PB&J – Wherein The Author Indulges In A Simple Pleasure

How long has it been since you have eaten a PB & J? Which everyone knows stands for peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Like everyone knows that Micky D is a nickname for McDonalds. But do you know anything about the history of this all-American lunchtime treat? Neither did I until I re-introduced myself to this iconic combination.

First off, I must confess that I took the PB&J for granted for a long time. Truth be told, I actually preferred my “& J” with Philly cream cheese instead of PB. However, that is another sandwich for another time. Would you believe that during most of my adult life, I have usually lacked at least one PB&J ingredient at any given time in my pantry? But recently I discovered that I had them all available and assembled them into a delightful and nostalgic treat that is a uniquely twentieth-century phenomenon.

It goes without saying (although I will say it anyway) that this sandwich requires three things – peanut butter, grape jelly, and ordinary white bread. Yes, some people mess with the ingredients, subbing some other nut butter for the PB or some other kind of fruit preserves for the J. But being who we are here, we shall stick with the classics.

Although some ancient cultures ground nuts into a butter or paste, the modern version comes courtesy of John Kellogg – yes, the guy whose name is on so many cereal boxes. He was a Seventh Day Adventist who followed that faith’s practice of avoiding meat, and saw nuts as a great alternative. In 1895 he was awarded a patent for boiled nuts ground into a paste, which he fed to inpatients at his sanitorium. We are told that it was delicious.

Around 1900, an employee at Kellogg’s sanitorium invented a machine for grinding peanuts and there we were, all ready for meat scarcities during WWI when this newfangled peanut butter became available. A major convenience improvement came via the 1921 application of partial hydrogenization. This is the process that turns vegetable oil into Crisco, and which keeps the oil in peanut butter in a solid state, rather than separating out and requiring regular stirring. This was what made peanut butter something that could be sold in a shelf-stable jar. To this day, Americans eat more peanut butter than the inhabitants of any other land.

To make a proper sandwich of almost anything, you will need bread. Yes, there all kinds of artisanal, whole grain and specialty breads out there. We all know, though, that a real, proper mid-century American sandwich requires sliced white bread. We can thank Otto Frederick Rohwedder of Davenport, Iowa for inventing the modern bread-slicing machine, which got put into commercial bakeries in the late 1920’s. National brands like Holsum (which I grew up eating) and Wonder Bread (which Kaptain Kangaroo kept trying to get my mother to buy) soon took over. We usually prefer other kinds of bread, but sometimes nothing will do like a good, old-fashioned nutrient-free slice of factory-baked bread. Mmmmmm, are you hungry yet?

The final ingredient for the PB&J – grape jelly – did not arrive on the scene until WWII. Grape jelly required grapes, and that quintessentially American variety called the Concord Grape was first grown in the area of Concord, Massachusetts in 1854. Farmer Ephraim Wales Bull bred those first Concord grapes to thrive in New England’s harsh climate, and the result was, fortunately for all of us, quite tasty. Fifteen years later, a New Jersey dentist named Thomas Welch worked out the process for squeezing juice from Concord grapes, and then sealing bottles with wax before boiling them – making the juice shelf-stable for retail sales. By 1897, Dr. Welch was processing 300 tons of grapes annually.

It was during WWI that Welch developed a grape jam, which it called Grapelade (like grape marmalade, I suppose). The U.S. Government bought the entire first batch for use in soldiers’ ration kits, because doughboys needed to eat some fruit. This new kind of grape jam was sold at retail starting in the very early 1920’s, and a jelly variety came along soon after.

Hard as it may be to imagine, It seems that the three ingredients did not come together for another two decades – until they did so in the ration kits of G.I.s in WWII. And that, gentle reader, is when the PB&J was officially born. General George Patton famously said that “War is hell”, but it did bring us Jeeps, Spam and the PB&J sandwich.

It was this last ingredient – grape jelly – that has most often been missing from the JP pantry. It seems that we aren’t big consumers of fruit spreads, mainly because we don’t often eat the stuff to put fruit spreads on. And when we do get some, my tastes run towards raspberry preserves. But a Christmas gift from family resulted in a very nice jar of grape jelly. Which, I will confess, was opened a few times before the idea of a PB&J crossed my mind.

Marianne also likes to keep a regular supply of peanut butter, but we have gone old-school with some natural PB sold through Costco. Unlike the big brands, this Kirkland PB is nothing but nuts and a touch of salt. So we are back to stirring our peanut butter before spreading, because this stuff is not hydrogenated like the kind purchased by our own choosy mothers those many years ago.

And finally, I don’t recall the occasion, but a loaf of sliced white bread happened to be in the house too, just in time for the idea of this classic sandwich came into my head on a recent day when I was looking for a bite of lunch at home. And I must say, there are few things as satisfying as the soft, sweet, gooey goodness of a PB&J, which is now just a bit over 80 years old. The concept, that is – not the actual sandwich I made, which was quite fresh.

Whether you go the Jif-Welch’s-Wonder Bread route or upgrade your ingredients just a half notch as I did, peanut butter and jelly on white bread is a great way to satisfy your system while you feed your inner 9-year-old self. Pardon me while I go make another one.

A brief history of peanut butter, though not as brief as the one above, can be found at : https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/brief-history-peanut-butter-180976525/

50 thoughts on “PB&J – Wherein The Author Indulges In A Simple Pleasure”

  2. They’re good cold.

    Meanwhile, when I worked for Ball, one of my favorite places to visit was the test kitchen they developed recipes for the Ball Blue Book in. I can confirm the cream cheese and jelly route as a win. The best involved jalapeño jelly on a cracker.

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  3. I have eaten peanut butter and jelly sandwiches all my remembered life (a true comfort food). As a kid, I often consumed a couple a day. I did not realize grape jelly was essential but that is what I used. You will be horrified to know that as I grew older, I expanded my use of peanut butter (which is always in our pantry) to match it with bananas, tomatoes, eggs, honey, etc. The variants are endless for me. I ordered a peanut butter burger with all the trimmings at a restaurant once just to show off but found I loved it.

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    • You seem to have been able to make peanut butter serve as a culinary Swiss army knife, and for that I salute you. I have occasionally seen a burger with peanut butter, but have never been able to make the leap. I have paired it with bananas and with honey (never together, but I don’t see why not) and have found that it makes a great dip for goldfish crackers. My Mrs grew up eating peanut butter and butter sandwiches. I have made fun of her about it but have never actually tried one. Perhaps I should.

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      • I remember eating Goober Grape with a spoon over at their house when I was in middle school. It was actually pretty good. But then again, almost everything is good when you are a hungry 14 year old. 🙂

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    • Wow, I just spent a few minutes with their menu – lots of their choices look pretty good, others just intriguing. For kicks, I tried a “build your own” on their ordering site – how odd that it is impossible to get a sandwich with smooth peanut butter and grape jelly at a place called the Peanut Butter & Jelly Deli.

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  5. For whatever reason I have been doing the PB&J thing on toast. Yes, I know, that’s wrong and all, but it’s much easier to hold. And I also keep it open face. And I will deviate by using strawberry, cherry, or blueberry jelly.

    Yet, there is one important question…is your peanut butter smooth or chunky? I’m a smooth guy.

    Did you know Mr. Rohwedder’s invention was first used commercially by the Chillicothe Baking Company in Chillicothe, Missouri? Every town needs their claim to fame, and that is the only one for Chillicothe.

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    • I actually did see the Chillicothe connection, and thought of you.

      That smooth or chunky question has been a point of contention at our house. I prefer chunky, but Marianne likes her PB smooth. Her opinion is stronger than mine, so I am good with it.

      I like PB on toast, but hold the jelly. There is something about the warm, melty peanut butter on fresh toast that is really good. And this is the application that really, really screams for chunky peanut butter, at least for me.

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  6. “The concept, that is – not the actual sandwich” — haha, it’s like you knew some pedants (attorneys and software developers, to be redundant) would be thinking this.

    What you described is more or less what I used to think of as PB&J (though I always preferred strawberry jelly/jam/preserves to grape even as a (chronologically younger) kid). It seems weird to me, but I have had a harder time finding good peanut butter (nuts and salt) in my stores since we moved out of Colorado — here, there is a proliferation of “Peanut Butter Spread” or some similar terminology.

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    • Haha, where would we be without pedants! You can tell that sometimes I find it easier to have some fun with an awkwardly written sentence than to go back and actually fix it.

      There are a couple of stores in my area (Indianapolis) that will freshly grind peanut butter from roasted peanuts and sell it in tubs. And Costco’s Kirkland brand offers a 2-pack of this basic variety. Every time I open the jar I think of the old people of my youth who would occasionally remark “Do ya remember when we had to stir up the peanut butter because the oil would always float to the top?” I make the stirring a little easier by storing the jars upside down. But yes, I can imagine that the selection in “regular” grocery stores is pretty slim, because there never seems to be more than two brands of anything these days.

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      • I store mine the same way. A couple of the Kroger stores in Colorado Springs had grinding machines like this. I do prefer chunky peanut butter, so I never did use this. But with CO’s being a land of hippy, tree-hugging, Subaru-driving, road-raging-cyclists… there were plenty of places to get food with a short ingredients list.

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  9. A national culinary treasure, to be sure. we have two jars of PB, one chunky for Mrs. Herb and creamy for me. I love the many variants possible as well but the sandwich you describe is awesome.

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  10. Thanks for the nostalgic explanation of what and why!

    I have peanut butter (the crunchy kind that you have to stir the oil into) on one piece of whole grain toast, topped with an egg – every morning. I started adding some grape jelly to the mix when I made some last fall.

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  11. This was a fun post JP, not to mention informative. I also like a PB&J sandwich, although I confess that I now only buy whole-grain bread, sometimes sourdough as a treat. I buy the Jif Natural Crunchy which you have to stir a bit, but speaking of stirring … I also put a tablespoon of peanut butter in my morning oatmeal. Try it sometime!

    When I first began my walking regimen in 2011, in the Summertime I had a daily treat when I got home, a PB&J and large glass of chocolate milk – what is better than peanut butter and chocolate right? I mentioned that in a blog post once and wrote that I put butter on the bread, then peanut butter, then jam. A fellow blogger was aghast and commented “how could you do that – you ruin the taste completely?” I said “I grew up eating all sandwiches with butter, PB&J or not. I still put butter on my bread to make a PB&J. 🙂 P.S. – I did stray for a few years as a youngster when Marshmallow Fluff came out, so marshmallow, not “J” accompanied my peanut butter, but that was on toast.

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    • Someone recently told me that butter on every kind of sandwich is a British thing, so it doesn’t surprise me that you picked that up in Canada.

      My oatmeal is completed with a little pour of maple syrup. I wonder how peanut butter and maple syrup go together?

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      • That’s interesting, but it makes sense then – it was a Canadian thing patterned after a British thing. I don’t ever recall having mayo on a sandwich until moving here and tried it on a BLT (with butter too of course). 🙂 No, a marriage of chocolate and peanut butter for anything works, but with maple syrup, it would not.

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  12. I’m the odd one out here. To answer the question you asked in your first sentence – first and last time I had a PB&J sandwich was approximately 60 years ago (I’m 66). Only my mom could mess up a PB&J, but somehow as I ate that I ended up regurgitating. To this day, smelling peanut butter triggers a gag reaction.

    I also have psychosomatic reaction to Braunschweiger (when I was maybe 6 or 7, my dad forced me to eat a whole sandwich of this, upon which I hurled it right back up on the kitchen table) and watermellon (a trip to watch a rodeo in the hot sun at the Illinois State Fair at age 12 ended up with me spending the afternoon in the infirmary – probably due to bacteria on a watermellon slice from a less than sanitary food vendor).

    I suppose I could get hypnotized to get over the watermellon issue, but that kind of scares me. I never denied my kids any, but would have to leave the room whenever they had it. Yes I admit I am a very strange person.

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    • You sound like my wife whenever either a hard-boiled egg or baloney out of the fridge (which she still, at well north of 60) calls “raw baloney.” I did that kind of thing to myself with bourbon in college, but with some effort, I got over it. 😛

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  13. It is a simple pleasure, but one that resided in my lunchbox most days when I was a kid. Or at least on all days other than when I was lucky enough to be allowed to buy lunch at school (what can I say…I’ve loved school cafeteria food for about 60 years).

    Re. the peanut butter, we were a Jif family. For some reason, this was something my mom was adamant about. I guess she was a choosy mother https://academic.oup.com/columbia-scholarship-online/book/23372/chapter-abstract/184367852?redirectedFrom=fulltext . But Beech-nut? While that wasn’t a peanut butter brand on the shelves by the time I was a kid, I did spend some time wandering around its former factory this past summer in Canajoharie, NY. It’s currently mostly a slab on the ground as the factory finally moved after 118 years to a new location (still in NY).

    Welch’s was until just a few years ago still based out of Concord, MA, just down the road from me. They have operations worldwide now, but their HQ is now in Waltham (next door to Concord). And the grapes – Concord grapes – that gave them their start still grow wild around here. Some years we pick a big pile of them and make our own Welch’s. Anyhow, Welch’s – preferably in Looney Tune or Flintstones glasses/jars – was the approved-of jelly in my house for PBJ. My mom would allow no shady store brands. Welch’s WAS grape jelly. Period.

    The bread, of course, was Wonder. Again, store brands were not to be trusted by my Mom as (she said) you never knew what “they” might be putting into those non-name brands. So it was the white bag with the red and blue circles for us.

    Dang, now I’m hungry.

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    • I didn’t realize that Welch’s was still locally headquartered in New England. That sounds like a good reason to buy some. My mother always bought their grape juice, but was a Smucker’s customer for jelly. But yes, I remember the Flintstones jars!

      It was Holsum Sof-Twist bread for us. There was a Holsum bakery in Fort Wayne and the fresh-baking bread always smelled wonderful.

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  14. At 70 I’ve never *not* eaten them. Of course my wife tells me I dress like a 10-year-old, too. Now baloney and ketchup on white bread, that’s my ethnic food.

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  15. That was interesting. I’ve never had a PB&Jelly sandwich, but I always thought it was made with strawberry jam? I like my PB straight, preferably Kraft (more sugar), occasionally Jiff, or with half a banana sliced on it. While I know that pure peanut, stir-the-oil brands are supposed to be more natural, there’s something about stirring in the oil that takes my appetite away. I did not know that PB had been around that long, or in war rations. I also didn’t know Macdonalds was Mickey D’s? (Not here in Canada?) My education is sorely lacking.

    I tried a new product recently if you are a fan of peanut butter cookies, but don’t want the mess of baking from scratch. Pillsbury has a new Reese’s Peanut Butter Cookie Dough product – which makes 24 cookies, or less if you just want a few, you can bake as many as you want. It’s not one of those Pillsbury slice and bake cookie rolls those are generally awful, but a package of individual round dough circles that you take out out of the fridge and flatten with a fork – 14 minutes in the oven and warm cookies! They have a really good peanuty taste, not bad for a convenience product. Made with Real Reese’s Peanut Butter. I fed them to my grasscutter and he was impressed. Perfect for grandchildren – if you have any yet?

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    • I must be a strange one, because strawberry is way down on my flavor hierarchy. But for fans of strawberry jam, the addition of peanut butter and white bread would work very nicely, I’m sure. And those cookies sound like they might be interesting to try!

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  16. If I were asked which fruit jelly belongs in a PB&J, I don’t think I would’ve guessed grape. I’ve had just as many strawberry-jelly PB&Js thanks to what showed up in my school lunches. Maybe my mother thought strawberry was the healthier choice? She also went with wheat bread for awhile. Anyway, good to know grape is the official jelly. As for the peanut butter, we’ve gone all the way to the other extreme like you (the stir-before-serving kind) but come all the way back to Jif. One of the few junk foods in our pantry these days. Finally, I completely agree about the bread. It must be the mass-produced spongy stuff you can squish down to a tiny ball, or it’s simply not the best-tasting PB&J. Side note: I can’t get enough of the dated adverts you include with your posts. No idea where you find them but I think it’s best kept a secret!

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    • Now you have me wondering – is there such a thing as strawberry jelly? As opposed to strawberry jam. I know there is grape jam, but I have thought that grape is the only flavor of actual jelly that is (or at least was) normally on store shelves. Yes, there was mint jelly that people served with lamb, but that would be an awful choice with peanut butter.

      There is an amazing number of old ads that have been scanned/photographed online. I just search for “vintage ad” with whatever topic I am interested in. I don’t know why, but those old ads have captivated me since I was a kid. I used to love looking through old magazines and the ads were my favorite parts.

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      • Strawberry jelly, absolutely. Picture those little plastic-encased servings you get at a chain restaurant to go with your toast. Grape, strawberry, sometimes blueberry. I may prefer jam in general, but jelly for sure on a PB&J.

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