National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day!

National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day

Mmmmmm!!! Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches! The staple of both young children and college students alike. I think I lived on PB&J all through high school. Quick. Easy. Mobile. Who wouldn't love them. I pity the peanut allergy folks of the world. Some folks have been known to grill them. Some folks have probably even deep fried them! Hey, if you can do it to a Twinkie, then why not a PB&J! I like a layer a saltine crackers in the middle. Four perfect squares. Did you know though, that the components of peanut butter and jelly have been around far longer than the heavenly combination? The peanut butter and jelly sandwich as we know it is only about 60-70 years old. In fact, there may be folks living RIGHT NOW who remember life without PB&J sandwiches! Where did it all begin...soldiers. Many tasty treats have been brought home by soldiers. I would personally like to take a moment to thank our Navy sailors for bringing back S.O.S. (ask one and they can tell you what those letters mean). The dish is chipped beef on toast and that was another staple of mine during adolescence. Anyway, yes, the soldiers of WWII brought back the PB&J with them and I can't thank them enough! 

Bread goes back crazy far into history. That was probably the first food. Bread has gone through many changes before ending up in the Wonder Bread bag in the grocery aisle, but the biggest change is...being sliced! I'm not sure what was better than sliced bread before sliced bread! Maybe the wheel. In the early 1900's, some cat (slang for "dude") by the name of Otto Frederick Rohwedder of Davenport, Iowa got a great idea of selling pre-sliced bread. He developed a prototype in 1912 and tried to sell to local bakers. They had no interested in pre-slicing bread. The biggest problem was that the bread got stale and there really wasn't much demand for sliced bread. I guess it didn't really matter anyway because the plans and prototype were lost in a fire in 1917. Rohwedder didn't give up though. He reworked the plans and built another prototype and in 1927 he began to see some success. I guess it took a little time for folks to warm up to the idea and the wax paper sure did help with the staleness issue.

Jams and jellies have also been around for quite a long time. They are a great way of preserving crops, but Mr. Welch (have you heard of him?) was the frontrunner in commercialized jelly. In the food world, it's not who "invented" a product, but who "commercialized" it. Check out Mr. Birdseye during Frozen Food Week. Anyway, Mr. Welch was making grape juice to use for communions for soldiers, but it didn't really catch on (why on earth would anyone want a wine substitute?) so he created what was called "Grapelade" that was grape jam that was handed out with the WWI rations in 1918. The soldiers loved it! When the war was over and the soldiers went back home, they demanded their Grapelade and they got it! Commercial jams came out in retail stores in 1923.

Peanut butter is just another component with an illustrious history. Peanut butter can be traced back to 1000BC with the Incas, but the peanut butter as we know it made it's debut at the World's Fair in 1893. Back then, peanut butter was food for rich people so not too many folks ate it. 

So now you know the history of the standard ingredients of peanut butter and jelly. What about the combo? Well, the first peanut butter and jelly sandwich was mentioned in the Boston Cooking-School Magazine of Culinary Science and Domestic Economics written by Julia Davis Chandler. Peanut butter was till considered "high end" food so, once again, it took a while to catch on. The perfect storm was brewing though. The soldiers came back from WWII with their Grapelade demands. Sliced bread was really catching on and becoming popular. Peanut butter became more widespread especially during the Great Depression. Peanut butter was a great source of protein when meat was scarce and very expensive. 

The sandwich became popular with soldiers and began to develop a following. It was a quick meal for children and inexpensive for college students. The peanut butter and jelly sandwich has been around for about a century, but has enjoyed immense popularity and a cult following in just the past 60-70 years. So next time you sit down to a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, just remember...it's history in the making!