With the arrival of her Kong, Reiko was introduced to peanut butter. It was her first experience, and she absolutely adores it. For me, peanut butter has always been a part of my life.
When I was a small kid in the 1950s, my stay-at-home Mom would make me a peanut butter sandwich to take to school in my little metal lunch box. Everyone thought I was weird because I eschewed jam or jelly and went with a simple slather of creamy PB on white bread, sliced in half, not diagonally. I alternated between this and a baloney-on-white sandwich with yellow mustard.
Reiko-chan’s embrace of peanut butter got me to thinking about this classic taste of Americana and its history. Now, I’m going to subject you to more than you want to know about peanut butter.
The Early Days
Pottery shards indicate that the home of peanuts is the Pantanal which is a huge wetlands area in Brazil, Paraguay and Bolivia. Ancient South American civilizations including the Incas and Aztecs ground roasted peanuts into a paste as far back as 3,500 years ago as a food source and as a remedy for sore gums. I’m not kidding about the gums.
As early as 1500 B.C., the Incans of Peru used peanuts as sacrificial offerings and entombed them with their mummies to aid in the spirit life. No, there will be no mummies with sore gummies comments.
When the Spanish began their exploration of the new world they found peanuts in Brazil although by then peanuts were grown as far north as Mexico where they were called Mexican jumping beans. That last part is not true.
After killing every native they could find and stealing their gold as per Spanish tradition, the explorers then took peanuts back to Spain, and from there, traders and explorers spread them to Asia and Africa. Africans introduced peanuts to North America beginning in the 1700s.
Peanut Butter – A Sort of Chronology
In 1884 a guy named Marcellus Gilmore Edson patented a method for milling roasted peanuts into a paste with a butter-like consistency to create a product that was described as “tastes like ointment.” Yum – peanut ointment.
About ten years later, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg patented a new and better process for making a paste from raw peanuts and marketed the product as a nutritious protein substitute for his patients with dental problems. The gums again. It was considered a pricey food and was served at expensive health resorts.
It wasn’t until 1901 that the first recipe for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (a finger sandwich with currant jelly) appeared in The Boston Cooking School magazine. Birth of the PB&J!
Some years later, author Florence A. Cowles published a recipe book called “1000 Sandwiches” in which she recommended sandwiches made from peanut butter combined with quince, peanut brittle, tomatoes, celery, hard-boiled eggs, maraschino cherries, green peppers, and salad dressing. Who doesn’t love a PB&J with Green Goddess on top?
Anyway, back to the chronology…
In 1903, Dr. Ambrose Strob patented a peanut butter-making machine and peanut butter was introduced to a wider audience at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair. That fair also showcased new inventions such as the X-ray machine and infant incubators, and popularized new foods like ice cream cones, cotton candy, hot dogs in buns, Dr Pepper, and puffed rice cereal. Auspicious companions.
Peanut butter started attracting a wider following around the World War 1 when Americans faced meat rationing. The government actively promoted peanut butter as a protein substitute on “meatless Mondays” and it didn’t hurt that peanut butter could be served on meat-free Fridays to Catholics and was pareve under Kosher law. Note that at this time the target demographic for peanut butter was wealthy and white.
As the US began to accept peanut butter, George Washington Carver (who incorrectly lives rent-free in a lot of people’s heads as the inventor of peanut butter) was instructing Black farmers to grow less cotton and more peanuts. Carver, the son of an enslaved woman, was a brilliant child with a penchant for reading who later headed the agricultural department at Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. His “Bulletin No. 31: How to Grow the Peanut and 105 Ways of Preparing it for Human Consumption” summarized the benefits of planting peanuts and best practices for growing the legume.
The Bulletin became better known for its 100+recipes collected from newspapers, Good Housekeeping magazine, and agricultural journals. Over his life, Carver dreamed up 300 different uses for the legume!
It was in 1916 that the Planters Company introduced the now iconic MR. PEANUT® character when schoolboy Antonio Gentile submitted his sketch to win a branding contest. A commercial artist later added a top hat, a monocle and a cane.
In 1921, Joseph Rosefield patented partial hydrogenation, a process that kept the oil from separating, making the product more stable and easier to spread and later licensed his invention to the company that launched Peter Pan peanut butter.
in 1928, Chicago’s E.K. Pond Packing Company had unashamedly slapped the Peter Pan name on its new line of hydrogenated peanut butter, apparently without making the slightest attempt at properly licensing it from its creator, the Scottish novelist and playwright J.M. Barrie. It was and remains one of the great intellectual property thefts of all time and it has continued for 90 years, unlike with Disney which paid big time for licensing rights to the Peter Pan name around 1953.
In 1932 Rosefield developed a new method of churning creamy peanut butter, giving it a smoother consistency and began producing his own peanut butter under the name Skippy and subsequently added bits and pieces of peanuts to create the “chunky” variety.
During World War II, peanut butter became a common food in military rations, the so called C-rats.
In 1955, Procter & Gamble launched a peanut butter named Jif, which was sweeter than other brands due to the use of sugar and molasses in its recipe.
After that, nothing much happened. Peanut butter had largely attained maturity as a food staple. Except, let’s not forget when a Malaysian company introduced the Jobbie brand of peanut butter which was met with hilarity in downtown Edinburgh.
Peanut Butter By The Numbers
Total consumption: China consumes the most peanut butter overall by total volume, consuming about 4 million metric tons annually.
The United States ranks third in total consumption, with 694,000 metric tons. Rookie numbers. Jif is the best-selling peanut butter in the United States, followed by Skippy and Peter Pan. Jif holds a dominant 32% market share, while Skippy has 19% and Peter Pan has 13%.
Interestingly, East Coast residents of the US tend to prefer creamy peanut butter, while West Coast residents prefer crunchy.
Per capita: Burkina Faso has the highest per capita consumption, with the average person eating about 6.4 kilograms per year because it is a staple food in many of its traditional dishes. Just think about how many bar bets you can win with that little nugget of trivia.
Several other African nations, like Chad and Niger, also have high per capita consumption due to peanut butter being a staple in soups, stews, and sauces.
The USA ranks 11th in per capita consumption, with an average of 2 kilograms per person per year. Peanuts are the 12th most valuable cash crop grown in the U.S., with a farm value of over $1 billion, according to The American Peanut Council and they should know.
Some Oddball Stuff
- January 24 is National Peanut Butter Day in the United States.
- Want to dazzle with your deep knowledge of peanut lore? OK, just memorize this data bite and regurgitate it (yuck) at any venue where peanut butter is being discussed. “Peanut butter is a viscoelastic food that exhibits both solid and fluid behaviors. Its characteristic soft, spreadable texture can be defined through rheology, a branch of physics that deals with the study of the flow and deformation of matter.” Rolls right off the tongue, unlike the subject matter.
- One of my childhood snacks that became famous was “ants on a log”, with a celery stick acting as the “log”. The groove in the celery stick is filled with peanut butter and raisins arranged in a row along the top are “ants.” Popularized by the Girl Scouts.
- To be legally called “peanut butter” in the U.S., a product must contain at least 90% peanuts, according to FDA standards.
- A simple test for the early detection of Alzheimer’s disease uses a ruler and peanut butter to test a person’s sense of smell.
- Under extremely high pressure, peanut butter can be turned into diamonds.
- Astronauts eat peanut butter with tortillas instead of bread to avoid the crumbs.
- The Guinness world record for eating the most peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in one minute is six.
- Peanut butter and jelly is a very America-centric food. During the 2022 season of the Great British Baking Show, one contestant proposed a berry and peanut butter cheesecake to judges Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith. To American viewers, that combination seemed like a no-brainer, but both British judges reacted in confusion and revulsion. Hollywood commented “peanut and fruit. You wouldn’t normally put them together.” Say what?
Summing up
So, there you have it. More than you ever wanted to know about peanut butter, Reiko-chan’s new favorite treat. Or favourite if you are one of those people.
Are you still awake? I doubt it. But if you are, chime in with comments on your brand of choice, PB&J memories, your lunch box, the attitude towards peanut butter in your country or just criticisms that this post is entirely too long.
Love to hear from ya