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Why Do People Put Peanuts In Their Coke? We Get To The Bottom Of It

Sara TraynorBy

Perhaps you Southern readers will laugh when we tell you that we’ve never heard of putting peanuts in Coke before. Sorry, but to be fair, it’s an unexpected combo. Although we’d be willing to give it a go, we need to get to the bottom of the peanuts and Coke tradition before we do any mixing, drinking, and chewing.

On August 14th, Esquire published a story about the longstanding Southern tradition of putting peanuts in Coca-Cola. Writer Justin Kirkland noted that he was introduced to the sweet and salty combo during childhood when his dad poured half a bag of salted peanuts into an open bottle of Coke. After his snack time awakening, Kirkland was forever changed.

The saltiness from the peanuts mixes wonderfully with the sweetness from the Coke, according to Kirkland. And the peanuts preserve their crunch and make for the ultimate snack when your Coke is gone. “Think of it like the working man’s strawberries in champagne,” Kirkland wrote.

Back in 2013, food historian Rick McDaniel did his peanuts and Coke homework for the Coca-Cola company website. In an effort to track down where the tradition came from, McDaniel reached out to John T. Edge, Director of the Southern Foodways Alliance at the Center for Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi.

Edge believes that the peanuts and Coke combo “was likely born of country store commerce. Think of Coke and peanuts as a prototype fast-food for the 20th century South.” McDaniel added that Southerners have probably been combining the two since the 1920s when shelled peanuts began being sold at country stores.

But the question still remains: Why?

John Masters from Tampa, Florida told McDaniel that he thinks peanuts and Coke “may go back to working people who may not have had a place to wash up.” Pouring peanuts directly into your Coke bottle left your dirty hands out of the equation.

But Edge thinks the combo came about as a way to eat and drink while driving a stick shift. And another Southerner McDaniel talked to, James Brown, believes peanuts and Coke were combined to leave one hand free for smoking or working.

But still, some people are completely against the idea of peanuts in Coke.

The mysterious origin story of peanuts and Coke may never come to light. But as any Southerner will tell you, peanuts and Coke (real Coke — not diet) is the MVP of snacks. Okay fine, we’ll give it try.

Coca-Cola isn’t just for mixing with peanuts! It can actually be used as several household and kitchen hacks:

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Bottoms up!