50 Fun Facts About Peanut Butter

Peanut butter is a paste of ground peanuts. How have the peanuts usually been prepared first?

John Harvey Kellogg's 1898 version boiled the nuts instead, which is one reason his paste never caught on.

Botanically, a peanut is not a nut at all. What is it?

It grows in pods underground like a pea, which is why Linnaeus named the species hypogaea, Greek for 'under the earth'.

Which ancient civilisations are credited with the earliest form of peanut butter?

Sixteenth-century Aztecs reportedly used the paste as a remedy for aching gums.

Marcellus Gilmore Edson, granted the first peanut butter patent in 1884, was from which city?

His application described a product with 'a consistency like that of butter, lard, or ointment', which he stiffened with sugar.

Which cereal pioneer patented a peanut-based 'alimentary product' in 1898 for patients who could not chew?

Because it debuted at expensive health institutes, peanut butter began life as food for the wealthy.

Which famous Tuskegee scientist is often wrongly credited with inventing peanut butter?

By the time his 1916 bulletin '105 Ways of Preparing' the peanut appeared, the spread had already been patented several times over.

Who invented the 1922 process that stopped oil separating in peanut butter, later licensed to Peter Pan?

He licensed it to Peter Pan in 1928, then launched Skippy himself in 1932 and went on to invent chunky-style.

Which peanut butter brand, launched in 1932, is credited with the first 'chunky' style?

The brand name was borrowed, over its creator's objections, from Percy Crosby's 'Skippy' comic strip; the lawsuits ran into the 2000s.

Jif, launched in 1955, tasted sweeter than rivals because its recipe added sugar and what?

Jif became America's biggest peanut butter brand in 1981 and is now made by Smucker's at the world's largest peanut butter plant, in Lexington, Kentucky.

When the American spread reached Dutch shops in 1948 it could not legally use its usual name. Why?

The Dutch call it pindakaas, 'peanut cheese', a name inherited from a sliceable peanut block eaten in colonial Suriname.

Which two US states are the major peanut-producing states?

More than half of the American crop ends up as the spread.

What date is National Peanut Butter Day in the United States?

April 2 is the separate, unofficial National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day.

By roughly how much did US peanut butter sales rise in March 2020 over the previous March?

Its long shelf life and protein content made it a pantry staple, just as it had been in the Great Depression.

Which peanut-butter puffed corn snack holds a quarter of Israel's snack market and is tied to low peanut-allergy rates?

Osem launched it in 1964 and chose the name because it sounded like baby talk; the peanut butter is imported from Argentina.

A 100-gram serving of smooth peanut butter supplies roughly how many calories?

Around half of it is fat, mostly the monounsaturated oleic acid also found in olive oil.

The children's snack 'ants on a log' is a celery stick filled with peanut butter and topped with what?

The groove in the celery is the log, and the raisins lined up along the top are the ants.

The first published mention of PB&J, in 1901, suggested serving it how?

Julia Davis Chandler proposed it in the Boston Cooking School Magazine; it only went mass-market once its main ingredient was mass-produced.

Which company patented the sealed crustless PB&J in 1999 and sold frozen Uncrustables from 2000?

The profits helped it buy the Jif brand from Procter & Gamble, giving one company the largest peanut butter and largest jelly brands.

'Goober Grape', a single jar with stripes of peanut butter and grape jelly, went on sale in which year?

'Goober' is a Southern word for peanut that came into American English via the Kikongo language.

Elvis's 'Fool's Gold Loaf' was a hollowed loaf filled with peanut butter, jelly and what?

His better-known peanut butter and banana sandwich is now simply called 'the Elvis'.

A 'fluffernutter' pairs peanut butter with what other spread?

The name was dreamed up by an advertising agency in 1960; the sandwich itself dates to a World War I recipe.

The fluffernutter has been proposed as an official state food of which New England state?

Marshmallow creme was invented in Somerville and Melrose, both in the state, which explains the regional loyalty.

H. B. Reese created his peanut butter cups in 1928 after being let go by which chocolate company?

He lost his job managing Hershey's Round Barn in 1919 and used Hershey chocolate in his own candy from the start.

What was the official early name of Reese's peanut butter candy, reflecting its price?

Reese's six sons merged the company into Hershey in 1963, and by 1969 the cups were Hershey's top seller.

Reese's Pieces became hugely popular after appearing in which 1982 film?

Unlike the cups, the candy-shelled Pieces contain no chocolate at all.

Nutter Butter, the peanut-shaped cookie, was launched by Nabisco in which year?

When the Red Cross stopped handing them out at Georgia blood drives in 1995, donations reportedly fell by 20,000 pints.

The criss-cross fork pattern on peanut butter cookies first appeared in recipes in which decade?

Peanut butter itself only became a listed cookie ingredient in the early 1930s; the fork marks were popularised by Pillsbury.

Peter Pan peanut butter took its name in 1928 from a character created by which author?

Before that the same product had flopped under the names Dainty and Delicia; the switch made it a best seller.

Hormel-owned Skippy was the best-selling peanut butter in which country in the 2010s?

Hormel bought Skippy from Unilever in 2013 and pulled it from Canada in 2017; worldwide it trailed only Jif.

Which cartoonist fought for decades against the peanut butter maker that borrowed his comic strip's name in 1932?

Crosby's strip became a novel, a radio serial and an Oscar-winning 1931 film before the peanut butter appeared in 1932.

Jif's factory in Lexington, Kentucky, is notable for being what?

The brand started there in 1946 as 'Big Top' before P&G bought and renamed it in 1955.

How much did schoolboy Antonio Gentile's family get for his 1916 Mr. Peanut drawing?

Founder Amedeo Obici later paid Gentile's way through medical school; the monocle, top hat and cane were added by a commercial artist.

The peanut plant is native to which continent?

The oldest known pods, about 7,600 years old, were found in Peru; the Spanish met peanuts for sale in the market at Tenochtitlan.

Why did Carl Linnaeus give the peanut the species name 'hypogaea'?

After the yellow flower is pollinated it bends over and pushes its stalk into the soil, where the pod develops.

What British nickname for the peanut references an animal?

Americans borrowed 'goober' and 'pindar' from the Kikongo language of West-Central Africa.

What did the Tuskegee agriculturalist's famous 1916 peanut bulletin promise?

He pushed peanuts and sweet potatoes on Southern farmers whose soil had been exhausted by cotton; Time magazine dubbed him a 'Black Leonardo'.

The Tuskegee peanut champion's testimony before Congress in 1921 supported what measure?

That appearance made him one of the most famous African Americans of his day.

The USDA tests every truckload of raw peanuts for which naturally occurring toxin?

It comes from the mould Aspergillus flavus, which thrives when pods are drought-stressed or badly stored.

In the American South, a popular roadside snack is peanuts prepared how?

The same snack is common in India, China and West Africa.

Peanut oil extracted by a simple water-and-centrifuge method was studied by NASA for what?

Peanuts pack protein, fat and calories into a crop that can be grown compactly, which is what a life-support system needs.

Peanut allergy affected roughly what share of people in Europe and the US in the 2010s?

Rates rose about 3.5-fold over two decades; since 2017 guidelines have recommended giving peanut products to high-risk babies from about four months to prevent it.

In the 1985 Canadian cult film 'The Peanut Butter Solution', what does the magic peanut butter do?

The boy hero loses his hair from 'The Fright' after meeting ghosts, and the ghosts hand him the recipe in a dream.

South Africa's first peanut butter, made in 1926, was sold under which brand name?

Alderton Limited made it in Potgietersrus; Tiger Brands has produced the brand for decades.

During World War I, US government 'meatless Monday' campaigns promoted which food as a meat substitute?

By 1917 Americans were reaching for peanut products whenever meat was rationed.

Which country has Europe's highest per-capita peanut butter consumption?

Canada also out-eats the US per person; the Dutch habit dates to their colonial links with Suriname.

In 2022 the maker of Jif recalled peanut butter across the US and Canada over fears of which contaminant?

Smucker's put the cost of the recall at around $125 million.

Archibald Query invented the sweet half of the fluffernutter in 1917 in which city?

An earlier version, Snowflake Marshmallow Creme, was made in Melrose from 1913 and starred in a wartime 'Liberty Sandwich' with peanut butter.

Reese's peanut butter candy pulls in roughly how much annual revenue worldwide?

They became Hershey's number-one seller in 1969 and were the best-selling candy brand in the US by 2012.

What slang name did US servicemen give the peanut spread during World War II?

Unlike dairy butter, it is not solid at room temperature, but it is thick and spreadable.

A sliceable 'peanut cheese' called pinda-dokkunnu existed by 1783 in which country?

That Dutch colonial link is why peanut butter is still called pindakaas, peanut cheese, in Dutch.