It was a wonderful food for people with dental issues, which many folks in the late 19th century apparently had. In 1884, a Canadian chemist/pharmacist named Marcellus Gilmore Edson obtained a patent for his peanut butter. If we fast-forward to North America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, we’ll find a new set of folks attempting to invent a ground peanut spread for the modern day. The history of peanut butter begins with the Inca, who were grinding nuts into a paste hundreds of years ago.

You can find peanut butter in 91% of American households! 91%! I’m pretty sure that’s the first time 91% of Americans have agreed about anything, and it may be the last, but that’s depressing, so let’s move on. The point I’m driving at, albeit in an extremely roundabout way, is that peanut butter has become foundational to American childhood. Peanut butter toast! Peanut butter cups! FLUFFERNUTTER SANDWICHES! (Extra points if it had a red yarn loop for hanging.) You may have eaten ants on a log at summer camp or smeared peanut butter on saltine crackers at your Grandma’s house.

Perhaps you always got a PB&J in your sack lunch for school field trips, or you made a peanut butter and pinecone bird feeder in kindergarten. Maybe not a super entertaining story, but a story nonetheless.

I’m willing to bet that you have a peanut butter story. “A consistency like that of an ointment…”

Saltine crackers with peanut butter