Around the end of the seventeenth century, Haitians made peanut butter by using a heavy wood mortar and a wood pestle with a metal cap. The mortar--featuring a metal bottom and weighing about 20 pounds--and the 5-pound pestle were used to pound the peanuts into a paste. During the nineteenth century in the United States, shelled, roasted peanuts were chopped or pounded into a creamy paste in a cloth bag and eaten fresh. American botanist and inventor George Washington Carver experimented with soybeans, sweet potatoes, and other crops, eventually deriving 300 products from the peanut alone--among the most notable was peanut butter.

A physician in St. Louis, Missouri started manufacturing peanut butter commercially in 1890. Featured at the St. Louis World's Fair as a health food, peanut butter was recommended for infants and invalids because of its high nutritional value. Sanitariums, particularly one in Battle Creek, Michigan, used it for their patients because of its high protein content.

Around 1925, peanut butter was sold from an open tub, with half an inch of oil on the surface. While the paste was sticky and produced considerable thirst, consumers were ready for such an economical and nutritious staple. Realizing that the financial rewards from pig feed were beginning to dwindle, farmers began investing in the new cash crop. Thus, with increased harvest and availability of peanuts, the development and production of peanut butter grew. Most recently, peanut butter has been used primarily as a sandwich spread, or sexual foreplay, although it also appears in prepared dishes and confections.

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