Most Americans think Peanut Butter is an ‘All-American’ classic. Sorry, folks… Peanut Butter was invented by a Canadian Pharmacist! But it’s a great story that parallels a couple of other iconic food discov-eries that were made ‘accidentally’ by US tinkerers…
“The spread’s earliest formal origin traces back to a Canadian chemist and pharmacist, Marcellus Gilmore Edson, from Montreal,” the Peanut Bureau of Canada confirms. “In 1884, Edson pat-ented a method for milling roasted peanuts into a ‘peanut paste’ — an early version of what we now know as peanut butter.”
Who?
Marcellus Gilmore Edson (photo, top of page) was a pharm-acist (and later, a real estate investor) who wanted to cre-ate a soft food that folks recovering from serious illnesses could chew and digest easily.
Of course… Many Americans think George Washington Carver invented peanut butter. Some even think he invented the peanut!
In reality, the US National Peanut Board says: “He was one of the greatest inventors in American history, discovering over 300 hundred uses for peanuts including chili sauce, shampoo, shaving cream and glue. He was a pioneer in the agri-cultural world and many refer to him as father of the peanut industry.”
In 1885, Dr John Harvey Kellogg (the creator of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes) patented a process for creating peanut butter from raw peanuts.
In 1903, Dr. Ambrose Straub of St. Louis, Missouri, patented a peanut-butter-making machine.
But Edson – and his original patent – predate them both.
It’s a Canadian staple…
The Canadian Peanut Board reports
- 93 percent of Canadian households consume peanut butter:
- 56 % eat peanut butter at least once per week
- 16 percent eat peanut butter daily
- 81 percent of households always have peanut butter on-hand
- 73 percent say peanut butter is a staple in their pantry
- 90 percent of Canadian kids eat peanut butter, and 61 percent eat it at least weekly”
Parallel discoveries
As we mentioned at the beginning of this post, two actual American Food Classics were also created, by Americans, at the same time, in the latter half of the 19th Century.
Atlanta, Georgia, pharmacist Dr John Stith Pemberton is credited with first mixing up what we know today as Coca Cola on May 8, 1886 – just two years after Edson created the first peanut butter.
Dr. Kellogg started tinkering with a corn-based cereal for invalids in 1877, two years after he patented his formula for making peanut butter. I think it’s safe to assume that his experience with peanut butter, as an ‘invalid food’, got him thinking about the corn porridge he later accidentally dried into flakes…
The 1880s was truly a landmark decade for food-related discoveries that shaped their industries and are still going strong today!
My take
I’m proud, as a Canadian, that one of our own invented something as universal (and eternal?) as peanut butter.
Canadian inventors usually don’t get the kind of respect they deserve – even here at home!
~ Maggie J.