The man who invented peanut butter

Bless him, the man who invented peanut butter. No-one knows his (or her) name simply because although the making of peanut butter can be traced back to almost 1000 BC there is no mention of the name of who made it first.

Claims to the modern recipe are easier to follow: New Yorker Rose Davis made peanut butter in 1840, Canadian Marcellus Edson gained a patent for it in 1884, George A. Bayle made peanut butter in 1890, John Harvey Kellogg – he of the famous Kelloggs cereals – received a patent for suchlike product in 1897, and Ambrose Straub from St Louis, Missouri patented a peanut butter making machine in the 1903, the same year George Washington Carver introduced his peanut butter recipe. The next year, C H Sumner introduced peanut butter commercially at the Universal Exposition in St Louis. But it would be Joseph L. Rosenfield who would take it big time from 1922 onward.

Rosenfield licensed his churning process for smooth peanut butter to the Peter Pan brand in 1928 but in 1932 introduced his own Skippy brand.

Today, peanut butter is a billion dollar industry. Thanks to that guy or girl whose name we don’t know.
Beyond crunchy and smooth peanut butter

Beyond the world of crunchy or smooth peanut butter there is white or dark chocolate peanut butter (both real yummy), cinnamon and raisin peanut butter, even spicy peanut butter, just some of the flavors produced by Lee Zalben’s Peanut Butter & Co.

And it doesn’t stop there. (Zalben also suggests a marshmallow fluff spread on top of the peanut butter.) Think about combination sandwiches such as peanut butter and banana, peanut butter and mayonnaise, peanut butter and dill, or peanut butter and onion. Who can top that?!

“Man cannot live by bread alone; he must have peanut butter.”  – James A. Garfield.
Weird peanut butter combination sandwiches
Beyond jelly, reinventing the peanut butter sandwhich