March 8th is National Peanut Cluster Day! Melted chocolate mixed with peanuts makes a perfect combination for sweet and salty deliciousness!
- In 1847 Joesph Fry found a way to convert Cocoa into moldable solid chocolate.
- 1900 – Several labor-saving machines are brought in to plant, cultivate, harvest, pick, clean, and deshell the peanuts — which ultimately skyrockets the peanut production in America.
- In 1912, in a copper kettle at the Standard Candy Company at Clark & First Avenue in Nashville, TN, America’s first combination candy bar was invented.
- In 1930, American inventor Elmo Lanzi patented a Chocolate Peanut Cluster Dipping Machine, automating the slow process of hand-enrobing. “Think of turning out 450 pounds of luscious, attractive Chocolate Peanut Clusters,” the advertisement trumpets.
- Peanuts, which originated in South America, were brought to West Africa by Portuguese and Spanish traders. Peanuts became a staple crop for West Africans, and came to the Southern U.S. with the slave trade around the late 1600s.
- It didn’t take long for confectioneries to add the now readily available peanuts to melted chocolate.
- ‘Peanut Cluster’ is referred to a type of candy that mixes melted chocolate and peanuts.
- The first retail peanut clusters were introduced in 1912 and were called the Goo Goo Cluster.
- These crunchy treats are a perfect combination of a sweet and salty deliciousness.
- There are several versions of peanut clusters including caramel clusters, butterscotch clusters and chocolate peanut clusters.
- Peanuts have a higher antioxidant capacity over grapes, green tea, tomatoes, spinach, carrots and many more.
- One confectioner substituted pecans for peanuts in a caramel-nut confection, and added four pecan halves as “feet” to the bottom of the oval-shaped candy. These became known as “turtles.”
- Peanuts are the seventh most valuable crop in the U.S. and have a farm value of over one billion U.S. dollars.
- Astronaut Allen B. Sheppard brought peanuts with him to the moon.
- During World War II the Emporia Wholesale Coffee Company “shipped approximately 50,000 pounds of chocolate peanut clusters weekly for consumption by those on the fighting front.”
- Peanut clusters have been around for many years dating way before 1912 when they were made popular by the Goo Goo Cluster.
- A roundish mound of caramel, marshmallow nougat, fresh roasted peanuts and real milk chocolate; its renegade shape was more difficult to wrap than the conventional rectangular or square shapes of the day.
- More importantly, this was the first time multiple elements were being mass-produced in a retail confection.
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