This is where the ‘cheese’ in peanut butter comes from
Today is National Peanut Butter Day. At least, it is in America. We’re happily joining in on this smooth and creamy day. Still, we started wondering about something. Everyone knows that peanut butter contains no cheese. So why is it called that? It all has to do with Suriname and butter.
Here’s a quick peanut butter history lesson: the word peanut butter is more than 100 years older than the spreadable treat.
Pienda-dokoen
In eighteenth-century Suriname, the word pienda-dokoen was used for a block-shaped mass of mashed peanuts. Slices were cut from the block to put on bread, just like cheese. In 1783, a German missionary therefore translated the word as pinda-käse, which was translated into Dutch as pindakaas.
Mr. Cornflakes
It was not until 110 years later, in 1893, that peanut butter as we know it was invented by none other than John Harvey Kellogg — yes, the one behind the cornflakes!
Calvé
It was only introduced in the Netherlands after the Second World War, in 1948. By the French (!) Calvé brothers. They had an oil and sauce factory in Delft. And since they already used a lot of peanuts, they decided to launch the American product on the market.
Butter Act
Why wasn’t it simply called peanut butter, like the English peanut butter or French beurre de cacahuètes? At the time, butter was a protected term; under the Dutch Butter Act of 1889 (yes, it really existed), only real butter could be called butter. A perfectly sensible rule, by the way. That’s why they fell back on the Dutch corruption of the Surinamese pienda-dokoen, namely: pindakaas.
Truly Dutch?
So peanut butter is certainly not as ‘truly Dutch’ as you might have thought. But who cares? It’s simply delicious!
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