Banana pudding perfect BBQ partner

The trinity of barbecue is brisket, pork ribs and sausage. But when it comes to a post-barbecue dessert, there can be only one: banana pudding.

Some barbecue joints may also serve fruit cobblers, and others may offer brownies. But banana pudding, with its mix of distinctly yellow custard, whipped cream, ripe bananas and wafer cookies, is almost universal.

Danielle Bennett, a national barbecue authority, author and host of “BBQ Crawl” on the Travel Channel, estimates she has visited about 900 barbecue restaurants throughout the country and banana pudding was on the menu at more than 95 percent of them.

“It would raise a little red flag for me if you didn’t have it,” Bennett said.

It’s now so ingrained in the culture of barbecue dining that Ernest Servantes, co-owner of the Burnt Bean Co. in Seguin, said he never considered not putting it on the menu when he was getting ready to open his restaurant late last year.

“It felt like an obligation when we opened our restaurant,” he said. “Everybody has it, and you don’t want it to be that one thing that you don’t have on your menu that leaves a customer to walk away disappointed.”

Servantes’ wife, Belinda, makes about 300 servings a week of banana pudding, which, in keeping with the Tex-Mex barbecue offerings at Burnt Bean, is creamy and comes with Mexican buñuelos.

Banana pudding has a distinct history in Southern cuisine going back to the late 1800s, when ships started bringing in bananas from tropical spots. The first recipe appeared in Good Housekeeping in 1888 and featured bananas, sugary sponge cake and whipped cream.

IStockphoto The qualities that made banana pudding a potluck favorite likely led to its association with barbecue.