soy peanut butter

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HISTORY OF SOYNUT BUTTER

In China there is said?? to be a product resembling soynut butter called huangdou jiang , however nothing is known of its history or present use. Soynut butter is unknown elsewhere in East Asia.

In Europe the earliest known reference to soynut butter was during the 1970s (when??), when Itona Products Ltd. in Wigan, England, began to manufacture a tasty product called Beannoot Butter.

In the United States, soynut butter has a surprisingly long history. The world's earliest known reference to soynut butter was in 1916, when John L. Kellogg (mentioned earlier) was granted the first patent on the product. (How make it??) Piper and Morse in The Soybean (1923) described soynut

butter saying,

Roasted soybeans may be ground into a fine paste and with the addition of a refined oil, as peanut oil, mixed thoroughly through the paste, a sort of butter, resembling peanut butter, may be prepared. This product, if the beans are roasted simply to a light brown color, has much the same appearance as peanut butter and a very agreeable flavor.

In about 1929 T.A. Van Gundy made America's first commercial soynut butter at his La Sierra Industries in southern California. He sold the product through local health food stores. Called Beanut Butter, it was made from oil roasted soynuts that he also made. In 1936 Mildred Lager's House of Better Living Catalog in Los Angeles listed a "Soy Bean Butter (like peanut butter)." Lager (1942a) described two types of soynut butter; toasted and raw. The raw was made from raw soy flour blended with soy oil. (The maker was clearly not aware of the problem of trypsin inhibitors in raw soy flour; see Chapter 7.) Lager also gave lots of soynut butter recipes. An article in the May 1943 issue of Soybean Digest carried a recipe for "Soy Butter" made from oil roasted soynuts with added oil.

In 1967 Pichel and Weiss were granted America's second patent for soynut butter (US Patent 3,346,390). In 1971 Badenhop and Hackler suggested grinding soynuts with oil to make a peanut butter analog. In 1972 Herbert Horn, a student in the University of Illinois Department of Food Science, wrote an excellent master's thesis entitled Quality of Soybean Butter as Determined by Processing Variables . The key step in his process was inactivation of the beany flavor in soybeans by a bicarbonate blanch, which also removed flatulence-causing oligosaccharides. He ground his oil roasted soynuts with 8% oil, plus salt and dextrose.

Horn mentioned that there was a commercial soynut butter on the market in 1972 but he did not mention the name of the manufacturer. Subama Food Company in Iowa started to make soynut butter commercially in 1973; unsalted and made from oil roasted soynuts, it was sold only in bulk (30-pound pails), mostly to local food co-ops.

The heat waves and drought of the summer of 1980 devastated peanut crops across the US. By October a major peanut and peanut butter crisis had surfaced. The US peanut harvest was down by almost 50%, the price of unprocessed peanuts had more than tripled, and the price of peanut butter had roughly doubled. Big food processing companies rushed to develop a low-cost replacement, using soynut butter as a peanut butter extender. Food Engineering (1981) ran two articles on the subject. A leading contender was Archer Daniel Midland's Peanut Spread, which came in two types: a smooth version contained 40% peanuts and 60% NutriBits full fat soy particles that can be roasted with the peanuts before grinding; and a chunky version containing 45% peanuts and 55% NutriBits. ADM did not market the products. They simply developed the prototypes and offered the formulas with their NutriBits to any company wishing to make and market them. It is not known?? if the product was ever commercialized; it could have sold for $0.45 per pound less than peanut butter, which would make it competitive even in times of normal peanut prices. Kraft also announced its readiness to release a similar product if the 1981 peanut crop was poor. In 1981 INARI began testing two soynut butters; a natural and a commercial. Also in 1981 Shurtleff gave a review of soynut butter in the US, its history, and its future prospects.

To counter astronomical peanut butter prices some people began making soynut butter at home. A typical recipe called for soaking 1 cup soybeans in water for 5 hours, draining for 1 hour, then deep frying to make oil roasted soynuts. These were then mixed with 2 tablespoons oil (ideally peanut oil) and 1/4 teaspoon salt, and ground in a hand mill or Champion-type juicer.

Hopefully the next time there is a peanut shortage, soyfoods companies will be ready to take advantage of the golden opportunity to put a tasty, low-priced soynut butter on the market and to once again demonstrate the soybean's amazing versatility.