Walk into a diner almost anywhere in America and there’s a good chance you’ll find it on the menu. Peanut butter, sliced bananas, plenty of butter and a hot frying pan. A lot of places don’t even bother with a long description anymore. They just call it “The Elvis.”
But that sandwich didn’t come out right the first time. Not even at Graceland.
The woman who made it for Elvis was Mary Jenkins, later known as Mary Jenkins Langston. She cooked for him at Graceland for 14 years, and the family kept her on as cook for another 12 years after that. That’s a long time in one kitchen. She knew exactly how the man liked his food.
Mary told this story in “The Burger and the King,” a 1996 BBC documentary directed by James Marsh. The whole film was built around her as Elvis’s personal cook, and she was happy to talk about her early days on the job.
Elvis wanted his peanut butter and banana sandwich. Mary made one, set it on a tray and sent it out. It came right back.
“The first time I went in, fixed the sandwich and put it on the tray and brought it back, that wasn’t right,” she remembered.
That’s a nervous moment for any new cook. Your famous boss asks for one simple thing and you miss.
Before we get to who helped her, here’s Mary herself at work, showing what went into the sandwich Elvis loved.
Mary Jenkins shows how she made Elvis’s favorite sandwich
So who came to the rescue? It was Elvis’s father, Vernon Presley.
Vernon was sitting right there when the plate came back. Mary said he got up to go with her. “His father was sitting there, and he said Mary I’m going with you and help you, and maybe both of us can get it right.”
Back in the kitchen, the two of them worked it out. And Vernon came up with the step that had been missing all along. Toast the bread first.
Mary walked through it: “So we toast the bread, then spread the peanut butter on and slice the bananas and put ’em on.” After that she fried them in the pan, turning them with a spatula.
This time the plate didn’t come back. Mary remembered Elvis’s answer word for word: “Now that’s what I want! That’s right!”
She didn’t go easy on the butter, either. Mary used two sticks for every three sandwiches. “You’d turn it and turn it and turn it until they soaked up all the butter. That’s when Elvis liked it,” she told The New York Times.
From then on, the version with Vernon’s fix was the one. Whenever the craving hit, Elvis let the kitchen know. “Whenever he get a taste for ’em, he’d call down and that’s what he wanted,” Mary said.
If you’d like to spend a little more time with the woman behind the sandwich, this clip is a good place to start, since it’s Mary on camera talking about her years as Elvis’s cook at Graceland.
Mary Jenkins, Elvis’s longtime cook at Graceland
It’s funny to think about now. A sandwich that ended up on menus all over the country started with a cook who got it wrong once and a dad who got up from the table to help her fix it.
Mary went on cooking at Graceland for years. And every time Elvis called down for one, it was made the way she and Vernon figured it out that day.