Tea at Trianon: What Happened to Peanut Butter and Jelly?

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, July 24, 2021

What Happened to Peanut Butter and Jelly?

From JSTOR Daily:

There was a time when peanut butter and jelly, spread generously on two simple slices of bread, was a quintessential American meal. But sometimes a great rise can also mean a great fall. And the mighty PB&J has fallen. By the twenty-first century, historian Steve Estes writes, “the PB&J had gone from a symbol of doting mothers and idyllic childhood to a marker of negligent parenting and unhealthy kids.” What took the sandwich from iconic to outdated?

The PB&J was at its peak in the second half of the twentieth century. This was due to a few factors, Estes argues. Because you could take it anywhere, it was a bridge between public and private life: “The sandwich symbolized ‘home,’ but it was just as often eaten outside of the house” on picnics, camping trips, and school cafeterias. It also connected generations—both adults and kids enjoyed it. Lastly, it bridged economic gaps as “a staple of the working class and much of the country during times of economic hardship…. [A]ll classes of Americans munched on PB&Js.” (Read more.)