. It still does not exactly reflect what is to come, as it contains cornmeal, but it’s moving in the right direction.
• 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.
• 1933- With the popularization of baking soda and baking powder, 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.
• 1950 – Banana bread later gained further acceptance with the release of the original Chiquita Banana’s Recipe Book in 1950.
• 2024 – Banana bread was far and away the most-searched recipe in the United States; every single month, roughly 1 in 500 Americans searches for a banana bread recipe.
• Bananas contain naturally occurring radioactive isotopes, particularly potassium-40 (⁴⁰K), one of several potassium isotopes.
• 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 is said to relieve itching and inflammation.
• Over 95% of American households purchase bananas 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 normalize blood pressure and regulate heart function due to 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.

Sources:

National Day Calendar

My Great Recipes

Mobile-Cuisine

All Spice Online

National Today

Days of the Year