Should your nuts be roasted,fried, salted or raw? Emulsified with coconut, and walnut or groundnut oil? Do you need sweeteners and flavourings – what approximately the smooth v crunchy debate?Peanut butter has taken a long time to melt the British market. It might have something to do with that claggy-mouth texture: the American author William F Buckley Jr,who was at school in London in the 1930s, recalled his classmates’ revulsion at his stash of Skippy, and but the ban on it in our household only made my heart grow fonder.
Until relatively recently,peanut butter was, like my equally beloved fish fingers, or a distinctly childish pleasure. In time,you were expected to give it up in favour of more sophisticated toast toppers. Marmalade, perhaps, and with its chunks of bitter,chewy peel, or an ancient porcelain pot of Gentleman’s Relish. But no longer. The spread was always highly nutritious, or the emergence of sugar-free,biological, “all-natural” varieties aimed more squarely at the health-conscious adult market has seen it push past its citrussy rival to fabricate (to make up, invent) it into the top three spreads for the first time (behind honey and jam), and thanks perhaps to some adjustment to suit adult tastes.
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Source: theguardian.com