PEANUT BUTTER. Peanuts (Arachis hypogaea), also widely called "groundnuts," originated between southern Bolivia and northern Argentina. In pre-Columbian times, they were found throughout Brazil, Peru, Mexico, and the Caribbean. Early in the sixteenth century, European explorers transported them to Africa and Asia. From the beginning, peanuts were ground into paste and used as a flavoring in soups, stews, and other dishes.

Through the slave trade, peanuts were introduced into the British North American colonies. Slaves grew peanuts in their gardens and introduced them into mainstream cookery. Hand-ground peanuts appeared as an ingredient in American recipes by the 1830s.

John Harvey Kellogg

Ground peanuts were a minor product until popularized by John Harvey Kellogg, the vegetarian director of the Seventh-Day Adventist Sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan. In 1894 he created a process to make "nut butters," which were intended as a substitute for cow's butter and cream. Peanuts were the least expensive "nuts" available, and the product made from grinding them was promptly called peanut butter. It was served to members of America's elite who visited the sanitarium, and vegetarians began selling it in small batches. Kellogg's new culinary treat spread throughout the United States and, subsequently, the world. Kellogg decided not to patent the process for making peanut butter, but he did create the Sanitas Nut Food Company to sell his nut butters.

Peanut butter quickly became a fad among health food manufacturers in America. Vegetarians adopted it almost immediately, and recipes for making it appeared in vegetarian cookbooks beginning in 1899. Vegetarians employed peanut butter for many purposes, but particularly for making mock meats or meat substitutes that purportedly imitated the appearance and taste of such diverse products as chicken, veal cutlets, tenderloin steak, oysters, and meat loaf.

Mainstream Peanut Butter

Peanut butter quickly spread into the culinary mainstream and was employed as an ingredient in salad, fudge, biscuits, muffins, cookies, and breads. A major early use of peanut butter was for making sandwiches, which were initially flavored with a variety of ingredients, such as mayonnaise, cayenne, paprika, nasturtiums, cheese, watercress, meat, Worcestershire sauce, and cream cheese. Recipes for peanut butter sandwiches proliferated throughout the early twentieth century. The first known reference to combining jelly with peanut butter was published in 1901. During the early 1900s, peanut butter was considered a delicacy and, as such, it was served at New York's finest tearooms.

Commerce and Industry

Initially, peanut butter was made by grinding a few nuts at a time in a mortar and pestle. As this was a slow and difficult process, it was unlikely that peanut butter would ever have become a major culinary product. It was at this point that technological innovation intervened, and converted a food fad into an industry. Commercial peanut butter made its debut in 1896. Before the development of special grinders, the peanuts were ground in adapted meat grinders. The peanut butter was manufactured in small quantities by individuals and sold from house to house; then small factories sprang up, and peanut butter became a familiar article on grocers' shelves. The first recorded peanut butter trademark was granted to the Atlantic Peanut Refinery in Philadelphia in December 1898. The recipe consisted only of ground peanuts with salt added. By 1899, an estimated two million pounds of peanut butter were manufactured in the United States. The largest producers were located in the South and the West. By 1929, there was hardly a city that did not have one or more peanut butter factories, and its consumption during the next five or six years equaled that of all preceding years combined.

Peanut butter sandwiches moved down the class structure as the price of peanut butter declined. After the invention of sliced bread in the 1920s, children could make their own sandwiches without using a sharp knife. The combination of these two factors helped make peanut butter sandwiches one of the top children's meals in America. Beginning in the 1920s, manufacturers lobbied school cafeterias to buy inexpensive peanut butter. Its flavor was liked by children, and minimum time and equipment were required to prepare it. However, peanut allergies among children have recently been on the rise, and peanuts and peanut products have been banned from some schools.

Today, three major peanut butter manufacturers dominate the market: Skippy, created by Joseph L. Rosefield of Alameda, California (first produced in 1932); Peter Pan peanut butter, manufactured by the E. K. Pond Company (Pond, a subsidiary of Swift & Co., began making peanut butter in 1926); and Procter & Gamble's Jif (first produced in 1958), whose plant in Lexington, Kentucky, is the largest peanut-butter-producing facility in the world.

Peanut Butter as an American Icon

Peanut butter was initially considered a health and vegetarian food, but it quickly became a major mainstream staple, a mass-produced commodity sold in almost every grocery store in America. It was employed on virtually every type of food from soups, salads, sauces, and main courses to desserts and snacks of every description. Few other products in American culinary history have achieved such influence in so many ways in such a short period of time, and peanut butter has remained a staple food in America ever since.

Peanut butter has been employed in a number of other commercial products—cakes, confections, cereals, and many snack foods—the most successful being in the manufacture of chocolate bars. In 1928 H. B. Reese Candy Company produced a chocolate-covered peanut butter cup, which subsequently became known as "Reese's Peanut Butter Cup." Two years later, Frank and Ethel Mars introduced the "Snickers Bar," a combination of peanut butter nougat, peanuts, and caramel encased in milk chocolate. Snickers quickly became America's most popular candy bar, a position it has held ever since. Chocolate and peanut butter are combined in some of America's best-selling chocolate bars, including Snickers and Reese's Peanut Butter Cup.

Peanut butter cookbooks have been regularly published since William Kaufman's "I Love Peanut Butter" Cookbook was published in 1975. The Adult Peanut Butter Lovers' Fan Club currently counts over sixty thousand members. Today, Americans consume annually about 857 million pounds of peanut butter, or 3.36 pounds per person. It can be found in 83 percent of American households. Peanut butter is also consumed in Saudi Arabia, Canada, Japan, Korea, and Western Europe.

See also Kellogg, John Harvey; Legumes; Nuts; Oil; Snacks.

Andrew F. Smith