Peanut Butter and Phenomenology

A few weeks back I was playing a twenty-questions-type game (headbandz) at a party, and someone asked whether the object in question, Peanut Butter, is sweet.
My response was an unvoiced yes. I expected to hear the rest of the group respond in the same way, but my expectations were totally defeated at the sound of a confident no.

It seems that some people do not consider Peanut Butter fit for the adjective sweet.

I will make my case here, as I did at the party:
Peanut Butter is basically two ingredients (peanuts and salt) removed from cake-icing (which is a delicious blend of fat and sugar.) That cake-icing is sweet does not automatically make Peanut Butter sweet, but I think it's helpful to think of it in this way. Peanut Butter is not like tomato paste or Marmite.
One would not spread Peanut Butter on a pizza. Pizza is a savoury dish (as are most pasta dishes) and will not tolerate the inclusion of sweet flavours. (This has occasionally been disputed by those who order pineapple on their pizza, and to those people I have nothing further to say.)
Cake, on the other hand, is a suitable canvas on which to spread Peanut Butter. White bread with Peanut Butter is more conventional, but is nonetheless something very much like cake with icing. They are at the least in the same category--two points on the same scale of intensity. To spread Marmite on white bread brings it to a different place from the cake; the scale changes from sweet to savoury.

Regardless of all my presuppositions, some in this world have apparently decided that the flavour of Peanut Butter is best defined as sweet.

Where do you stand on this issue, oh my reader?


Is Peanut Butter sweet?
Yes
No
Compared to Eggnog, nothing is sweet.
  
Pollhost

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Peanut butter: Ewwwww. Gag. Cough. Gasp. Can't breathe.....

Eggnog: Smooth and creamy. Mmmmmm. Why is the rum always gone?

Jack said...

I am sorry for your loss. (Though it means more peanut-based snacks for the rest of us...)

What about Eggnog Butter?
I suppose that would be something like Eggnog-flavoured icing... But it's a tempting thought in any case.
I'll have to try that sometime.

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