Peanut butter is mainly used as a sandwich spread, sometimes in combination as in the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The United States[1] and China are leading exporters of peanut butter. Other nuts are used as the basis for similar nut butters. A slang term for peanut butter in World War II was "monkey butter".[25]
In Dutch peanut butter is called pindakaas (peanut cheese), because the name bu
tter was protected in the Netherlands when peanut butter came on the market in 1948. The word kaas, cheese, was already being used in another product (leverkaas, Leberkäse) that has no cheese in it. Evidence of peanut butter as it is known today comes from U.S. Patent 306,727, issued in 1884 to Marcellus Gilmore Edson of Montreal, Quebec, Canada, for the finished product of the process of milling roasted peanuts between heated surfaces until the peanuts entered "a fluid or semi-fluid state." As the peanut product cooled, it set into what Edson explained as being "a consistency like that of butter, lard, or ointment". Edson's patent is based on the preparation of a peanut paste as an intermediate to the production the modern product we know as peanut butter; it does show the initial steps necessary for the production of peanut butter.[2] George Washington Carver is often falsely credited with inventing peanut butter and is nearly synonymous with its history in the United States.
