A Brief History
On January 24, 2023, Americans celebrate National Peanut Butter Day, a day when we can savor the flavor of our favorite bread spread that lends itself to making cookies, pies, candies, and other foodstuffs. Who do we have to thank for this wonderful food?
Digging Deeper
It may surprise you that George Washington Carver did not invent peanut butter, since he was such an influential proponent of the “Goober Pea” and is often erroneously given credit for this particular advance in eating pleasure.
The ancient Aztecs and Incas made a form of peanut butter about 1000 BC, although the modern form owes its existence to evolutionary steps by Marcus Edson, John Kellogg, Ambrose Straub, and Joseph Rosefield. While peanut butter made its mass market debut in 1904, it is Rosefield we can thank for peanut butter as we know it, when he invented the homogenization process that kept the oil from separating from the paste in 1922.
How will you celebrate National Peanut Butter Day?
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Lannan, Tim, and James Annabel. Peanut Butter: Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner. Hardie Grant, 2020.
Weinstein, Bruce, and Mark Scarbrough. The Ultimate Peanut Butter Book: Savory and Sweet, Breakfast to Dessert, Hundereds of Ways to Use America’s Favorite Spread. William Morrow Cookbooks, 2005.
The featured image in this article, a photograph by PiccoloNamek at English Wikipedia of “smooth” peanut butter in a jar, is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.
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