It is a well-known fact that the most perfect sandwich ever conceived by a human being
is the peanut butter and jelly sandwich but
was it always so perfect?
Well I'm going to find out as I make the very first recipe for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich from 1901.
So thank you to Wondrium for sponsoring this video as I investigate the origins of the PB & J
this time on Tasting History.
So I suspect that this video is going to get rather different reactions in different parts of the world
because while here in the U.S. making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich is practically a national pastime
in parts of the world they are almost unheard of.
In many countries peanut butter itself is hard to come by,
and there are those who believe that the peanut butter and jelly sandwich is an abomination and for those people
I weep but maybe I can lead them into the light
with this first recipe from 'The Boston Cooking School Magazine' in 1901.
"For variety, some day try making little sandwiches, or bread fingers,
of three very thin layers of bread and two of filling,
one of peanut paste, whatever brand you prefer, and currant or crabapple jelly for the other.
The combination is delicious, and, so far as I know, original."
So simple yet so brilliant.
And it being so simple it means that there's not a lot to actually make but I am going to show you how to make
the bread that was most commonly used for sandwiches at the turn of the century the Pullman loaf.
But I won't be making the jelly or the peanut butter from scratch because
both currants and crabapples are pretty hard to come by where I am living,
and for the peanut butter
during this time period you just run peanuts through the coffee grinder or a meat grinder
and I tried to run some peanuts through my hand crank coffee grinder and I'm pretty
sure that I destroyed the coffee grinder forever.
Luckily the Whole Foods near me lets you freshly grind peanut butter only using peanuts
as the period recipes call for. Its gritty texture evokes peanut butters of the past
back when they were still called goobers and I actually recently found out
why peanuts were once called goobers while I was watching a course from today's sponsor Wondrium.
The series is called 'Food A Cultural Culinary History'
and it's presented by none other than food historian and friend of the channel Ken Albala,
and it's actually the course that I back then listened to when I first started getting into food history.
All of the courses on Wondrium are taught by experts in their field,
and there is no one more expert in the field of culinary history than Ken Albala.
He leads you through the entire history of food all the way from hunting and gathering to
food as big business today and in one of the later episodes he talks about peanuts,
and how they originated in South America but then made their way to West Africa
where they were called ginguba. These then made their way to North America during the Atlantic slave trade,
and the ginguba just became guba or goober.
Every course on Wondrium is packed full of interesting tidbits like that
whether they be covering history or travel, culture, architecture, business, or literature
so if you want to start learning today then sign up for a free trial of Wondrim at wondrium.com/tastinghistory
or just visit the link in the description a free trial of Wondrium when you use that link.
Now with the peanut butter and jelly accounted for let's tackle that Pullman loaf.
I am going to use a recipe from 'Baker's Bread' by Paul Richards written in 1906,
and for that what you'll need is: one and two-thirds cup or 400 milliliters of water, 2 teaspoons of dried yeast,
6 tablespoons or 85 grams of lard or butter, 3 tablespoons or 35 grams of sugar,
5 cups or 600 grams of bread flour, and two and a quarter teaspoon of salt.
So first add the yeast and sugar to the water and give it a few minutes to bloom and then add in the flour, the salt,
and the lard or butter and start to work the ingredients together until they become a rough dough.
Then set it out onto a lightly floured surface and start kneading it until you have a smooth soft dough.
It's a rather sticky dough so you may need to add more flour but don't add any more than you need to.
I promise it'll start to firm up as you knead it. After about 15 minutes of hand kneading or five to seven minutes in a machine,
set the dough into a lightly greased bowl and cover with a wet towel.
Let it rise until it's nice and fluffy, about an hour and a half,
and while it rises you can pull out your Pullman loaf pan.
That is this, and this is really what makes a Pullman a Pullman.
Other names for the bread are pain de mi, pain Anglais, or just sandwich bread
but Pullman is the most common that was around at the time
and still today I think when you see this it's usually called a Pullman tin.
It's said that the bread gets its name from Pullman train cars where it was served.
Pullman train cars were super luxurious train cars at the end of the 19th and early 20th century,
and I'm sure that's true but I like to think that it's because the tin kind of looks like a train car.
Choo chooooo.
But really the Pullman loaf is special because when it's baked in here
with the lid on it has very little crust and so it's
pretty much perfectly square and has very little crust so it's perfect for tea sandwiches
which were little sandwiches that they would cut the crusts off of anyway.
So really this is like the original Uncrustables but you don't have to freeze them.
So butter the inside of your Pullman loaf pan. Mine is 13 inches long but they do make them smaller. If you do use a smaller size
you'll just have to reduce the amount of dough that ends up going in the loaf pan.
Once buttered knock the air out of your risen dough and turn it out onto the counter,
and stretch it into a large rectangle just slightly wider than your pan.
Then roll it up into a log and press the seam together.
Then tuck each end into itself, folding it over onto the seam, and then press the dough together.
tyhen set the dough seam side down into the pan tucking it nicely into the corners,
and then cover it with clear plastic stick wrap and let the dough rise again.
This time you want to let it rise until it comes up almost to the very top of the loaf pan.
It's going to depend on the temperature and everything but about an hour should get it there.
Then remove the plastic wrap and slide the lid of the pan over the dough then set it in the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit or 175 Celsius
for 20 minutes and then take it out, remove the lid and return it to the oven for another 10 to 20 minutes
just to let the top Brown ever so slightly. You just want this bread done and you can tell when it's done
by inserting a thermometer that registers 190 degrees.
As soon as it's done take it out of the oven and turn it out onto a wire rack to let it cool completely.
You cannot cut this bread when it is hot so just be patient,
make sure you're subscribed to Tasting History and listen to me tell you about the origins of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
So the story of PB & J is really the story of three ingredients: peanut butter, jelly, and sliced bread
and of those three the peanut butter definitely has the most interesting origins.
Peanuts were grown throughout the Incan Empire in South America and in the early 16th century
when a Spanish soldier and poet Garcilaso De la Vega encountered both the Incas and the peanuts which at the time were called 'inchic'
he was decidedly mixed on the legume saying "If eaten raw, it causes headaches,
but if roasted it is tasty and beneficial. With honey they make a very good marzipan from it."
So at least as far back as 1500 peanuts were being ground up and mixed with honey not exactly peanut butter
but getting close and it sounds delicious. So much so that the Spanish and Portuguese made sure
to bring peanuts back to Europe and to northwest Africa,
and it was in Africa that they became a feature of many dishes and so it's no surprise that they followed the Atlantic slave trade back to the West
arriving to North America with enslaved Africans in the 1700s.
Now was it still being ground into a paste?
Maybe, we don't know because like so much of history it wasn't exactly written down and so it's kind of lost.
We don't have any more written records of peanuts being ground into a paste until the late 19th century.
Now George Washington Carver is often cited as the inventor of peanut butter but
of the 300 prescribed uses he gave for the peanut, peanut butter was not one of them.
Credit actually goes to a Canadian, Marcellus Edson, who in 1884 patented a machine
specifically used to grind up peanuts but it was an American
John Harvey Kellogg of Kellogg's Corn Flakes who popularized the food.
Now Kellogg had some rather unorthodox views on food and I really need to do
an entire episode just on him but one of his ideas was-
he was a vegetarian and promoted vegetarianism which isn't weird in and of itself,
but his reasoning that meat was a sexual stimulant...
a little, a little different and so he had other foods take the place of meat including peanuts
but he found that "When swallowed in small bits, they are practically indigestible. Experiments made by the German government show
that even very small particles of nuts pass through the alimentary canal entirely unchanged.
The mastication of the nut should be so thorough that it will be converted into a creamy pulp
before it has swallowed."
I'm sorry but for a man who is obsessed with people not having sex his writing is rather suggestive, don't you think?
Anyway people sort of found it difficult to make sure that they were
crushing the nuts with their teeth to the point of digestibility as he said.
So he says "This difficulty is overcome by converting the nut into a paste, or so-called nut butter, by crushing or grinding in a suitable mill."
A suitable mill that he patented and soon after this peanut butter was being spread onto bread.
In 1896 The Washington Post raved "Have you eaten the very latest dish?
I say latest in every sense of the word, for it's a dish that goes with the midnight Welsh rarebit
and is the newest and best sort of a sandwich.
You take fresh bread and perfect butter. Then you have some fresh roasted peanuts-
it's the fad to roast them yourself-
ground fine in a coffee mill... Next you mix the ground nuts into a paste with a little sherry or old port,
spread them on the bread, and there you have the sandwich everybody is eating...
a peanut sandwich you must have if you are to follow the fashion set they say by the wife of a Cabinet member."
So no jelly yet but it did include sherry or port and that makes me lament the dearth of alcoholic sandwiches on menus today.
Maybe I'll add a little gin next time I make tuna salad.
Probably not. <_<
But as it was the peanut butter and wine sandwich never really took off
because it was overshadowed by the flavor combination of peanuts and less fermented fruit.
That same year, 1896, Fannie Farmer suggested a sandwich made with a fig spread and chopped peanuts inside.
Not peanut butter but it's no surprise that just five years later in the magazine from the school that she ran
they finally came out with the first recipe for peanut butter and jelly sandwich
which is the one that we're making today.
But even though there was a recipe for it it turns out the sandwich just didn't really take off.
First, the peanut butter at the time was
very gritty. It wasn't smooth or even chunky, just gritty kind of like almond butter is often served today,
and I guess crabapple and currant jelly just didn't entice.
Then there is the added effort of having to slice your own bread...
exhausting. But there were salute solutions to all three of these issues coming very soon.
First the bread. It was Otto Frederick Rohwedder of Davenport Iowa
who first realized that slicing your own bread was for chumps so
after a few failed starts including a fire which destroyed his prototype in 1912
he finally introduced a fully working bread slicing machine in 1928.
A few companies started using it but many of them thought that it was kind of a gimmick and frankly not that smart because
once you slice the bread it goes stale rather quickly, so why would anyone want that?
But it turns out that pre-sliced bread is consumed a lot faster than unsliced bread
as are the things that go on it like jam and jelly and so they sold a lot more bread, and jam, and jelly and the thing took off.
It was soon touted as "The greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped."
It was considered so fantastic that even today we still use the phrase it's the best thing since sliced bread,
so who knew that slicing your own bread was what was holding back Humanity all those centuries.
Now when it comes to the jam or jelly portion of the sandwich well that had been made
for thousands of years with very little change in how it was done.
But during WWI the Welch Grape Juice Company famous for what they touted as "The National Drink"
that is juice which had become popular in a country increasingly obsessed with the Temperance movement,
note that Prohibition was going to start just a couple years later, they released a new product called Grapelade.
This they said was neither jam nor jelly, but jam and jelly form.
And it's basically grape jelly, and at first it was only available to the troops who were fighting over in Europe but as they came back
they did so with Grapelade. There was actually a Grapelade ad that said
"Thank the Armistice for Welch's Grapelade".
Yes be glad that the death and destruction from the Great War is finally over but
you also get Grapelade, and this was soon followed by Peachlade, Plumlade and Fruitlade
which was a mix of grape and raspberry.
WWI also helped promote peanut butter as well because
there was a shortage of meat and so just as John Harvey Kellogg had touted all of those years
they replaced the protein with peanuts here on the home front.
Then in 1921 Californian Joseph Rosefield applied the process of partial hydrogenation to peanut butter.
This allowed it to stay blended at room temperature and not separate into the oils and the solids.
Still today the scourge of Laura Scudder's fans everywhere.
The process was first used by Derby's Peter Pan peanut butter who could now churn the peanut butter into a smooth consistency
rather than the gritty consistency that comes from peanuts out of a meat grinder.
Then in 1932 Rosefield founded his own peanut butter company called Skippy,
and developed my favorite style of peanut butter crunchy.
But it was the smooth peanut butter that was really popular and became the beloved food
for school children in recipes like the peanut butter and tomato soup that I made when recreating the Depression era school lunch.
But it's pairing with jelly still hadn't taken off in the school system and wouldn't for a few years.
First, peanuts had to go to war.
Peanut butter became a common item in the mess kits of American soldiers during WWII.
Another common item in the mess kits was Welch's Grapelade and so it was amongst the soldiers that they took that peanut butter and
the Grapelade and put them together between two slices of bread. It wasn't the first time
but that's when it really became popular and so when they got home
they still had that craving. A craving
that I know all too well. That's because just like flat feet or a receding hairline
they passed it down to their kids.
By the 1950s peanut butter and jelly sandwiches became the de facto food for children
when mom either didn't want to cook or when the kids had to fend for themselves,
and the peanut butter and jelly companies made sure the sandwiches found their way into every school cafeteria in the country.
In fact when I was a kid if you forgot your lunch or just didn't have a lunch at school for some reason
then they would give you a peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich between two slices of white bread that
was slightly smushed and kept at a temperature just above freezing so it was so it was really really firm,
and I missed that sandwich so much I have been chasing that sandwich for 30 years,
and still haven't really found it but maybe this recipe from 1901 will get me one step closer.
So once your bread is cooled slice it into rather thin slices.
You need three slices per sandwich,spread peanut butter on one.
Then jelly on another and then stack those on top of each other and top with one more slice,
and then cut that into finger sandwiches and you're all set.
And here we are the first PB & J.
So I made two here, I have the one with the currant jam as well as the crabapple jam,
and I'm super curious about the crab apple jam because usually crab apples are like really really tart
so I'm going to start with that.
[Chomp]
So first things first, she says to serve these with tea.
No they need to be served with milk. They're just too you know it's a peanut butter and jelly sandwich you need something-
to wash it down with. Also,
while I love the idea of of the the triple layer
I think that just two pieces of bread is is better unless this was toasted which is actually usually how I like to do it. I like to do
crunchy peanut butter, grape or strawberry jam,
and toasted sourdough. The toasting just lets it not be so
so gooey but the jelly, that crab apple jelly it's not as tart as I thought.
Granted I bet they add a lot of sugar because the only ingredients are
the crabapple and sugar, a little pectin.
So it is pretty sweet but you still get a little bit of that tartness
that you might get from like a raspberry or something like that. Let's go with the current jam.
[Chomp x2]
So I do prefer that actually. It's sweeter and
the flavor of that jam just stands up better to the peanut butter which
even though it's just ground up peanuts has a really strong flavor here.
I find it has a stronger flavor than if you were to get like Skippy or something like that.
It's just peanuts in your face but
yeah so I prefer this one over this one. Both very good both I would actually take out that second piece of bread
but as for the bread it's so soft and it's close textured because it's kept with the lid on,
and that's the point it's meant for sandwiches. There are no holes for things to really fall into.
Perfect.
Yeah peanut butter and jelly sandwiches still one of if not my favorite foods.
I know it's so simple but there's just something about it, brings up memories.
I don't know.
Next week I'm going to be in New York City doing a book signing of the Tasting History cookbook
so if you already have one or you need to get one come on down to Kitchen Arts and Letters
on Tuesday [May] 30th at five o'clock P.M.
and I'd love to meet you.
I'll put the details down in the description,
and I will see you next time on Tasting History.