Speaker 1: Are you guys. We've gone a little nutty with this topic,
Speaker 1: but there's so much more to talk about.
Speaker 2: Yes, we're nuts about peanuts.
Speaker 1: My name is Evel Longoria and I am Myra and
Speaker 1: welcome to Hungry for History, a podcast that explores are
Speaker 1: past and present through food.
Speaker 3: On every episode, we'll talk about the history of some
Speaker 3: of our favorite dishes, ingredients, and beverages from our culture.
Speaker 1: So make yourself at home. Even so, you grew up
Speaker 1: with some Mexican idioms, right, because I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: have any Mexican I don't have any detols that mentioned
Speaker 1: peanut in it. Do you?
Speaker 3: I have just one even ever heard that?
Speaker 2: Like it means peanuts to.
Speaker 1: Me, Like it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3: It's a matter which is which is ironic, right, because
Speaker 3: peanuts are an essential ingredient in Mexican cooking and marlaise
Speaker 3: and and Santa Mata.
Speaker 2: And they're filled with protein vitamins.
Speaker 3: But it's small and cheap and synonymous with something kind
Speaker 3: of unimportant.
Speaker 1: So it's like small. That's why, speaking of idioms, you know,
Speaker 1: he's a nut job. You're a nut You're so nutty.
Speaker 1: I'm nuts about him. He makes me nuts. The peanut gallery.
Speaker 1: Like there are so many idioms in English, like so
Speaker 1: many the nut can be a crazy person, a testicle,
Speaker 1: a person's physical head. How did the nut become so
Speaker 1: important in our English language? Right?
Speaker 2: And even like an exclamation like, oh my god, that's nuts.
Speaker 2: It's so funny.
Speaker 3: So I love food related idioms, so it's you know.
Speaker 3: Some of them referred to the physical description of the
Speaker 3: nut as is hard round out herself with something valuable inside,
Speaker 3: like like the brain and the skull, like if you're
Speaker 3: nuts about somebody, they're like embedded in your head. But
Speaker 3: according to some sources, this definition days back to the
Speaker 3: eighteenth century, like early seventeen eighty five we see this reference.
Speaker 1: And then it was in a newspaper comic, right the
Speaker 1: first time nuts were seen as like crazy.
Speaker 3: A comic strip named Mutt and Jeff and in nineteen
Speaker 3: oh eight, so super early to be off one's nut
Speaker 3: meant to be separated from your head. And then if
Speaker 3: something is nutty it developed from that as like something
Speaker 3: is you know, silly or crazy or eccentric.
Speaker 1: Oh this one, I love the peanut gallery Like all right,
Speaker 1: U hush peanut gallery, Like I used actually used this
Speaker 1: one a lot and I love that it comes for
Speaker 1: the vaudeville era because the cheapest seats or the gallery
Speaker 1: were filled by the poor members of the audience who
Speaker 1: were stereotyped as like unruly or like they were the hecklers,
Speaker 1: and they would throw peanuts because it was like the
Speaker 1: cheap snack sold at theaters. And then in the segregated South,
Speaker 1: these seats were largely occupied by black patrons. So this
Speaker 1: phrase of like the peanut gallery, it was a phrase
Speaker 1: that gained cultural recognition even though it's had offensive origins.
Speaker 1: It became less obvious because it was used in a
Speaker 1: children's program How Toy Doty in the nineteen forties and fifties,
Speaker 1: and the show featured this boisterous studio audience of children
Speaker 1: known as the penut gallery. So today it's used to
Speaker 1: describe a group of people offering unsolicited comments. I do
Speaker 1: not care what you have to contribute to this conversation,
Speaker 1: you peanut gallery. But understanding its historical roots, there are
Speaker 1: so many horrible phrases that we don't realize how really
Speaker 1: dark origins, like crack the whip when you want somebody
Speaker 1: to like, let's go, guys, crack the whip. We've got
Speaker 1: to get going that I have such an allergic reaction
Speaker 1: when I hear that, because I think people don't realize
Speaker 1: where it comes from. It's important to being mindful of
Speaker 1: the origins.
Speaker 2: To know what we're saying.
Speaker 1: So, okay, we left off the last episode with Mexico,
Speaker 1: so let's give a recup on how the peanut got
Speaker 1: to the US.
Speaker 3: So Portuguese conquers. It took it from Brazil to Africa
Speaker 3: and the fifteen hundreds, and they rapidly spread across the continent,
Speaker 3: you know, so much so the botanists mistakenly believed that
Speaker 3: they were native to Africa, and then enslaved West Africans
Speaker 3: carried peanuts to North America and we actually see the
Speaker 3: first recorded peanut were you know, referenced in sixteen ninety
Speaker 3: in Charleston. And so initially the peanuts were grown mainly
Speaker 3: for animal feed, but enslaved Africans began cultivated them to
Speaker 3: supplement their meager food rations, and they became integral to
Speaker 3: Southern food traditions. They were often grown and garden plots
Speaker 3: tended by enslaved people for their own you know, sustenance,
Speaker 3: and up until the American Revolution, peanuts were cultivated primarily
Speaker 3: by African Americans in their own garden patches for their families.
Speaker 1: Well, so there were such sustenance, like it was such
Speaker 1: an easy way to get nutrition.
Speaker 3: And so for many years they were dismissed as animal
Speaker 3: fodder or poor people's food. But then after the Civil
Speaker 3: War they started gating wider acceptance because soldiers on both
Speaker 3: sides they needed them for nutrition. They relied on them
Speaker 3: for energy and protein. But they also really liked them.
Speaker 1: They're fun to eat. I will say that they are.
Speaker 2: They are there's something very I don't know, they're festive
Speaker 2: about it.
Speaker 1: But the soldiers this makes sense because they would provide
Speaker 1: energy and protein for them, right. And then after the
Speaker 1: Civil War, what happened? How did they stay and demand?
Speaker 3: They just you know, soldiers really liked them. And then
Speaker 3: they started becoming popular everywhere. The South started shipping more
Speaker 3: and more peanuts to the North as urban demand for
Speaker 3: peanuts and these growing cities, they just sort of boomed
Speaker 3: like people wanted peanuts. And then we slowly start seeing
Speaker 3: peanut based recipes in cookbooks for white you know, elite,
Speaker 3: And one of the earliest was Sarah Rutledge, this woman
Speaker 3: who wrote Carolina Housewife in eighteen forty seven. She has
Speaker 3: a ground nut soup, and ground nuts is what the
Speaker 3: peanut was called in Africa, and it was beaten peanuts
Speaker 3: simmered with a pint of oysters and Chile.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, Chile, says a seed pepper or two, so
Speaker 1: a chilo o some sort of Chile. And then we
Speaker 1: did mention the last episode. By the eighteen eighties, like
Speaker 1: the late eighteen hundred, streetcart vendors and traveling circuses were
Speaker 1: offering these hot roasted peanuts to fair goers and audience
Speaker 1: members across America. So then that kept it alive as.
Speaker 2: Well, right, and street vendors.
Speaker 3: That's a really important part of the story of the
Speaker 3: peanut everywhere really, because they were sold in mes amarkets
Speaker 3: as well. But in the US there's street vendors have
Speaker 3: always had their finger on the pulse, right, They know
Speaker 3: what people want and they get instant feedback.
Speaker 1: Yeah no. And so when these American cities experienced all
Speaker 1: this rapid growth of like mass migration in the late
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds nineteen hundreds, it feels like this created a
Speaker 1: market that needed a convenient and affordable street snack, especially
Speaker 1: in places like New York City or Chicago and things
Speaker 1: like that. So I always think, you know, all good things,
Speaker 1: at least good food come from immigrant communities, right totally.
Speaker 3: And a lot of these immigrants who didn't have, you know,
Speaker 3: weren't proficient in the English language, or didn't have a
Speaker 3: capital to start, you know, a business, they turned to
Speaker 3: push cart vending to survive because the startup costs for
Speaker 3: a simple cart and a sac of peanuts were really,
Speaker 3: really low, and so peanut vending became a.
Speaker 1: Very viable option for a lot of people.
Speaker 3: And this trade provided this entry point into entrepreneurship in
Speaker 3: these bustling American cities.
Speaker 1: So we can't talk about peanuts without mentioning George Washington Carver.
Speaker 3: George Washington Carver born around eighteen sixty five, nobody really
Speaker 3: knows exactly, and he rose from this sickly orphaned child
Speaker 3: he was born in a Missouri farm to become one
Speaker 3: of America's most influential scientists and educators. He transformed agriculture
Speaker 3: and the perception of peanuts in the US to a
Speaker 3: really important product. So this guy was born in a
Speaker 3: one room cabin in Missouri on a farm owned by
Speaker 3: these German immigrants, Moses and Susan Carver. His mother had
Speaker 3: been enslaved. We don't know who his father was. And
Speaker 3: when he was a child, George and his mom were
Speaker 3: kidnapped and taken to Arkansas, and he was eventually returned
Speaker 3: when Moses Carver traded a horse for him. He never
Speaker 3: saw his mother again. It's this crazy story, like crazy story,
Speaker 3: but he was educated. He earned a Masters of Agriculture
Speaker 3: in eighteen ninety six and started working at the Tuskegee
Speaker 3: Institute in Alabama as head of the agricultural department. So
Speaker 3: Carver he saw that tobacco and cotton farming had just
Speaker 3: exhausted southern soils. So he started teaching poor farmers to
Speaker 3: grow peanuts and sweet potatoes to improve the soil. You
Speaker 3: know this like monoculture never really works, So to improve
Speaker 3: soil and to earn a living. And in nineteen fifteen
Speaker 3: he published a bulletin on peanuts. And this is at
Speaker 3: a time that the boil weavil had devastated Alabama's cotton crops.
Speaker 3: If farmers couldn't sell the peanuts that they had grown,
Speaker 3: at least they could just eat them, right, and they
Speaker 3: had a nutritious food source. And so his research identified
Speaker 3: over three hundred uses for peanuts, including like oils and
Speaker 3: dyes and soaps and like even peanut based sausages. And
Speaker 3: so he promoted agricultural sustainability and economic independence, helping black
Speaker 3: farmers shift away from exploitive cotton farming while elevating the
Speaker 3: reputation demand for peanuts. And so his legacy is one
Speaker 3: you know, of science and education and innovation, and he
Speaker 3: helped bring peanuts to the mainstream.
Speaker 1: So it was his research and agricultural efforts that really
Speaker 1: put peanuts on the big stage in the US exactly. Well,
Speaker 1: then by the twentieth century, peanuts were everywhere. They weren't
Speaker 1: on the margins anymore. They were in mainstream and mostly
Speaker 1: in the vaudeville and music halls. So if there was
Speaker 1: any type of entertainment, somebody was selling peanuts. And the
Speaker 1: cheapest seats were famously filled with the patrons eating peanuts
Speaker 1: and throwing peanuts at performers, and it kind of cemented
Speaker 1: the snacks association with like mass entertainment. So then cinema
Speaker 1: exploded in you know, around the nineteen twenties, and movie
Speaker 1: theaters began selling peanuts with popcorn and candy because they
Speaker 1: were very inexpensive concessions, and so then they were a
Speaker 1: fixture in theaters by the nineteen twenties. So so interesting
Speaker 1: that peanuts became this like standard fair at anything entertainment
Speaker 1: and especially at baseball games and festivals. And this was
Speaker 1: thanks to improved harvesting technology that allowed for mass production
Speaker 1: and distribution. So I knew something had to happen totally,
Speaker 1: and something had to happen with like industrial mass production
Speaker 1: of peanuts because they became they were everywhere.
Speaker 3: They were everywhere circuses, the circus peanuts, and like elephants
Speaker 3: eat peanuts, that was a total circus thing. Elephants don't
Speaker 3: naturally eat peanuts, they eat grasses.
Speaker 1: But it's like give it a peanut, all right. So
Speaker 1: when does peanut butter come into the picture. I know
Speaker 1: it has something to do with doctor Kellogg.
Speaker 3: So we established in part one the peanut butter or
Speaker 3: peanuts have been part of pre Hispanic diets for centuries
Speaker 3: and they were ground into paste. But peanut butter got
Speaker 3: this boost thanks to this vegetarian doctor named John Harvey Kellogg.
Speaker 3: In eighteen ninety five, he patented this food compound which
Speaker 3: was basically peanut butter and he designed for his patients
Speaker 3: at his Battle Creek Sanitarium, and he launched this health
Speaker 3: focused adventure creating plant based alternatives to meat, and one
Speaker 3: of its stars was something called protos, which was a
Speaker 3: peanut and wheat meat substitute. And this helped American see
Speaker 3: peanuts as this protein packed, easy to digest food even
Speaker 3: those who could not to meat. And it was advertised
Speaker 3: as a food for the toothless, which is so old,
Speaker 3: which is not at all appetizing.
Speaker 1: John Kellog was really about this kind of vegetarian, plant
Speaker 1: based alternative.
Speaker 3: And people This is in the late eighteen hundreds, they
Speaker 3: started telling people like magazines like Good Housekeeping telling readers
Speaker 3: to make their own peanut butter with a meat grinder.
Speaker 3: And then in the nineteen hundreds, of former Kellogg employees,
Speaker 3: a guy named Joseph Lambert invented machines to roast and
Speaker 3: grite peanuts, and this made peanut butter cheap and wildly
Speaker 3: available around the country. And then the Saint Louis World's
Speaker 3: Fair in nineteen oh four was a turning point because
Speaker 3: people tasted it along with peanut bread ale and roasted
Speaker 3: peanuts and other health foods. It's always a world's fair,
Speaker 3: that always always, it always is the world always a
Speaker 3: turning point, always and it's always either the Chicago one,
Speaker 3: the or the Saint Louis one or the London one,
Speaker 3: like it's always the turning point of something. And they
Speaker 3: had these advertisements that boasted the ten cents worth of
Speaker 3: peanuts pecks six times the energy of a porter House steak. Interesting,
Speaker 3: and then during the Great Depression, the peanut butter, because
Speaker 3: it was so cheap, it became a lunch box favorite.
Speaker 1: Peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which emerged around this time
Speaker 1: because during World War One, meat rationing made peanut butter
Speaker 1: basically the protein alternative, and then this meatless mondays became popular.
Speaker 1: I can't believe that that became popular in World War
Speaker 1: One so long ago, but during this time or a
Speaker 1: little after the war, families began pairing peanut butter with
Speaker 1: these sweet fruit spreads. And then sliced bread was invented
Speaker 1: in nineteen twenty eight, and that revolutionized sandwiches because they
Speaker 1: you could do it quick and easy. You could assemble
Speaker 1: this quick and easy. And then at the same time,
Speaker 1: Joseph Rosefield pioneered partial hydra enation, which created this like creamy,
Speaker 1: shelf stable peanut butter that could be shipped nationwide, and
Speaker 1: that paved the way for Skippy peanut butter and Peter
Speaker 1: Pan peanut butter, which if I eat peanut butter, I'm
Speaker 1: usually I'm usually eating Skippy. Really, yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: which one's better by because there's there's Skippy, Jiffy, Peter Pan.
Speaker 1: I don't like the sweet lies. I like the salt
Speaker 1: sells one like it.
Speaker 2: I like you, Yeah, I like I don't like this
Speaker 2: sweet one.
Speaker 1: World War two, again, peanut butter was included in soldier
Speaker 1: rations uh and Skippy Skippy was actually included in the
Speaker 1: peeb and Jay sandwiches that then became a staple and
Speaker 1: kitchens across the US. Ninety percent of US households enjoy
Speaker 1: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches sandwiches. Wasn't it Elvis's favorite
Speaker 1: peanut butter and banana? Elvis's favorite sandwich? Yeah, I was banana.
Speaker 2: Peanut butter and banana.
Speaker 1: You're right. Well, since it's Halloween, let's talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about the history of some of our favorite peanut
Speaker 1: based candies. Yes, I well, this is the only way
Speaker 1: I need a peanut is if it's in a candy
Speaker 1: chocolate bar, sugar chocolate coated. Like, I'm not eating it
Speaker 1: by itself. I'm just not doing it.
Speaker 2: But I'm like the opposite. But I do like goobers.
Speaker 1: So, oh, what's a goober?
Speaker 3: Oh my god, you've never had goobers in movie theaters.
Speaker 3: It's usually the snack that I get in movie theaters.
Speaker 1: Nope, you've never had the goobers.
Speaker 3: They have them in all of the movie theaters in La. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's basically an eminem without the candy coating. So it's
Speaker 3: the original movie candy. So movie theaters they were booming
Speaker 3: in the nineteen twenties, and it was there were popcorns
Speaker 3: so it opp and nuts and these goobers. They were
Speaker 3: easy to share, perfect for snacking in the dark. And
Speaker 3: it was this combo of chocolate and crunchy peanut butters.
Speaker 3: This combo was very novel and in algent. But just
Speaker 3: to backtruck a little bit. In eighteen ninety four, Milton
Speaker 3: Hershey a caramel maker from Lancaster, Pennsylvana, and he bought
Speaker 3: a chocolate making machine and created the Hershey's Chocolate Company
Speaker 3: and peanuts were not among the ingredients in his early
Speaker 3: candy wars, but he kind of opened the path to
Speaker 3: this sort of chocolate and peanut combo. And so this
Speaker 3: Goober was originally the original candy, and the name Goober
Speaker 3: made it memorable because it's kind of fun to say.
Speaker 3: And the word comes from the Goula word goober, which
Speaker 3: means peanuts. So you see this African connection. And then
Speaker 3: there's a Baby Ruth, Baby Ruth. I do like a
Speaker 3: Baby Ruth.
Speaker 1: Where does that? What? Movies that Baby Ruth?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Goonies, of course, the goonies. I love that baby. This
Speaker 1: one is one of my favorite candies because it's like
Speaker 1: peanut caramel nougat bar. It coded in chocolate I did.
Speaker 1: What I didn't know was that in nineteen twenty one,
Speaker 1: the Curtis Candy Company repackaged and rebranded a one called
Speaker 1: Candy Cake, and they launched it as Baby Ruth. So
Speaker 1: it was called something else before it was called Baby
Speaker 1: Ruth and Curtis Candy Company. Curtis claimed that the name
Speaker 1: came from Ruth Cleveland, the daughter of President Grover Cleveland,
Speaker 1: who had died in nineteen oh four, and at the
Speaker 1: same time, Baseball's Babe Ruth was becoming America's biggest sports star.
Speaker 1: So many historians view this as a legal marketing ploy,
Speaker 1: and it allowed Curtis to avoid paying baseball legend Babe
Speaker 1: Ruth for the use of his name while still benefiting
Speaker 1: from the public's like mental association with him. And so
Speaker 1: when Babe Ruth tried to launch his own candy bar,
Speaker 1: Curtis sued him for trademark infringement and one snicky Oh
Speaker 1: my God, Baby Ruth was one of the earliest examples
Speaker 1: of clever branding and marketing in US candy history because
Speaker 1: it wasn't just sold as a sweet, it was like
Speaker 1: also marketed as fuel, like an energy bar for working Americans.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine no Baby Ruth today, Like eat this,
Speaker 1: it's an energy bar. No. No, So by the late
Speaker 1: nineteen twenties, Baby Ruth was the number one five cent
Speaker 1: candy bar in America. There's more important ones. We got
Speaker 1: to get to the more important ones. Peanut butter cups,
Speaker 1: Reese's Pieces, peanut em and M's right which I have
Speaker 1: quit about those. I have a question about those. But
Speaker 1: let's talk about the peanut peanut butter cup. Because when
Speaker 1: was this born, This brilliant invention.
Speaker 2: The peanut butter cup.
Speaker 3: That's probably my favorite peanut butter can't because I don't
Speaker 3: love me candies, but I do love to be Reese's
Speaker 3: peanut butter bar. So it was born in nineteen twenty
Speaker 3: eight in Pennsylvania in a basement kitchen by a man
Speaker 3: named Harry Burnette Reese, who was a former dairy farmer
Speaker 3: who worked for Milton Hershey and Hershey Pennsylvania, and so
Speaker 3: in nineteen twenty eight he left the Hershey's dairy farm
Speaker 3: to start his own candy business, and among them were
Speaker 3: penny cups, these little chocolate cups filled with sweet peanut butter.
Speaker 3: And this combo was an instant hit, and by the
Speaker 3: nineteen thirties, Reese's peanut butter cups became his signature candy.
Speaker 3: They were really inexpensive, they were totally indulgent, and this
Speaker 3: was at a time when the Great Depression made people
Speaker 3: crave these affordable luxuries.
Speaker 2: And so he kind of found a niche.
Speaker 3: He created a niche, and by nineteen sixty sixty three,
Speaker 3: the Hershey Chocolate Company acquired Reese's business for twenty three
Speaker 3: point five million dollars, and it was this kind of
Speaker 3: balance of sal d, sweet, creamy, crunchy, and it was
Speaker 3: there was nothing like this, and it was.
Speaker 1: Packaged individually, and so they felt like shareable and personal.
Speaker 3: And it's still one of the most popular candies in
Speaker 3: the US, inspiring lots of spin offs, including Reese's Pieces,
Speaker 3: which was made popular during an et the movie ET
Speaker 3: when Elliott lures Et out of hiding, leaving a trail
Speaker 3: of Reese's Pieces.
Speaker 2: Wait, so did you know that? Originally Steven Spielberg wanted Eminem's.
Speaker 1: Yes, I did know this, and they declined yes, oh
Speaker 1: my god. But after the movie was released, sales of
Speaker 1: Reese's Pieces skyrocketed, and the et that the product placement
Speaker 1: is cited as one of the most successful product placements
Speaker 1: in history.
Speaker 2: It's fascinating.
Speaker 1: It's so yeah.
Speaker 2: I can't think of Recent's Pieces without thinking about ET.
Speaker 1: I saw this argument on the TikTok or Instagram, one
Speaker 1: of those places. And the peanut Eminem, which was invented
Speaker 1: by Forrest Mars, which was the side of the Mars
Speaker 1: Chocolate Empire. Founder. He got this idea from seeing soldiers
Speaker 1: eating chocolate pellets coated and sugar during the Spanish Civil
Speaker 1: War and this kind of prevented the chocolate from melting.
Speaker 1: So the original Eminem's were plain chocolate with a candy
Speaker 1: shell designed to survive the heat and transport, and that
Speaker 1: was nineteen forty one. In nineteen fifty four, peanut m
Speaker 1: and ms were introduced as a new variety, and then
Speaker 1: it became the brand's top seller. But I saw this
Speaker 1: argument on the Instagram or the TikTok where somebody said
Speaker 1: the peanuts are the original, and this wife was like, no,
Speaker 1: the original is just the chocolate, and he's like no,
Speaker 1: and this husband and wife were fighting about it. So
Speaker 1: just to let you guys know, the original m and
Speaker 1: ms were plain chocolate, and peanut m and ms were
Speaker 1: introduced almost fifteen years later, but it is the top seller.
Speaker 1: I would like to settle this argument.
Speaker 2: Once and for our.
Speaker 3: So we went a little nutty on this topic. But
Speaker 3: who knew this small and mighty peanut had so many
Speaker 3: stories to tell?
Speaker 2: Are you a convert?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 2: Do you love peanuts?
Speaker 1: I don't like peanuts by themselves, but I will say
Speaker 1: I love our peanut peanut based candy history. I'll eat
Speaker 1: a peanut butter and jelly I'll eat a peanut butter
Speaker 1: and jelly sandal like I will say, I sometimes do
Speaker 1: crab it, but I didn't go as nutty on this
Speaker 1: topic as you. Next week, what are we talking about?
Speaker 3: Next week? We're talking about our favorite condiment, mustard. Plus
Speaker 3: I'm putting even to the test. Does she know her mustards?
Speaker 1: I do know my mustard because I just got back
Speaker 1: from France, from Dijon and learned all about mutad. So
Speaker 1: leave us a message on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app. We love hearing from you. We'll see you
Speaker 1: next week. Goodbye. Hungary for History is a Hyphenite media
Speaker 1: production in partnership with Iheart'smikultura podcast network.
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