It’s as Swedish as banana pie.
Thought putting pineapples on pizza was controversial? Pizza-philes are going nuts over Swedish people’s predilection for topping their slices with bananas.
While this pie-in-the-sky trend has been around for years, pie-hards are only learning about it now, which has sparked heated debates over whether it’s a delicacy or an affront to pizza-kind.
Many were appalled by the Frankenslice, which is often seasoned with curry powder and sometimes adorned with ham and pineapple — another divisive accouterment.
“Yes, I tried AFRIKANA, pineapple and banana pizza in Sweden,” scoffed one detractor on X. “It was probably top 3 worst things I ever tried in my life.”
“People have no right to make this abomination,” declared another on a Reddit thread discussing the bananas concoction.
One even dubbed the banana pizza “a hot circle of garbage.”
However, others deemed this banana-freckled slice a Swede deal that’s not nearly as saccharine as it sounds.
“Turns out it’s really good,” declared one Redditor while defending the so-called merits of the incongruous-seeming slice. “The banana loses some of its sweetness and caramelizes and with the curry it works out great.”
“It’s simply amazing,” declared one Swede in the thread. “Banana in tacos is amazing, too. Don’t hate it before you try it.”
There’s no definitive date for when the dish was created.
However, Stockholm University food historian Richard Tellström traces the pie-brid back to the South Pacific culture craze that enraptured the West after World War II (read: Tiki bars).
“This [Polynesianism] creates the sort of postwar Polynesian food culture that I would link this banana pizza to,” the professor told Smithsonian Magazine.
He described how South Pacific flavors were introduced to Swedish cookbooks in the 1960s and 70s to inspire the country’s somewhat staid home cooks.
“Deep-fried bananas served [with] steak [or] veal [is] an early dish from the 1960s served at some restaurants,” Tellström said. “Bananas could be served along with ham, as a fancy dish for a Saturday night with the family watching TV.”
He added, “In the ’70s, a simple, everyday dish at home could be sausage filled with tomatoes, pineapple, mustard and ham.”
One of the best examples of this culinary cross-pollination is the Flying Jacob, a casserole made with chicken, chili sauce, bacon, bananas, and pizza that was dreamt up by Swedish air-freight worker Ove Jacobsson in 1976.
In fact, pizzas topped with bananas and other exotic ingredients are actually fairly ubiquitous throughout Sweden.
“We have a lot of pizza shops in Sweden, probably more than there are McDonald’s, and there are plenty of those,” Tellström explained “If you go to a Swedish pizza shop, you can probably choose between 75 and 100 different pizzas.”
He added, “You can always do your own mixture of toppings on it, as well, so you choose your favorites, and that usually doesn’t cost anything extra.”
Other varieties that seemingly go against the pizza orthodoxy include beef tenderloin and kebab meat, pepperoni, yogurt sauce and vegetables.
