For most people, the most popular sandwich of childhood is the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It is so iconic that when we want to express that something is a natural pairing, we often say the two things go together like peanut butter and jelly. As ubiquitous as this sandwich is, its origins are not as old as you may think.
The idea of grinding peanuts can be traced back to the Inca. In the 1500’s Garsilaso de la Vega, a Spanish soldier in South America, reported that roasted and ground peanuts made a “very fine marzipan” when mixed with honey. There are many people who can lay claim to inventing peanut butter, so it is difficult to attribute it to a single person or company. It made its first World Fair debut in Chicago in 1893, and then appeared again in St Louis in 1904.
In 1896, the Washington Post wrote about the popular new dish. They reported that it was the fad to roast peanuts yourself and then grind them in a coffee mill, mix them with old sherry or port, and serve them on bread as a sandwich. Five years later, the Boston Cooking School Magazine published the first recipe for an actual peanut butter and jelly sandwich by Julia Davis Chandler. It called for three slices of thin bread with one layer of peanut paste and one layer of crab apple or currant jelly. Neither the alcoholic sandwich of the Washington Post nor Chandler’s peanut butter and jelly gained much popularity.
The invention of pre-sliced bread in the early 1900s, as well as improvements in peanut butter production, led to peanut butter sandwiches becoming a Depression-era staple. The sandwiches were nutritious, filling, and cheap, but they did not yet include jelly.
In 1917, Paul Welch received a patent for Grapelade, a jelly made from pureed Concord grapes. It was popular among soldiers in World War I, but it wasn’t until World War II that peanut butter and jelly sandwiches took off. During that war, both peanut butter and Grapelade were included in ration kits. Soldiers began spreading them on bread to make sandwiches and continued to do so once they came home.
Today, you can find peanut butter and jelly as a flavor combination in other foods, a scent in a candle, and even the subject of a once-popular song. This cheap yet delicious sandwich continues to sustain budget-conscious and time-strapped families and individuals through the generations.
Crystal Kelly is a feature writer for Bizarre Bytes with those unusual facts that you only need to know for Trivial Pursuit, Jeopardy, or to stump your in-laws.
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I remember Grapelade as a child of the 60’s. The only Peanut Butter I eat now is Organic, free from partially hydrogenated oils and high fructose corn syrup. Same with the Jelly or Strawberry Jam. Organic. No Pesticides or roundup spray to consume. This “New” PB& J is not only delicious, it is very good for the body. All on DAVE’S Organic Bread. You know were fed bad stuff for years, leading to a myriad of health issues. (clogged arteries, cancer, diabetes, ect) I guess yall are tiring of my realism….