Peanut butter, that delicious thick spread of peanuts that is in our minds the favorite snack of young and old especially in America, has many suitors who are credited with its invention. George Washington Carver, Marcellus Gilmore Edson, John Harvey Kellogg, Joseph Lambert and Dr. Ambrose Straub are just some of them…
If you think about it, this controversy is not so strange... We are talking about the product that brought about a revolution in eating habits!
Originally considered a rich people's food, peanut butter became popular in its early days as a product served in expensive health care facilities... Peanuts and peanut butter then became an integral part of the military meals of World War I and World War II. War. It is believed that the U.S. military popularized the peanut butter and jam sandwich as a food during World War II, where it was then slang for “monkey butter”… Today, the U.S. consumes $800 million worth of peanut butter annually; it has National Peanut Butter Day, January 24th…
Of course, now the per capita consumption of peanut butter in Canada and the Netherlands - the largest per capita consumer in Europe - has surpassed that of the United States, according to Jon Krampner's 2013 book on peanut butter. And in March 2020, during during the COVID-19 pandemic, retail sales of peanut butter in the United States increased by 75% over the March 2019 level.
But back to the would-be inventors of…
As the US National Peanut Board confirms: "Contrary to popular belief, Mr George Washington Carver he didn't invent peanut butter." Carver took credit in popular folklore for many inventions that did not come out of his lab… Until Carver published his paper on peanuts, titled “How to Grow the Peanut and 105 Ways of Preparing it For Human Consumption ” in 1916, many methods of making peanut butter had already been developed or patented by various pharmacists, doctors and food scientists working in the US and Canada…
Specifically, the pharmacist Marcellus Gilmore Edson of Montreal patented this product the 1884, as food for people who could not chew. Edson is the one who promoted the idea of peanut paste as a tasty and nutritious food for people who could hardly chew solid food, a common condition at the time. In 1884, he received United States patent number 6942069 for the invention. His chilled product had "a consistency like that of butter, oil or ointment," according to his patent application. It included mixing sugar into the paste to stiffen its consistency. The patent describes a process of grinding roasted peanuts until the peanuts reach a "liquid or semi-liquid state."
THE John Harvey Kellogg, known for his line of ready-to-eat breakfast cereals and an advocate of using plant-based foods as a healthier dietary choice instead of meat, in turn took out a patent for a "Nutritional Product Manufacturing Process" in 1898 where he used peanuts, although he boiled them instead of roasting them. Kellogg's “Western Health Reform Institute” served peanut butter to patients because they needed a food that was high in protein and could be eaten without chewing.
The first peanut butter machines were developed by Joseph Lambert, who had worked at John Harvey Kellogg's Battle Creek Sanatorium, and Dr. Ambrose Straub who obtained a patent for a peanut butter making machine the 1903, while another businessman from St. Louis named George Bale produced and sold peanut butter as a snack in 1894, a hundred years after Edson that is…
Peanut butter was first introduced at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904.
From then on, peanut butter went into mass production…
Later, in 1922, the chemist Joseph Rosefield invented a process for making smooth peanut butter that prevented the oil from separating. In 1932, he began producing his own peanut butter under the name Skippy. Under the Skippy brand, Rosefield developed a new method of churning creamy peanut butter, giving it a smoother consistency, creating the first "chunky" style peanut butter. In 1955, the Procter & Gamble released a peanut butter called Jif that was sweeter than other brands due to the use of "sugar and molasses" in its recipe.
In South Africa, one of the countries where peanut butter is produced and consumed, the first peanut butter was produced in 1926 by Alderton Limited at Mokopane (then called Potgietersrus), probably under the name Black Cat. The product proved so popular that the Tiger Brands (then Tiger Oats Company ) took over the manufacture of Black Cat, which is still produced under the same brand name. In Afrikaans, "grondboontjiebotter" (peanut butter) is also colloquially called "katjiebotter" (butter kitten), it is not clear whether the "Black Cat" was the basis for this name...
So peanuts and peanut butter come from Canada and the US?
Let's start things from the beginning...
The peanut probably comes from Peru or Brazil in South America. No fossil record proves this, but people in South America were making peanut-shaped vessels or decorating vases with peanuts as early as 3,500 years ago.
As early as 1500 BC, the Incas of Peru used peanuts in sacrifices and buried them with their mummies to aid in spiritual life. Tribes in central Brazil also ground peanuts with corn to make a drink.
European explorers first discovered peanuts in Brazil, took them back to Spain, and from there, traders and explorers spread them to Asia and Africa. Africans were the first people to introduce peanuts to North America beginning in the 1700s, and records show that until the early 1800s peanuts were not grown as a cash crop in the US.
Now, when it comes to peanut butter, there is evidence that the ancient Incas of South America were the first to grind peanuts to make a paste that would later conquer the world.
Also, from the Incas until 1884 and the pharmacist Marcellus Gilmore Edson, the people of Surinam mediated…
A related dish called pinda-käse (peanut cheese) existed in Suriname in 1783. But it was more solid than modern peanut butter and could be cut and served in slices like cheese. Pinda bravoe, a peanut-based soup-like dish, also existed in Suriname at the time. Modern peanut butter is still referred to as “pindakaas” (peanut cheese) in Dutch for this reason, as Suriname was a Dutch colony at the time.
And in GREECE;
In Greece today, peanut butter is one of the favorite snacks of young and old, while at the same time it is an ingredient used in many sweet and savory recipes.
The tastiest one on the Greek market and exported to many foreign countries is that of Halvadopoiia Papagiannis OLYMPOS. It comes from the super spread series in 3 flavors... peanut butter soft, crunchy and peanut butter with dark chocolate!
E.M.