For a long time, I casually searched for the Gros Michel. I knew it would be difficult to find in stores, though from what I’d read the variety still existed. The longer I searched and the more I paid attention, the more it became incredibly clear to me how many bananas this country has for sale. Bodegas, convenience stores, airport kiosks, chain grocery stores, corporate cafeterias, hotel breakfast buffets—everywhere I happened upon a yellow banana, it was always a Cavendish.
Finally, one day, I was pleasantly surprised to find an online Gros Michel retailer calledMiami Fruit. I ordered a small box of Gros Michel bananas and patiently waited for them to arrive at my door but realized I didn’t quite know how to qualitatively judge one banana against another. To truly understand how the elusive Gros Michel from years past compares to the Cavendish that litters produce stands today, I knew I had to speak with a bona fide fruit expert.
“What it is you should be looking for with this banana—the elements of food quality you should be making notes on—would be: sweetness, acidity, texture, and size of the fruit overall,” says David Karp, an assistant specialist in the Department of Botany & Plant Sciences at the University of California, Riverside. Karp, who has written for publications includingGourmet, worked as a provisioner for Dean & DeLuca and has studied fruit and its cultivationfor more than 20 years.
At first glance, the two bananas looked the same. Upon peeling the Gros Michel, however, I noticed it was much more fragrant than the Cavendish. Each banana seemed just as sweet as the other, and I couldn’t make out any pronounced acidity in either, but there was a clear difference in their texture. The Gros Michel was more firm, which gave it a creamier mouthfeel. After a few bites of each banana, taking sips of water between to reset my palate, I noticed that the Gros Michel’s flavor lingered significantly longer than the Cavendish’s.
After a raw taste test, it was time to make dessert. I started with my favorite banana dish, comparing two batches ofbananas Foster side by side. The difference in flavor was extremely subtle, and the two friends I roped into the taste test came to the conclusion the two dishes tasted slightly different but only if you were paying attention. A very obvious difference between the two desserts, however, was how well the banana held up once it was cooked. While the Cavendish became incredibly soft as it cooked in the caramelizing sauce, the Gros Michel’s firmer texture fared much better. The bananas Foster made with the Gros Michel did retain that slight candy flavor, but it was also chewier, creamier, and, I thought, a better iteration of the dish overall.
The next dessert on my list wasbanana pudding, another classic that predates the banana industry’s switch to the Cavendish. I made two batches—again, one with the Gros Michel and another with the Cavendish for comparison—in its classic layer style, alternating between a layer of vanilla wafer cookies, a layer of sliced bananas, and a layer of vanilla pudding. After they rested in the fridge for 24 hours, I opened the wide-mouth canning jars I’d assembled the pudding in and immediately noticed a difference in the way the two puddings smelled.
