Johnny came marching home with peanut butter and jelly

Today's question:

My daughter and I were wondering if you know who invented peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches.

This is the second time in the past week or so that parents have asked me to help educate their children. Since I am concerned about the future of America's youth, I find this worrisome.

Anyway, you can't really say any one person invented the peanut- butter-and-jelly sandwich. I suppose if you wanted you could tell your children you did in the same manner I told my daughters I had invented ice cream. I suspect they didn't believe me.

The classic PB&J came from the convergence of three culinary and marketing developments.

One was the introduction in the 1920s of sliced bread packaged in waxed paper. This got people eating more bread.

Next, around 1918 a man named Welch developed "Grapelade," a commercially viable grape jelly that was very popular with troops during World War I.

As for peanut butter, we all learned in school it was developed by George Washington Carver, but in fact it has been around in one form or another since the days of the ancient Incans.

Peanut butter was a big hit at the 1898 World's Fair in Chicago and became a luxury item. Posh tea shops sold stuff like peanut butter and pimento sandwiches, the thought of which makes me queasy. As time went by, the stuff got cheaper and peanut butter — a good source of protein — and grape jelly were popular with the troops in World War II, who brought that taste home with them to all those little Baby Boomers with Gene Autry lunch boxes.