According to Wikipedia, “Recipe number 51 on the list of 105 peanut uses describes a “peanut butter” that led to the belief that Carver invented the modern product with this name. It is a recipe for making a typical gritty, oily peanut butter of the period. It does not have the key steps (which would be difficult to achieve in a kitchen) for manufacturing stable, creamy commercial peanut butter that was developed in 1922 by Joseph L. Rosefield. Carver is also often incorrectly credited with the invention of the original oily type of peanut butter. In 1890, even before Carver was in college, George A. Bayle Jr. of St. Louis marketed a crude form of peanut butter as a food easily eaten by people with poor teeth.”
Well, there goes my entire February’s worth of public schooling. For a while as a child I actually thought Carver invented the peanut. Like, from scratch. And now I find he didn’t even do peanut butter?! I am so disappointed and disillusioned.
(Okay, so he was a really neat guy. But he did not invent peanut butter! Or, for that matter, the peanut.)
No doubt this revisionism is simply a desperate attempt by Carver’s heirs to head off all the peanut allergy lawsuits hanging over their heads.
"Oh, would you look at that! Turns out it wasn’t Great-grandpa’s fault after all! It was that bastard Rosefield’s doing! He probably invented all that peanut-compatible food processing machinery too! Go take a chunk out of his ass instead!"*
*Actually, according to his biographers, Carver was known to his great-grandchildren by the affectionate nickname “Pea-pappy.”
Don’t leave us hanging like that Zsofia – give the reference.
The Wikipedia article on Peanut Butter gives a history, but doesn’t give the information you do – it simply says that Carver didn’t nvent it, and gives a reference:
The quote you give comes friom their entry on George Washington Carver:
The “Peanut Butter” article notes that Rose Davis of Algierville, New York made it in the 1840s, but she was copying what she’d seen in Cuba. And that the Incas, far earlier, were reported to have made a paste of peanuts.
Well, it’s not like Wikipedia is the world’s best scholarly engine. That quote is from the George Washington Carver article. Here’s a summation of the point:
So in other words, all that stuff we were supposed to be so proud of him wasn’t really very important.
It’s from the Wikipedia article on the American Dad episode Black Mystery Month, which manages to parody Da Vinci Code, National Treasure, Peanut Butter, and Wikipedia. I gotta look this up – I’m much too far outta the loop.
I keep thinking of the episode of NYPD Blue where Sipowicz was interrogating a black man. He started off “I know that that great African-American George Washington Carver invented the peanut. Now, where were you last night?”
Thank you. Actually I have no idea whether Carver had great-grandchildren or not; but if he didn’t, I’m sure he made a substitute out of peanuts.
History is all very well and good, but unverifiable anecdotes are what really separate the statistics from the legends. Dammit, I don’t need historians to tell me that Carver was a flawed, often-fallible human being! I need the mythological Carver as mad scientist, who reflexively believed that peanuts were the answer to all life’s problems!
I refuse to take this lying down. I sincerely believe that George Washington Carver has the potential to be the next Chuck Norris internet phenomenon. Except instead of the tough-guy thing, he’s the guy who attacks everything with peanuts. Everyone should help out with their own GWC Facts.
Throughout his career, GWC produced over 770 hybrid strains of peanut. The four most intelligent strains carried on his work to produce over 11,500 new hybrid strains of peanut.
Out of peanut butter. It melted in the Georgia sun.
Completely irrelevant (and insane) anecdote: I had a friend whose cousin took her kids out of public school to home-school them when she “discovered” that the kids knew who George Washington Carver was, but not George Washington.
How about that? :rolleyes:
This is entirely appropriate, since George Washington Carver’s research established the original pay scale that still determines the modern public schoolteacher’s salary even today.
Since he was a gay man, Carver never married or produced children. And at that time, gay couples such as him and his lover Austin W. Curtis, Jr. were not permitted to adopt, so there would not be any adopted children to produce grandchildren or great-grandchildren, either.
An episode of the animated series The Tick featured several great Scientists from history trapped in a cage. GWC lamented that they would be out of that cage “If only he had some peanuts.” When he does get ahold of peanuts he creates a peanut fueled engine of destruction that also utilizes peanuts as ammunition.