Greetings, my beautiful lovelies! It's Emmy! Welcome back to another episode of Hard Times,
where I explore food and recipes from times of food scarcity and hardship.
Today, I'm gonna be making a very simple recipe that was suggested to me by Jerry.
Jerry, thank you so much for bringing this to my attention. I have never heard of this particular
combination before, and it is peanut butter and mayo. In a sandwich.
Mayo as in mayonnaise.
I do have plenty of mayonnaise recipes.
In my retro/vintage recipe playlist, if you haven't seen those, I'll put them up there.
Lot's of Jell-O and mayo, but I've never had it with peanut butter before.
So, this recipe stems from the times of the Great Depression, where there was not a lot to go around
and so things like peanut butter were a great way to get some protein and stretch the dollar.
So you just use plain white bread, add some peanut butter, and then various things were added to it.
So besides testing peanut butter and mayo today, I'm also gonna to be tasting peanut butter and onion,
and peanut butter and pickle.
So, I found a pretty well researched article about the history of the peanut butter and mayo sandwich,
so I'll put that link down below. I'll also put a link to the New York Times, that expands on the idea and history
of the peanut butter and pickle sandwich.
A lunch counter offering during the Great Depression. Really simple, easy, and very cost effective meal.
So, in that article, the writer, Dwight Garner, mentions that Ernest Hemingway loved to have
peanut butter and onions sandwiches, so I'm gonna go make that one, as well.
So as far as the peanut butter and mayo sandwich goes, it's said to have come from the South
and continues to be consumed there, and then made its way up north. And in the Midwest, it's often served
with something else. So peanut butter, mayo, and bacon. Peanut butter, mayo, and banana.
But down in the South, usually it's just peanut butter and mayo.
The combination of salty and sweet together.
And, apparently, a lot of people still eat their sandwiches this way. I've never, so this will be my first time.
So in terms of my own personal preferences, I'm not a huge peanut butter fan. I don't dislike it by any means
in fact, I actually really love it on my burgers.
You take a great burger and you just put a little peanut butter in there and it's just excellent.
A little bit of sweetness, lots of richness, it's a great cheese substitute.
I know it sounds weird, but don't knock it 'til you try it because it's so, so good.
So I'm thinking that this peanut butter and mayo combination is gonna be a logical one.
Pickles on the other hand? I'm not a huge fan of pickles, at all, just don't really like them, but again,
that sweet, tangy, salty combination might actually work.
Onions. I have a vidalia onion, a onion that comes from the South. It's very, very sweet.
I think this might be, again, a logical combination in the sense of kind of a burger.
You have that salty, kind of spicy onion flavor with the peanut butter, but we shall see.
Alright! Let's go ahead and make this! There's not much to it, as you can imagine.
It's probably one of the simplest recipes I've ever made.
I'm gonna take 2 slices of white bread.
Ooh!
Let's get another slice. 'Cause we want our sandwich to be happy. Okay! Like that!
And we're gonna take our peanut butter, this is just the jarred variety, nothing fancy here.
This happens to be crunchy, but we don't really care in our house.
And now I'm gonna put some mayo on this side, and in some of the recipes I've read,
they actually combine the mayo and the peanut butter together. But I'm gonna do it separately,
I feel like you can actually taste it better that way. Or at least I imagine.
So now we're gonna take our 2 halves and put them together.
Make them friendly.
Okay, so that's what the sandwich looks like, you can see a little bit of the mayo.
Definitely see the peanut butter in there.
Smells fine, smells like peanut butter.
I'm gonna taste these all at once, so I'm gonna set that one aside.
Next, I'm gonna tackle the peanut butter and pickle sandwich.
Slather a slice.
And now I'm gonna take some homemade bread n' butter pickles,
these were made by my aunt Susie.
Have you seen my pickle cupcake recipe?
I'll put the link down below.
Ding!
So for the last one, which is the peanut butter and onion, I'm gonna cut up a vidalia onion
and apparently, Hemingway liked a thick slice of onion, so...here we go.
Alright, now come the onion rings.
Straight up onion.
That's a lot of onion.
Okay, close it up
Peanut butter and onion.
Okay, so, sandwiches are prepared. Let's give them a taste.
I'm gonna try the peanut butter and mayo combination, first.
It looks like a regular peanut butter sandwich, to me.
Until you look closely, and see that there is, indeed, a layer of mayonnaise.
Alright, here we go. Itadakimasu!
Hm!
Don't you just love the way white bread and peanut butter bind together into this mass of glue
that kind of just enrobes your tongue and kind of glues your jaws shut.
At any rate, it's not bad. I would say, it's just a slightly more salty and a little bit tangy
-a just almost imperceptible tanginess - in the sandwich.
It's not bad.
Mmm-hmm
Go away, Winston.
I think for those that are mayonnaise-phobic, I wouldn't recommend telling anyone that there is mayo in here.
In fact, I think if you were, especially, to incorporate it into the peanut butter, I don't think they would
detect it, at all. They would detect that something's different, but they wouldn't associate it with mayonnaise.
But it works!
And this is peanut butter/pickle.
There are bread n' butter pickles.
I'm not really looking forward to this one so much because I don't really like pickles, but
here we go! Bottom's up!
*falling sound effect*
Hmm!
That works, too!
Actually, that works really well!
I still don't really care for pickles so much, but it really, really works.
I think what's better about this one than the first one is the texture.
The pickles have a really great crunch. Which goes really well with that whole mushy combination
of white bread and peanut butter that kinda glues everything together.
The crunch is really nice because you get a little bit of variation
and...crunchy sensation?
Mmm-hmm
And in terms of flavor, it works really well, too. The acidity of the pickles is a nice kind of counter point
to the fatty, crunchy, nutty peanut butter.
And the sweetness of the pickles goes well with the peanut butter, as well.
That actually works, it almost makes me...almost like pickles.
Wow!
Lastly, we have this one. Which is the peanut butter and onion. My onion is kind of falling out.
Now, this one sounds pretty good. I love raw onion, although I don't like the lingering effects of raw onion
or raw garlic, I do love them while I'm eating them.
Alright, so here we go. Fat slices of vidalia onions with my peanut butter, here we go.
That one works, too!
Although this is really different than the other 2 because this one has the most kind of vegetal crunch.
And the onions are a little bit juicy, and they have a nice crunch, as you can hear.
They're sweet, but they also have a nice spicy kick to them.
I like this version!
I think I like this one the most. The peanut butter and onions are actually an excellent combination.
Kind of imagine, y'know, saute sauce or peanut sauce?
Mmm-hmm!
Mmm-hmm
This is really good!
I think Hemingway was onto something.
Apparently, he called this the Mount Everest special.
So there you have it, 3 peanut butter sandwiches from the Great Depression.
3 different versions OF the 3. I think the onion one was definitely my favorite.
If you've got some peanut butter and bread lying around and some other ingredients,
I would suggest totally trying these just as a little simple thought experiment.
And, yeah, thanks again, Jerry, for suggesting this recipe.
Thank you guys so much for watching, I hope you guys enjoy that one. I hope you guys learn something.
Leave me a comment down below, let me know if there's a recipe that you'd like me to test out or try.
Share this video with your friends, it really helps me out.
Follow me on social media. Subscribe. Like this video, and I'll see you in the next one.
Too-da-loo! Take care, bye!
