Claiming to be the first substantive history of peanut butter, this book covers a large slice of the spread's story from peanut growing and harvesting to processing and marketing of a quintessential American foodstuff.
As a measure of how seriously the author takes his subject, one-fifth of the pages in this 19-chapter volume are made up of chapter notes, a timeline, product recommendations, and an index.
Topics covered include the botany of Arachis hypogaea, the early development and promotion of peanut butter as well as modern-day manufacturing, marketing, nutrition, salmonella outbreaks, pop culture and the debate over creamy versus crunchy spreads.
There are also recipes for peanut butter cheesecake, pie, granola, garlic bread, satay, french toast, stew, and meatballs.
Origins of Peanut Butter
Although some schoolbooks attribute peanut butter’s origins to the 19th century scientist and inventor George Washington Carver, Krampner traces its beginnings to Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, who created a protein-rich peanut mash to nourish patients at his Battle Creek, Michigan, sanitarium.
Kellogg became better known as one of the nation’s biggest cereal producers while Carver was widely known as a peanut innovator, developing 300 different uses for the legume — from hand lotion to meat substitutes — during his tenure as professor at Alabama’s Tuskegee Institute.
Another early peanut butter pioneer was St. Louis physician Ambrose Straub, who prescribed it to his toothless patients and debuted it at the 1904 World's Fair. But it was St. Louis manufacturer George Bayle, who around the same time established peanut butter as a popular snack.
Krampner's history also recognizes a sticky peanut paste made by South American tribes nearly 3,000 years and a roasted peanut mash enjoyed by West African cultures for half a millennium as well as a peanut porridge consumed by Confederate soldiers in the Civil War.
