Layers of silken custard, sliced bananas, and some manner of vanilla-baked good come together to form a dessert greater than the sum of its parts. Banana pudding is a sweet treat loved by many, its legion of fans often possessing very strong opinions about what exactly makes the dish so great. However one chooses to construct banana pudding—served hot or cold, layered with Vanilla wafers, topped with whipped cream or meringue—the classic dessert is as American as apple pie.

Like our country, banana pudding was spurred by capitalism and is linked to the South—warranted or not. And though Americans lay claim to the confection, the fruit isn’t native to the land, and we weren’t the first to layer its ingredients in such a manner.

Bananas, like many of the people that now call this land home, arrived on our shores via ships. Before the Civil war, a few bunches made their way here and there, up and down the Atlantic coast from the West Indies. With advances made in boats and shipping, more and more of the fruit was shipped in from the Caribbean and Central America. American businessmen bet “that American consumers could be taught to develop a taste for the exotic fruit” and thus created a market for bananas to turn a profit, hosting “decades of aggressive ad campaigns” to drive demand. As the supply of bananas and their presence in the American food system increased, cooks came up with more and more ways to use them.

It’s simply a riff on a trifle, a traditionally English dessert with layers of custard, fruit, and Vanilla Wafers that is often topped with whipped cream. It is this link across the pond that also potentially helps explain the etymology of the concoction. As a stickler for words and their meanings, I was always confused by the fact that something called “banana pudding” typically used a vanilla pudding instead of one with the flavor of the fruit. However, I now realize the use of “pudding” is perhaps just another carryover from the British and their use of the word to refer to any dessert.