Elvis Toast: Peanut Butter, Banana, and Bacon on Toast, Taken Seriously

Toast history · 7 min read

One pound of bacon, one jar of peanut butter, and one jar of jelly, inside a single hollowed loaf. Those numbers open most tellings of the Elvis sandwich, and they belong to a different sandwich from the one on a home cook's plate. Taken seriously, the Elvis is two objects sharing a name: a modest peanut butter and banana sandwich from a Memphis household, and a Denver restaurant loaf built for spectacle. This filing sorts the record first, labels the legend as legend, and only then builds the toast.

The facts box

Name: the Elvis, for Elvis Presley, the singer the sandwich is named after. Home form: peanut butter and sliced or mashed banana on white bread, grilled or pan fried, with bacon added in many versions. Creator: unknown. None of the sources in the record names the person who first made it. Denver form: the Fool's Gold Loaf, from the Colorado Mine Company in Denver, a warmed hollowed loaf filled with peanut butter, jelly, and a pound of bacon, with no banana. Toast form in this filing: an open toast adaptation of the documented toast first construction, labelled as an adaptation, not as a historical recipe.

The documented record: a pairing older than the name

The pairing came first, the fame later. A citation collection assembled by researcher Barry Popik, working from secondary citations, begins with a 1930 Chicago Daily Tribune headline, Peanut Butter and Banana Sandwiches, with no recipe on the page. A 1934 Washington Post item in the same collection says the sandwiches appeared on tea room menus in nearly every city, and a 1937 cookbook, Toll House Tried and True, mashes a small banana into peanut butter. Peanut butter and banana on bread was ordinary food before it was anybody's favourite.

The first printed link to Presley in that collection is dated 1957: a Walter Winchell column in the Lebanon Daily News quoting the line, Elvis' favorite sandwich is peanut butter and mashed banana. A year later, an Associated Press item reported that Private Presley planned to eat peanut butter and banana sandwiches during a two week leave. Read those two citations closely, because they are the foundation of the whole edifice. Neither mentions bacon. Neither mentions frying.

The household record is carried by the cooks at Graceland. Salon reports that Pauline Nicholson cooked for Presley from 1964 until he died, and says she may have invented the peanut butter and banana sandwich. Mary Jenkins, also given as Mary Langston, is named as another regular cook, credited with 14 years at Graceland in one account, and she wrote a book, Elvis, Memories Beyond Graceland Gates. An Associated Press obituary from July 2005 says Nicholson and Langston prepared peanut butter and fried banana sandwiches. It does not mention bacon. The two cooks' origin accounts are not reconciled in the sources, and this filing does not reconcile them. What the household record supports is narrower and stronger: peanut butter and banana, made by cooks, eaten often, sometimes fried. That is documented. The rest needs labels.

The bacon question

Bacon enters the record later, and less cleanly. In a 2007 Salon piece, a cookbook author is quoted saying Elvis loved bacon on just about everything, including the sandwich. That is a general claim about appetite, quoted decades later, not a menu or a recipe from the household. The earliest printed bacon version in the Popik collection is from a 2002 book, Honey: From Flower to Table, whose Fat Elvis swaps the banana for bacon and fries the sandwich in bacon grease. Note what that entry is: a variation named after him, rather than a record of what he ate, and one that removes the banana to make room for the bacon.

None of this makes the bacon version illegitimate. It makes it later. The documented method for the bacon version, summarized from a Mental Floss recipe account, fries the bacon first and then toasts the bread in the bacon grease instead of butter, until the peanut butter begins to ooze. As a cooking decision that is coherent: one fat, used twice, with the peanut butter as the binder. As a historical claim, bacon on the home sandwich rests on thinner paper than banana does. This filing therefore cooks with bacon and credits it honestly, as the later, popular filing of the sandwich, not as the original.

The Denver loaf, labelled as legend where it wobbles

Now the loaf, which is where the legend lives. The Fool's Gold Loaf was served at the Colorado Mine Company, a restaurant in Glendale, Colorado, run by Buck and Cindy Scott. Nick Andurlakis, then a teenage cook there, says the staff wanted something playful on a menu of steak and lobster, and that the mining theme name came from the restaurant decor. The composition is consistent across accounts: a warmed, hollowed loaf filled with a jar of creamy peanut butter, a jar of jelly, and a pound (450 g) of bacon. The documented preparation bakes a loaf of French white bread with margarine at 350°F (175°C) until brown, fries the bacon until crisp, hollows the loaf, and fills it. Andurlakis says he served it with blueberry preserves. Other accounts say grape jelly. Both are in the record, and the record does not settle it.

The famous night is dated February 1, 1976, by the Denver Public Library. In the detailed account in David Adler's The Life and Cuisine of Elvis Presley, Presley was at Graceland with Denver police captain Jerry Kennedy and Ron Pietrafeso, decided he wanted the loaf right then, and flew with companions on his Convair 880, the Lisa Marie, to Denver. They arrived at Stapleton International Airport at 1:40 in the morning, were met by the Scotts with 22 fresh loaves, spent two hours in the hangar eating with Perrier and champagne, and flew back without leaving the airport. Media coverage, including NBC's Today, has widely reported the story as legend, which is the correct filing status.

Legend, here, does not mean invented from nothing. It means the spine is attested and the garnish wobbles. Accounts disagree on the bread, French, sourdough, or Italian. They disagree on the price, with 37.95 dollars on a menu photo in one account and 49.95 dollars in others. They disagree on how many sandwiches reached the plane, with figures ranging from several to 30 around the commonly repeated 22. Even the credit is contested, with one account naming the Scotts as creators and Andurlakis saying he helped create it and delivered it himself. A serious filing keeps the flight, the hangar, and the loaf, and labels the rest as accounts in disagreement. What it must never do is move the loaf's ingredients onto the home sandwich and call the result history. The loaf has no banana. The home sandwich is not a loaf. The name covers both, and the name is doing heavy work.

Elvis toast: the single serving adaptation

The toast version below is an adaptation, stated as such. Its quantities come from a documented toast first recipe, published in 2023, which toasts the bread first rather than griddling a closed sandwich. That recipe, for two slices, uses 2 tablespoons of peanut butter, 1 banana sliced, and 2 slices of bacon, cooked. The adaptation opens the construction up: the same quantities, served as two open toasts, so the banana and bacon stay visible and the peanut butter is spread on hot toast, where it softens on contact.

1. Cook the bacon until crisp. Use 2 slices. Cook them fully, then drain them. For pork, Health Canada lists pieces and whole cuts at 71°C (160°F) on its safe internal cooking temperatures chart, and crisp is the documented endpoint in the Denver loaf preparation as well.
2. Toast 2 slices of white or wheat bread. Toast them firm. Soft toast under warm peanut butter and banana will fold, and an open toast has no top slice to rescue it.
3. Spread the peanut butter on the hot toast. Divide 2 tablespoons across the two slices. Spread while the toast is hot, so the peanut butter loosens and coats the crumb instead of tearing it.
4. Lay on the banana. Slice 1 banana and arrange the slices in a single layer over the peanut butter. Single layer matters: stacked banana slices slide.
5. Top with the bacon. Lay 1 slice of cooked bacon across each toast, breaking it to fit if needed. Butter or margarine on a top slice belongs to the closed version of the source recipe; the open toast leaves it out, and says so.
6. Serve at once, with a knife and fork if it suits. Open toast with warm peanut butter is committed food. It does not travel, and it does not wait.

What success looks like: toast that stays crisp at the edges, peanut butter glossy and softened but not liquid, banana in one even layer, and bacon that snaps rather than bends. If the peanut butter tears the toast, the toast was too soft or too cold. If the whole construction slides, the banana was stacked.

Food safety for the leftovers is short and official. FoodSafety.gov lists bacon among the foods to discard if held at temperatures of 40°F (4°C) or above for more than 2 hours, and cooked meat leftovers belong in the fridge promptly. Clemson University Cooperative Extension gives cooked meat 3 to 4 days in the refrigerator at 40°F (4°C) or below. Health Canada lists leftovers for reheating at 74°C (165°F). In practice, the toast itself is not a leftover food. Cook what will be eaten, refrigerate any extra cooked bacon within the 2 hour limit, and use it within 3 to 4 days.

The filing decision: closed, open, or loaf

The decision framework is the history, applied. Choose the closed sandwich for fidelity to the household form as it is most often described. Choose the open toast for scale and clarity, one serving, no pan of grease, layers visible. Choose the no bacon filing when the point is the documented record itself, because the earliest paper supports exactly that plate. Leave the loaf in Denver, in 1976, in the hangar, where the record puts it. It has earned its legend. It does not need to be shrunk into a snack and mislabelled as the original, and the home sandwich does not need a pound of anything to justify itself. Peanut butter, banana, hot toast, and, if the later filing is chosen, bacon. Sorted, labelled, and served. That is taking it seriously.

, Rex Bennett, Entertainment Writer