You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast.
Hey, everyone.
Welcome to the past and the curious.
It's your old pal, Mick.
And if you've listened before, you know that every so often I get fascinated by a food.
We've covered ice cream, donuts, tomatoes, even early cookbooks.
But today's episode came from a question that my friend sent my way.
Perhaps you know them, Lindsay and Marshall from Tumble?
Hey Mick, it's Lindsay.
And it's also Marshall from Tumble.
So the question in question doesn't actually come from us.
It came from our listener, Layla.
She wanted to know the history of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Which is like that's a really great question, but it's definitely not a science question, because PBJ happened like after the Big Bang, I think.
So we wanted to get your perspective since you focus on history.
Oh, yeah.
I was recently on Tumble to offer a quick answer to Layla's great question.
But you know, I kept poking around and it turns out there's a lot that goes into the old peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Yeah, we figured there was more to the story.
Like, sometimes people put raisins in it.
What?
I mean, actually, I've never heard of that.
I think you're confusing that with ants on a log.
Can you give me a full history of ants on a log?
Well, I wasn't really prepared for that.
I'm going to go ahead and plant some celery seeds and I'll get back to you on the ants.
On a log thing.
Promise.
But in the meantime...
I would like to tell you the robust history of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but I never know where to start with these things.
Mick, you gotta break it down piece by piece.
Let's start with ingredient number one, bread.
Oh, great idea.
Ever tried to cut a slice from a loaf of bread?
It's harder than you think.
First, if you have the wrong knife, you're just going to mangle and mush your loaves.
Successful slicing takes the magic combination of a serrated blade and a steady, soft sawing motion.
But even if you manage to cut a slice and still have an unmangled, unmushed loaf of bread, getting an even and properly sized slice is another problem altogether.
One end is thin, the other is thick, the top is wide, the bottom is narrow.
There's a hole in it from slicing too close to the edge.
It's a nightmare.
And getting two slices exactly alike to make the sandwich of your dreams?
Forget about it.
You might as well try making back-to-back half-court shots on a basketball court while blindfolded.
There's got to be a better way.
Yeah.
That's what Otto Frederick Roeder thought to himself in the early 1900s while living in St.
Charles, Missouri.
He was a jeweler but, growing bored with diamonds and gold, he cooked up a passion for fine baked goods, cut with accuracy and precision.
On the first point, Otto certainly wasn't alone.
People have been loving bread for centuries.
Archaeologists have found 30000 years of evidence, both in Europe and Australia, of primitive people pounding dried starchy plant roots with stones and making something like flour.
The bread that they made from that flour would have been eaten flat after being cooked on a hot rock in a fire.
The big change came from the Middle East around 11000 years ago.
An area known as the Fertile Crescent stretches from today's Iraq to Turkey, to Egypt, and this is a world hearth site.
That means it is one of the few officially recognized ancient places where people from long ago first made the big decision to plant some seeds but not others.
This is the birth of plant domestication, when people took an active role in what we wanted to grow, usually based on flavor and size and general awesomeness.
Before long, plants that just happened to grow were grown on purpose, and the individual plants that were the best were the ones whose seeds were replanted.
And from the people of the Middle East's Fertile Crescent, we got wheat.
The same wheat that people turn into flour, which makes all sorts of things.
Pizza crust, cookies, pancakes, pasta.
And yes, bread.
So let's tip our hats to the old fertile crescent ears.
And then tip our hats again to the Egyptians who 3000 years ago started putting yeast in the dough so it would rise and get airy and fluffy and well, a different kind of delicious.
And for thousands of years, we ate bread.
We baked it or bought it.
But in any case, it was always unsliced.
Good luck with your slicing.
Or maybe just tear off a chunk and sop up your plate after the food is gone.
Heck, in the Middle Ages, some people in England used flat pieces of bread called trenchers as a plate in itself.
If you were still hungry, the trencher had soaked up all of the juices and you could eat your soggy plate for dessert.
Or if your dinner did fill you up, you could just toss it to your dog, who was always happy to do the dishes for you, if you know what I mean.
Anyway, Otto Roeder sure loved bread.
But he saw a beautiful future with sliced bread that he loved even more.
So he sold his jewelry business and decided to design and build the world's first bread slicing machine.
Setbacks came in 1917, when a fire destroyed not just his in-progress machine but also his blueprints.
After literally going back to the drawing board, Otto finally saw his dream machine come to life.
On July 7 1928 at the Chillicothe Baking Company in Chillicothe Missouri, one lucky person bought the first commercially sliced loaf of bread.
Unmashed, Unmangled, light, and airy, it was a dream come true.
Yes, it's the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped.
That was actually the phrase the Wonder Bread Company used in 1930 to describe the game-changing world of sliced bread.
Today, when something is new and awesome, we say it is the greatest thing since sliced bread.
But this is where that phrase originated, only since there was no such thing as sliced bread.
Before sliced bread, all they could do was say the greatest thing since bread was wrapped.
Otto was probably like any schmuck can put bread in a bag, but my slicer is going to be the reference point from now on.
And he was right.
Slice bread changed the game and it gives us our first ingredient in the legendary P, B and J.
That might be the best thing I've heard about, since I heard about wrapped bread, which really was just like a minute ago because I just heard about it.
Yeah, maybe, but it's time to get sticky with ingredient number two.
Ingredient number two, grape allayed.
Grape allayed?
Did someone really call something that?
Well, let's just call it jelly.
Ah, jelly.
It's not quite solid.
It's not quite liquid.
It jiggles and it spreads.
It's sweet to eat and perfect for breads.
It's jelly.
Now, quick point of order.
In European and other non-American places.
Jelly often refers to things that might be called gelatin or by brand names like Jell-O, but we are of course not talking about those.
The jelly that we are talking about is the jarred fruit spread, the J in PB and J. Fruit is cool.
It's delicious and it grows from the ground.
Honestly, we can't ask for much more.
But if we could ask for more, maybe we'd ask for a longer shelf life.
Because one thing fruits don't do well is stay fresh for long.
If people long ago in the pre-refrigerator days grew hearty vegetables like carrots and turnips or squash, they could keep them long into the year by storing them in cool, dark places, often cellars underground.
But a winter of dining on squash and turnips sounds uninspiring.
Bet the kids in those times would have liked a year's supply of yummy fruits instead.
Unfortunately, fruits are different.
Any parent who has overpurchased on berries or bananas knows how quickly, even in the fridge, fruit can go rotten.
It's a sad fact of life.
But people figured out ways to persevere and preserve.
And sugar is a great tool for this.
And as it turns out, sugar is also something that most kids really like.
But for much of history, sugar was hard or impossible to get.
So the first fruit preserves were actually made with honey, which was far more abundant around the world.
The first recipe for jam comes from the Roman Empire in the 4th century CE.
A few centuries later, sugar cane from Southeast Asia was introduced to Persia, and from there, around modern-day Iran, comes the first fruit and sugar jam recipe.
Now I know what you may be asking.
What's the difference between jelly and jam?
And while we're at it, what about preserves?
Even marmalade?
How do those fit in?
Okay, here's the deal.
If you cook up your sticky sweet stuff with some big chunks or whole fruit and sugar, maybe a few other things you, my friend, are popping with preserves.
If it's citrus and maybe there's some peels involved, you're probably messing with marmalade.
And if you cook up some sugar and crushed or mashed up fruits and you leave in all the fibers, maybe some berry seeds, and what have you?
You are jamming with jams.
And finally, if you mash up the fruit, strain it so all that's left is the juice, and then you cook that with sugar and a solidifier like pectin.
Then you are getting jiggy with jelly baby.
And the biggest boom in the modern jelly world came thanks to a father and son who were dentists.
Which is kind of ironic considering how much sugar we're talking about here.
Anyway, Thomas and Charles Welch founded a company in the 1800s that survives today.
At the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago, Welch's debuted their groundbreaking product, grape juice.
Perhaps you've heard of it.
It was a big hit, and after the 1900s came, they perfected their newest product, grape-a-layed.
That's right, they called grape jelly grape-a-layed.
Heard of Marmalade, but this ain't no citrusy spread.
It's the jiggly, wiggly, purpley, perfectly spreadable glop for your bread.
It's Grape-A-Lade!
People liked Grape-A-Lade, even though the name was kind of weird.
When World War I happened and America joined the conflict, the U.S.
Army bought every jar of Grape-A-Lade that they could get their hands on.
It was portable, spoil-proof, and had enough calories to provide some energy.
And it tasted good.
So with that Welch's Grape-a-Lade, which they eventually called Grape Jelly, the first commercially available jelly was on the way to more and more people's homes by the 1920s.
Just in time for sliced bread.
Call it Grape-a-Lade, call it jelly, call it whatever you like, it is our second ingredient.
And after the break we'll go digging around to find the last one, and then we'll put them all together.
Hey everybody.
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Okay, it's time for You Have 30 Seconds in Arrowlin in Idaho.
I've always wondered about the origin of the three-point seatbelt.
Hi, my name is Arrowlin Torba and today I'm talking about the adventure the seatbelt knows more about.
Nils Bohlen was born in Harrison, Sweden in 1920.
He started his career in 1942 at Svenska Aeroplane Ektabolgaut, also known as SAB, as an aircraft engineer.
In 1955 he was made responsible for the development of catapult seats, as well as many other safety equipment for pilots.
He was hired in 1958 as Volvo's safety engineer to develop better seatbelts.
In 1959, he invented the three-point seatbelt but didn't patent it.
He died on September 26, 2002 at age 88 of a heart attack and was buried in Torpa Church in Sweden.
Nice work, Errol, and that was fantastic.
I'm going to go learn more about the origin of the three-point seatbelt.
You have inspired me thusly.
Also, wear your seatbelt, everybody, all the time, 100% of the time, okay?
If anyone out there has a you have a 30 seconds, then, you know, it's real easy.
You just record it on a device, a digital device, and you email it to me at hello at thepastandthecuriouscom.
It's quiz time.
It's quiz time.
It's quiz time.
Time, time.
Okay, it's a sandwich quiz.
Question number one.
There is a legend about where the name sandwich originated, and it involves a man at a card game who did not wish to stop playing while he ate, so he asked for bread to put around the rest of his food.
What was that guy's name was a british nobleman named john montague.
What you don't call your sandwich as montagues, i do one tuna montague, please.
Okay, his title was the fourth earl of sandwich, which is supposedly where the name comes from.
He didn't invent the sandwich.
In fact, he probably ate something on bread like a sandwich when he traveled to the mediterranean during his lifetime.
Plus, plenty of cultures have been putting delicious stuff on bread for centuries and then putting another piece of bread on top of it.
That's a sandwich, y'all.
Or a Montague.
Anyway, question number two.
How much did the largest sandwich ever made weigh?
It was 2005 in Roseville, Michigan, when a record-setting corned beef sandwich was created.
All said and done, It was 5,440 pounds.
That's 2,467 kilograms.
There were gigantic custom sandwich buns and even 150 pounds of mustard on the sandwich that fed a town.
That's a whole lot of mustard, baby.
Okay, here's your third and final question.
Music legend Elvis Presley loved to eat sandwiches and his favorite sandwich is now named after him today.
What were the ingredients of the so-called Elvis sandwich?
If you don't know, take a wild guess.
Here you go.
Peanut butter, banana, and bacon.
And if you didn't get it right, That's all right, Mama.
Any way you do.
It's all right.
Okay, so welcome back to The Past and the Curious.
This is a very special episode with my friends Lindsay and Marshall from Tumble.
But I must confess that, you know, in the excitement of quiz time and that fantastic 30 seconds, I forgot. forgot where we were okay i mean you just finished talking about gray palade which is jelly so that leaves the star of the show ingredient number three peanut butter oh right of course peanut butter how silly of me when the name george washington carver is spoken most people for good reason think of the peanut Say his name three times fast and Mr. Peanut might actually appear over your shoulder.
Mr. Peanut.
Mr. Peanut.
Mr. Peanut.
Okay, not really.
I made that part up.
But if there were a patron saint of Peanuts, it would indisputably be Mr. Carver.
He was peanut cheerleader numero uno.
From axle grease to shoe polish to makeup, this guy came up with over 300 uses for the peanut, and 105 of those uses were edible.
But contrary to the assumptions of many, George Washington Carver did not invent peanut butter.
That already existed.
But as de facto patron saint of the peanut.
No discussion about the lumpy legume is complete without him.
Because as much as he cared about peanuts, George Washington Carver cared more about people.
That's what got him so excited about peanuts in the first place.
Carver was born enslaved in Missouri in 1864.
And though slavery was abolished while he was a young child, Many of the formerly enslaved people had a hard time making money to live in the years that followed.
Opportunities were scarce, and getting ahead was hard.
Many people were sharecroppers, which meant they farmed land that they did not own for tiny little shares of the profit of the crops.
And the major crop was cotton, a plant which depletes the soil of important nutrients as it grows.
So the more cotton you grow in one place, the harder it gets to do.
Cotton is also not edible.
So to the people growing cotton, the plant did them very little good.
Carver was smart and curious.
He went to school to become a botanist.
And as his relationship with plants grew, he realized that the peanut could be the answer to so many problems.
Yes, they are nutritious and cheap.
But growing them actually improves the quality of the soil, so it's sustainable.
When you hear the word sustainable farming from now on, you should picture George Washington Carver, because this guy understood ahead of so many others so much about taking care of land so that it could take care of people.
Honestly, he totally deserves an episode of his own, and I think that will happen.
I'm going to promise that he gets one.
But let's just leave it at this right now.
To him.
The peanut would enable thousands of poor farmers to not just feed their families, but also earn a living.
To prove it, he devised so many potential peanut-based products, like his peanut shaving cream, peanut ink, even peanut fuel briquettes for your grill.
He did a whole lot more than this, and was more than just the peanut champ number one.
But let's face facts.
He was peanut champ number one.
And peanuts are amazing.
But most American farmers in Carver's time, and before, grew them to feed their animals.
But the Inca people in South America, who probably cultivated them first, knew that they were great for people.
In fact, there's a very good chance that they were the first people to make a peanut butter-like paste.
The crop also grew well in Africa, and it was through the enslaved Africans kidnapped and brought across the Atlantic Ocean that peanuts first arrived and were grown on North American farms and plantations.
The first patent in America for a product that resembles peanut butter came in 1895, and it was awarded to a businessman and doctor in Michigan named John Harvey Kellogg.
As in Kellogg's Frosted Flakes.
Dude was a big deal in breakfast and breakfast-adjacent advancements in eating technology.
And while he made big waves in the food world, he was actually most famous in his day as the leader of Michigan's huge Battle Creek Sanitarium, a resort health facility that combined hydrotherapy, spa-like facilities as well as more hospital-like resources to to serve the health needs of both the poor and rich and famous alike.
Two of his most notable clients were Sojourner Truth and Henry Ford.
To feed people with health issues, he had a lot of food ideas.
His patent for a food compound made of boiled nuts ground into a paste was originally designed as an easy-to-eat but nourishing food for patients who were missing teeth.
As we know now, it's good for all kinds of people.
One of his employees soon tweaked the recipe by roasting the nuts rather than boiling them, which was more flavorful.
And while Kellogg's idea was open to all nuts, this guy, Joseph Lambert, focused exclusively on peanuts.
Ergo, peanut butter.
Soon after, peanut butter sandwiches were most commonly found on menus at fancy, high-society tea parlors in big cities.
Now believe me, I know, plenty of people are allergic to peanuts.
And more, including one person in my house, simply don't like peanut butter.
But overall, peanut butter was a total game-changer.
It's been a great journey so far, and I'm feeling a little hungry.
I mean, I guess, peanut butter, sliced bread jelly, they're all great by themselves, especially when you eat them with your hands.
But when you put them together, things really go to another level.
Yeah, it's a great example of the saying, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
I think it's time for final assembly, everybody.
Peanut butter jelly time, peanut butter jelly time.
It was 1901, before sliced bread, and around the time that the Welches were perfecting their grape-elayed recipe.
Something was brewing.
The times, they were a-changin'.
And as the calendars turned and the history books moved on from the 1800s to the 1900s, an earth-shattering revolution took root.
And the first sprout came in the pages of a magazine called The Boston Cooking School Magazine of Culinary Science and Domestic Economics.
This was a magazine one of several at the time that printed recipes for the public to try out and hopefully, enjoy.
Thanks to the changes in transportation and industrialization, more foods were available to more curious tongues than ever before, so people were eager to hear from experts and experimenters.
And new ideas came on the printed page.
This magazine seems to have been aimed at upper-scale homes and parlors, as it was filled with tips for the kitchen and home in general.
Many of its readers were just the type who needed new sandwiches to serve at afternoon teas and fancy parties.
And so came our fateful recipe.
The author was a woman named Julia David Chandler.
Here's how she laid it out.
For variety, someday 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.
Peanut paste, crab apple jelly, and bread.
There you go.
But did you catch one detail?
That's right.
Three pieces of bread.
If you want to recreate the original recipe of the P, B and J, you're going to put the P B on one piece of bread, the J on another and then put a third piece of bread in between them, like a Big Mac or a club sandwich.
But since this was written before that marvelous bread slicing machine, that of course meant that people had to slice all of that bread themselves.
So if you want to be 100 accurate, find some crab apple jelly, a serrated knife and start cutting Buster.
But there's another important detail to point out here.
Julia said the recipe, as far as she knew, was her own original recipe.
Here's the thing about historians.
The only proof they have to go on is documentation.
Surviving writings photos menus, physical objects or other primary source material.
Those are how we can piece together the facts and the timelines of the past.
Is it reasonable to assume that before 1901 someone somewhere smeared peanut paste and jelly on bread that they squished together?
Yeah, totally, that's reasonable.
There are a lot of people with good ideas and hey, they all have the same tongues that we have, so sure someone could have foreseen the deliciousness that awaited them.
Totally.
But if they did, they didn't write it down.
Or maybe they did write it down, but it got thrown away or destroyed.
If so, we'll never know.
Of course, there's always a chance that there is some proof of another PB&J timeline out there, undiscovered, that someone could stumble upon.
Who knows?
Some historian's discovery could change everything we know about PB&J history.
But nothing is going to change the fact that millions of people find it to be delicious, economical and easy.
Currently, the earliest documented proof we have of a peanut butter and jelly is Julia David Chandler in 1901, so she's going to get the credit.
Congrats to her.
And congrats to us, because since that fancy tea sandwich recipe, the PB&J has grown in popularity.
The popularity started by making big fans of soldiers in the American Army.
All of the necessary ingredients were standard rations for soldiers during World War II.
And by and large, they agreed.
It was a delicious combo.
When they returned, their taste buds didn't change.
They didn't disappear.
So they returned with a taste for this sandwich.
And sales of the ingredients kept climbing.
It's also worth pointing out that the ingredients are pretty cheap compared to other things on your grocery shelves.
So that's always been a big plus for the old PB&J.
But perhaps the biggest boon to the rise of the PB&J is that they are simple.
This sandwich, thanks to the three simple and easily available ingredients, was one of the first foods that was not just delicious but easy enough that a kid could head into the kitchen and assemble one all on their own, without any adult supervision.
Three cheers for the PB&J.
Well, all right, that's episode 114 of The Past and the Curious.
I am and have been and will continue to be Mick Sullivan.
Thank you so much for listening.
I hope that, even if you don't like or eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, that this was a fun educational experience for you and you got something from it, even if it was the knowledge of Greyblade, which was one of my favorite takeaways.
You know what?
I am so happy that my friends from Tumble were a part of this.
This was kicked off by them reaching out to me.
And Marshall and Lindsay.
The science podcast Tumble is a huge.
It's always been a huge inspiration to me.
I love what they do.
So it's really cool that I get to be friends with people who I admire so much.
And we get to share our love of knowledge with everyone.
So, marshall lindsey, anything to add?
Well mick, thanks so much for having us on and we're gonna go get a quick bite to eat.
Talk to you soon.
Thank you so much for having us and telling us all about peanut butter and jelly, so we can appreciate it so much more, and i'll let you know when my celery crop comes in and i uh, can do something about ants on a log.
Remember i promised I'm sure that's bound to be one of my best episodes, most listened to ever, right.
Anyway, let's thank Patreon people.
I'm going to call back actually to last month, because one of the Patreon thank you sponsorships was sent out to Anders Stangeland in Canada.
And I have since learned, or been reminded of the fact, that Anders did the.
You Have 30 Seconds about Jacques Plant.
Who is the reason for goalies wearing hockey masks?
I just love that.
To keep things international though, we're going to go to another hemisphere.
Ben and Lucy Schwartz.
Hello in Australia.
Hello from Kentucky.
I am super excited that you're out there.
I'm super excited that you enjoy the show.
And hello to you.
I hope 2026 is going great.
And we're going to keep it in the same hemisphere.
Sasha Wright in New Zealand.
What is going on?
I love this.
I love everyone down there.
This is fantastic.
Um, and cool information that I know about Sasha Wright is that uh, you live near, about an hour away, from where Richard Pierce flew that plane in New Zealand that we did an episode about.
So how cool is that?
I love it.
Love it.
Love it.
Love it.
Thanks, Sasha.
I also have to thank Joni Cutler in Celebration, Florida.
Joni, let's celebrate my friend.
Thanks a million, Joni.
I really hope you enjoyed this show.
And the last but not least, y'all.
I got to send out a thank you, a shout out, to Matthew Heine in Washington DC.
Matthew, I am so glad that you are listening to the show, too.
You know, you're around history all the time.
I bet you have some pretty awesome field trips in your life.
It's one of the things I've always wondered about.
I bet it would be awesome.
Matthew Heine, thank you so much.
Oh, wait, and how could I forget?
There's a birthday that I need to say.
Happy birthday to someone.
Jude Cochis in Washington State.
Happy birthday.
I know it's just a couple weeks away.
I hope you have a really good one.
And everyone else out there, thank you too.
If you want to support the show, all you have to do is tell somebody about it.
So go for it.
And I'll leave you with this.
I'm going to be launching a Kickstarter very soon for a new book.
So I hope that makes you happy.
And I think you'll love the book.
I really do.
So just be on the lookout for that announcement.
It's coming down the pipeline very soon.
If you are hearing this in real time.
I hope to see you either in Owingsville Kentucky, for the 150th anniversary of the Kentucky Meat Shower, or I want to see you in Boston on April 26th.
I will be there that day.
It's a Sunday at noon for that. podcast festival that I always have such a joy doing.
So thank you all very much.
Please be well.
Please find love where you can.
