Illustration: during my stay in Leipzig this summer, I spent one caffeine-dazed afternoon writing a full-length article on the subject. I think you might be interested. Be forewarned: it is supposed to be a kind of pretend-pretentious exposé about the product (oh, and Kelly - the American in the article is an Ohian friend of mine at St John's. She's great, and also a vegetarian!):
"My ultimate student recipe:
Step 1) Take peanut butter. Step 2) Eat. Repeat as necessary.
It is a fact well-known that different countries have different foods. Hailing from Sweden
(apparently the land of painted horses and self-assembly furniture), I am accustomed to
certain culinary peculiarities. Fermented fish (surströmming) is one. Pickled herring (sill) is
another. It seems Swedes want their fish to be more than just fishy. For, say, the
Mediterranean Italian, accustomed to fresh and (typically) only lightly sautéed catch, this may
seem an odd preference. I do not blame them.
I was once equally unfamiliar with, and perplexed by, peanut butter – this most
quintessential of American foodstuffs, to which this essay is dedicated. In the spirit of
Melville’s exhaustive writings on the subject of whales in Moby Dick (1851), I shall rise to
the challenge set forth by him in that book: “To produce a mighty book [or essay, I assume],
you must choose a mighty theme. No great and enduring volume can ever be written on
the flea, though many there be who have tried it”. He was here referring in part to the
mighty physical bulk of his object of study. In this sense my endeavour to produce even a
passable essay seems doomed – what is the modest peanut (incidentally a legume rather than
a nut, giving even its name less umph) compared to the vastness of the whale? I seek refuge in
what I take to be the second meaning of “mighty”; a cultural bulk rather than a physical one.
For peanuts – roasted, ground, and mixed into butter – surely stand out as the most
fundamental staple food of the American childhood. Is not peanut butter to the American,
then, what Madeleine cakes were to Proust? What could carry a mightier cultural significance,
at least from the point of view of the individual?
I cannot pretend to be an expert on the subject, as I have not grown up in the US (nor spent
any more than a hectic two weeks in the country when I was thirteen). The purpose of this
essay is therefore to show that peanuts, and in particular peanut butter, are interesting also for
the non-American. Many are the occasions when it has saved the lives of individuals (more on
that later), and many are the cuisines apart from the American one it has enriched.
But let us start with the American way of consuming the product. My first exposure to peanut butter, when I was around seven, came as a side effect of
a nostalgia trip. We were living in England at the time, and my father had bought a jar of
Skippy’s from the local Sainsbury’s. His purpose was to consume it the way he’d learnt to as
an exchange student in California of the early 70s. Generous servings of peanut butter, white
toast and, of course, jam. My brothers were enthralled. I was not as sure. I found the peanut
“butter” more akin to a paste that stuck to the palate of my mouth, rendering sophisticated
verbal communication impossible (this did not trouble my brothers, who were busy producing
delighted “mm”-sounds that do not need much phonetic elaboration). The jam (blackcurrant –
my grandmother’s), moreover, was runny and stained my fingers purple.
As you will have noticed, my first experience of peanut butter was in the iconic American
“peanut butter jelly”-format (only slightly perverted by the Swedish-style jam we used), and I
did not like it. In hindsight, I realize it was the taste of the peanut butter together with its
accessories that disagreed with me, rather than the peanut butter itself. So even though the
concept of “peanut butter jelly” sandwich holds a very special place in American popular
culture (as evidenced by the fact that this dish was my dad’s most nostalgic memory from his
time in the US), I’d like to begin my defence of peanut butter by emphasising that there are
alternative ways in which to consume this product.
It was not until I came to Oxford that I had this insight, when an American friend
enlightened me that peanut butter sandwiches need necessitate neither jam nor white toast. As
a child, my friend used to enjoy sandwiches with peanut butter on top of normal dairy butter.
A more recent innovation of hers is peanut butter with cheddar on whole meal toast. I can
attest that both combinations are delicious. Then there is the “Elvis Presley sandwich” (or just
“The Elvis”), apparently the favourite food of the eponymous and iconic American artist. It
includes peanut butter, banana and bacon. I have not tried this one, but I presume it’s a hot tip
for anyone wanting an alternative post-clubbing fry-up (yes, it is also usually fried. I know).
Finally, there’s my preferred way of consuming the substance – in the form of peanut butter
with bread rather than bread with peanut butter. It’s all about the ratios in my book.
We can thus begin to answer why peanut butter is interesting and worth eating also for non-
Americans.
Firstly, it is a tasty and versatile product. As stated above with the example of my friend, it
is not mandatory to consume peanut butter in the “peanut butter jelly” form. The product has,
in fact, enriched (literally and figuratively) the cuisines of many cultures. Have you ever
heard of, or better yet tasted, peanut sauce (also known as satay sauce)? This is used in many
Asian cuisines, notably the Indonesian (from where it has been imported to the Netherlands
during Indonesia’s period as a Dutch colony – nowadays French fries with peanut butter can
be enjoyed on the streets of Amsterdam). To be fair, peanut butter is not traditionally used in
most Asian recipes for satay sauce, which instead specify the use of ground roasted peanuts
(and I must add the disclaimer that peanut sauce has been around for longer than the
American version of peanut butter!). But in my mind ground roasted peanuts are pretty much
equivalent to what I would call peanut butter. And the end result is equally infused with the
excellence of peanuts in their processed form.
Secondly, peanut butter saves lives. One must, for example, recognize its worthiness as
student food. In my first Michaelmas at Oxford, I would have been reduced to bones were it
not for this high-energy substance. It’s not that I don’t like to cook/eat normal food. I do. It’s
just that Oxford sometimes comes in between. What better way to ingest calories, then, than
to do it with minimal preparation and maximum convenience? Even more importantly, the
simplest meals based on peanut butter have an amazingly low “dishes to satisfaction”-ratio
(yes I just made this ratio up, but when you think about it it’s a pretty useful way to score the
student-friendliness of a dish). If you do like to complicate life for yourself, you can always
make your own peanut butter – all you need are roasted peanuts, salt and a food processor (or
a plastic bag and a hammer, depending on how hardcore you are). I think you can figure out
how to proceed from there.
My own anecdotal experience of the nutritional value of peanut butter is empirically
founded in international development work. In 2006, French paediatrician André Briend
developed a product called Plumpy’nut, aimed at treating sufferers of acute malnutrition. This
is a 92-gram plastic package filled with peanut paste that has been mixed with a number of
other substances (e.g. milk powder and sugar) to further boost the nutritional content. For the
most severe types of malnutrition, two sachets per 5 kg of body mass per day are administered
over a period of 6-10 weeks. The product requires no preparation before consumption, is
relatively cheap to produce (much of the world’s peanuts grow in developing countries where
the incidence of malnutrition is greatest), and has been shown to be very effective at what it is
designed to do – making sufferers of acute starvation gain weight. There has, however, been
controversy surrounding the producing company’s, Nutriset’s, unwillingness to let go of its
patent and thus lower the cost of the product further. This does not diminish the role of
peanuts as the main ingredient in an effective (and apparently also quite tasty) treatment
against malnutrition.
Still, in our corner of the world, where excess rather than lack of calories is more common,
the wonders peanuts work against malnutrition may seem a disadvantage to consumers wary
of putting on pounds. I’d say – don’t worry. Firstly, it seems that consuming peanuts (high in
polyunsaturated fat, protein and fibre) makes people fuller and thus prone to consume fewer
calories overall. Secondly, there is evidence to suggest that incorporating peanuts in one's diet can give protection against heart disease and type II diabetes. Of course, consuming anything in excess can be harmful, and peanut butter is calorie-dense (particularly the sweetened kind). In moderation, however, it can be very healthy indeed.
Finally, peanuts were first recognized as edible by the Incas, who also gave us chocolate.
The raw material of the latter – cocoa – bears the telling genus name Theobroma, “food of the
gods”. Clearly these people knew what quality cuisine was. And so should you, after having
read this Melville-esque rant on the glories of peanut butter, in my mind the ultimate student
food. The succinct answer to why more people should eat it is, simply, because it is tasty,
nutritious and convenient. I hold no shares in peanut butter-producing companies. This
product is just objectively amazing.
(Apologies to those with peanut allergies. There’s still chocolate?)"
This obsession made me want to try making peanut butter of my own. When my Ohian friend came to visit me, I took the opportunity of putting my food processor to use:
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This is the peanut butter.
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| This is the sunflower seed butter we attempted to make. Clearly inferior. |
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| This is the peanut butter (to the left), and the sunflower seed butter mixed with peanut butter (to the right). The latter was actually really tasty, with the sunflower seeds giving the peanut butter an interesting depth of flavour that isn't normally there (perhaps a hint of bitterness?). Maybe there is a market niche to exploit here? ;) |
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