How The South Starting Adding Peanuts To Coca-Cola

While it might sound strange, the salty tradition of mixing salty roasted peanuts and Coca-Cola soda is a culinary oddity dating back at least a century in the Southern U.S.

In the 1920s, Southern blue-collar workers needed a snack that provided calories, some nutrients, refreshment, and hydration. Both peanuts and Coca-Cola were inexpensive choices.

Food historians hypothesize that plunking nuts down into a bottle of Coke created a drinkable, hands-off snack that workers with dirty or greasy hands could enjoy on the job.

Some think that the combo caught on when workers purchased bottles of Coke from wagons pedaling their fare around job sites, which offered soda and nuts.

The largely blue-collar worker population who put this drink on the map struck gold with its sweet and salty combo, which is just as refreshing today as it was a hundred years ago.