The jelly. The peanut butter. The bread. We've all grown up on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches since our moms first started packing our lunches to bring to school. If you didn't have a PB and J, where were your priorities? Unless you had a peanut allergy. Totally understandable. And while all of our moms are superheroes in their own right, we must admit that they did not invent the legendary sandwich. So the question remains: Who invented PB and J sandwiches? Let's start with the ingredients.
The Sliced Bread
Everyone always talks about how something is "the greatest thing since sliced bread," right? Well, don't you ever wonder who thought of the idea to slice it up? Otto Frederick Rohwedder invented a bread slicer in the 1900s, but bakers thought it wouldn't sell well so they rebuffed it. Little did they know how successful it would be later on.
So Rohwedder kept fixing it to eventually make it the best bread slicer that it could be, advertising his machine as "the greatest step forward in baking since bread was wrapped." The slogan eventually evolved to the one we know and quote on a regular basis: "the greatest thing since sliced bread."
The Jelly
While jam is typically my preference (don't mind the crushed fruit in there), the jelly as we know it found in our PB and Js is courtesy of a Mr. Paul Welch. He secured a patent for pureeing grapes and turning them into jelly in 1917 and turned his Concord grapes into Grapelade (think marmalade or Gatorade). Spreading Grapelade on bread became popular when soldiers came home after WWI. But where does the peanut butter come in?
The Peanut Butter
For all my friends with a peanut butter allergy, my heart goes out to you. I pair this spread with bananas, apples, and sweet potatoes on the daily, and when I studied abroad I even brought boxes of it because I'd heard that London doesn't have peanut butter. Who is spreading this false rumor? Ah well, just goes to show my commitment for the PB.
Anyway, the first incarnation of the peanut butter we know and love nowadays came about in the 1880s thanks to Dr. Ambrose Straub, a St. Louis physician who made a peanut paste for his geriatric patients to help them swallow, or who had bad teeth.
Simultaneously, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg (think Fruit Loops and Frosted Flakes) was the first to patent a process to manufacture peanut butter. The world was first graced with peanut butter's presence at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. While peanut butter is now found in nearly every grocery store nationwide, it was essentially considered a delicacy in the 1900s. You'd find it being served in upscale tea rooms in New York City with watercress, pimentos, or on toast triangles with soda crackers.
The Sandwich
The question of who invented PB and J sandwiches—or at least who wrote it down as a recipe—can be answered with the name of Julia Davis Chandler. In 1901, she was the first to name this type of sandwich on record in the Boston Cooking School Magazine of Culinary Science & Domestic Economics, recommending currant or crab-apple jelly to make for a very "original" sandwich.
While at the time the PB and J was not a food of the masses yet, Joseph Rosefield turned peanut oil into a saturated fat in 1922. Perhaps not the healthiest choice in the long-run, this landmark alteration prevented peanut butter from going rancid so soon and from sticking to the roof of your mouth. He called this new brand of peanut butter "Skippy."
Peanut butter also became more commercialized in the 1920s, decreasing in price so most families could afford it and adding more sugar for the tykes to rave about. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, PB and J sandwiches took off, as they were considered a protein-enriched, easily assembled, and inexpensive meal.
Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches also rose to prominence among soldiers during WWII. Soldiers found peanut butter to be a snack that was easily portable along long marches in addition to their protein power. And while soldiers had already grown accustomed to making Grapelade sandwiches during WWI, the introduction of sliced bread only made the combination along with peanut butter a natural fit.
And post-war to now, America's love for PB and J has remained steadfast. It just goes to show that the more things change, the more they stay the same. So now that we've solved who invented PB and J sandwiches, should we take on the task of who invented PB and banana? Maybe yes, maybe no. But nonetheless, you know with either choice you've got a perfect sandwich to bring to your internship for lunch tomorrow.