The peanut butter and jelly sandwich is such a staple of American childhood these days
that it seems like it’s been around, well, forever.
In fact, it took a surprisingly long time after all the necessary ingredients were invented
for someone to put them together, and several decades more before doing this became popular.
In fact, there are people alive today in America who grew up in a world where the PB&J sandwich
simply wasn’t well-known at all.
*gasp*
First, let’s start with the ingredients.
Bread, of course, is an ancient food that has been eaten for tens of thousands of years.
However, pre-sliced bread—which would make PB&J making a convenient task—didn’t come
about until the early 1900s, when a man named Otto Frederick Rohwedder of Davenport, Iowa
invented a device to automate this process.
He first built a prototype of his bread slicer in 1912, which didn’t interest bakers he
showed it to as it was thought that no one would want their bread pre-sliced.
Unfortunately, Rohwedder’s blueprints and machine were destroyed in a fire in 1917.
From there, he struggled to obtain funding to begin again on his machine owing to the
lack of interest.
The primary concern was the reduction in shelf life of the bread.
Even if it was reasonably well packaged, it still became stale faster than well packaged
whole loaves.
Finally, in 1927, Rohwedder was able to re-build the machine and produce a model ready to use
in an actual bakery, soon to be advertised as “the greatest forward step in the baking
industry since bread was wrapped,” which later morphed into “the greatest/best thing
since sliced bread” when describing various other products.
Rohwedder got around part of the staleness problem by wrapping the thinly sliced loaves
in wax paper directly after slicing was complete.
Apparently it was good enough as pre-sliced bread was a hit and within a decade people
who had access to pre-sliced bread were eating more bread per person than before and began
experimenting with various new spreads to put on the now commonly thin bread slices.
As for jelly—which in the case of the peanut butter sandwich could mean jelly, jam, or
other fruit preserves (see the difference between these here)—that’s been around
for a long time too, going all the way back to at least the first century, mentioned in
Of Culinary Matters by Marcus Gavius Apicius.
Despite this lengthy history, for the purposes of this article, one Mr. Welch is the man
to pay attention to here.
He developed Grapelade from Concord grapes in 1918, which proved to be extremely popular
among the troops during World War I. When they got back from the war, they spread the
practice of using it on bread.
Peanut butter has actually been around much longer than you probably think, and was not
invented by George Washington Carver, with the first reference of it going back several
hundred years before Carver, first created by the Incas and Aztecs.
However, peanut butter more or less as we know it today was popularized at the 1893
World Fair.
In the early 1900s, peanut butter made frequent appearances in tea rooms across the nation
where it was billed as a dish for rich people.
Back then, it was paired with such crowd-winning favourites as cucumbers, cheese, celery, and
crackers.
With all the ingredients around so long, it might surprise you that the first known reference
to a peanut butter and jelly sandwich didn’t happen until 1901, with this first mentioned
in the Boston Cooking-School Magazine of Culinary Science and Domestic Economics, written by
Julia Davis Chandler:
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 crab-apple jelly for the other.
At that point, however, peanut butter was still considered a “high end” food and
peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were not a commonly eaten food item.
Peanut butter being more available to the masses occurred in the 1920s and 1930s, shortly
after Grapelade had become popular and pre-sliced bread was all the rage.
It was at this point that another major PB&J breakthrough happened: commercial brands of
ultra-creamy peanut butter were developed such as Skippy and Peter Pan.
With the Great Depression, peanut butter on bread became a staple in many American households
because it provided a hearty, filling meal with a cheaper-than-meat substitute for protein.
No doubt some at this point were happily creating PB&J sandwiches, but the real surge in popularity
was yet to come.
This brings us to WWII.
Grapelade’s popularity with the troops paved the way for jelly to be included in the soldiers’
rations during this war as well.
Along with the jelly was the trusty high-protein peanut butter that had proved so useful during
the Great Depression, and, of course, pre-sliced bread.
The perfect storm.
Perhaps they had heard of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches before, or perhaps it was
simply a natural inclination to combine these three staple ingredients in their rations,
but before long the peanut butter and jelly sandwich became a popular meal among United
States soldiers.
When soldiers arrived home from the war, peanut butter and jelly sales skyrocketed.
It was an instant hit with just about everyone—kids loved how good it tasted, parents loved how
easy it was to make, and college students liked that it was cheap.
Since then, this sandwich has become a “traditional” American favourite.
(That isn’t to say that PB&Js aren’t enjoyed across the globe, but it’s certainly
a bigger hit in the United States than in most other countries.)
In the end, despite all the needed ingredients having been around for millenia in some form
or another, America’s favourite sandwich seems to have only been around for just over
a century, and has only been popular for about 60-70 years.
Who knew?