To some, peanut butter is just the brown stuff in jars that you ate as a kid. But it's so much more. Peanut butter is analogous in American culture to rice in Asian culture – a staple food, regardless of one’s income stratus. To the surprise of some, modern American peanut butter is the legacy of the Kellogg brothers (yes, that Dr. Kellogg) to Southern farmers. George Washington Carver did not invent the peanut butter process (Carver’s crop soil research did show that rotating peanuts with other crops vastly improved the fertility of the soil). When John Harvey Kellogg invented the modern peanut butter manufacturing process, he created the world’s greatest market for the humble peanut and Carver’s synergistic research saved the South. Previously relegated to being boiled like its cousin the pea (peanuts are a legume, actually), they had very little market value. Peanut butter changed everything.

With its high oil content and low sugar content, it’s hard to get properly canned peanut butter to spoil. Put it in tin cans, and it can be shipped across the country and stored on shelves – the perfect food to feed the nations poor youth during the Depression and soldiers during the World Wars. Back in those days, peanut butter was little more than roasted peanuts, salt, and maybe sugar. These were what are now referred to as “natural” peanut butters – peanut butters in which the oil would separate from the proteinous peanut paste and pool at the top of the jar or can. Eventually stabilizing agents such as hydrogenated vegetable oils and palm oil were added. These ingredients keep the peanut butter from “breaking” or separating.

But enough peanut butter wankery – let’s get down to the tasting. For this first tasting, we will be comparing three versions of the Skippy brand. I personally prefer Skippy over Jif or Peter Pan because of Skippy’s superior peanut flavor (although Simply Jif is very good in that respect), thicker texture, and more substantial mouthfeel. The three versions being compared are: Skippy Creamy Original, Skippy Creamy Roasted Honey Nut, and Skippy Natural.

Skippy Creamy Original: This is the OG of peanut butter, yo. The King of the Mountain, The Old Man of the Sea. When I open a jar, an aroma wafts forth -- the peanut aroma much like the fresh roasted Spanish peanuts at a Morrow’s Nut House (if they still exist). Skippy Creamy Original spreads very nicely, even for a thicker peanut butter. It is ground very, very fine and the stabilizers give it a nice smooth mouthfeel when one eats it right off the spoon. There is no back of the mouth bitterness, and the salt-sugar balance is very nice. Because of the thickness, I do not recommend this for Wonder-type breads. A hairy-chested peanut butter like Skippy Creamy Original calls for a multi-grain bread with some substance to it – Roman Meal at the very least, but a nice wheatberry loaf is a perfect match.

Skippy Creamy Roasted Honey Nut: This variant has been on the market for a while, and from the graphics on the label is clearly marketed to kids (rather than mothers). Upon opening, the peanut aroma is more subdued than Original and the added sweetness is also evident. Off the spoon, the first thing that struck me about this is that the peanut butter didn’t taste like it had honey in it. It was sweet, but I wasn’t fooled. I looked at the label, which confirmed my hypothesis. The main sweetening agent by volume was listed as honey, but the flavoring was molasses! That also explains the slightly darker color and slightly more plasticine mouthfeel. This would indeed be very good on a Wonder loaf bread – the sweetness of the Skippy would match well with the insubstantial bready flavor of Wonder. In the end, however, I think I’ll eat this off the spoon rather than on bread.

Skippy Creamy Natural: First a disclaimer – I am a harsh judge of natural peanut butters. I prefer Krema, which is smoother than a prom queen’s thighs and so finely ground as to be nearly liquid. Krema is truly the Mercedes S-Class, Gibson Super 400, the Silver Oak cabernet, and the Leica M3 of peanut butters. While Skippy Creamy Natural is certainly not in the same class with Krema, I think it will fill a market void. It is clearly a less processed peanut butter. The nose – while subdued -- is full of peanut and nothing else, there are only five ingredients (roasted peanuts, sugar, palm oil, salt) and it seems more “natural” (if only in marketing) than the typical partially hydrogenated glorp that passes for peanut butter these days. Neither as sweet as Skippy Roasted Honey Nut, nor as smooth as Skippy Creamy Original, it does have a pronounced peanut flavor. And while there was no pool of peanut oil to be stirred in, there were a few small pea-sized pockets of oil that had separated. The only thing that I really look at in askance with Skippy Creamy Natural is the texture. It is a touch more granular in mouthfeel than Skippy Creamy Original, but that’s not saying much. I would have preferred to see Skippy go even more granular – possibly to the size of salt grains, and either add more sugar or more salt for character. Skippy Creamy Natural needs work – it seems an incomplete, immature peanut butter. At only twenty cents less a jar than Krema, it’s not a great savings if you figure in the value of quality.

Are there better peanut butters out there? Yes. But if I had three dollars, only these three Skippy choices, and a mandate to buy a jar of peanut butter I would have to go with Skippy Creamy Roasted Honey Nut. The molasses aroma and flavor truly puts it over Skippy Creamy Original, and Skippy Natural is a cruiserweight even amongst its Skippy peers. It would have no chance against Krema – the Samoa Joe of natural peanut butters.

Next: Simply Jif, and Jif Creamy go up against this week’s winner – Skippy Roasted Honey Nut Creamy.