Rachel Eats Stuff: Salted peanuts in Coca-Cola

Americans in the southern states have been consuming the salty, sweet snack for a century

Nibbling on salty peanuts while enjoying a refreshing, chilled drink is a classic combination.

However, in the American South, there’s a century-old tradition that sees the two enjoyed in a slightly less well known manner: putting the peanuts in Coca-Cola.

It’s a simple concept: snip the corner off a packet of salted peanuts, pour a generous amount into a glass bottle of Coke and take a gulp.

Quite how the tradition came about, however, isn’t entirely clear.

It’s thought the sweet and salty combo originated at the start of the 20th century and swiftly spread across the South - from Texas to the Carolinas - where some Americans still enjoy the snack today.

According to food historian Rick McDaniel, the tradition likely began in the 1920s when packets of shelled, salted peanuts first arrived on supermarket shelves.

Pouring the nuts into a bottle of Coke - after taking a swig first to make space - was considered a practical option for road trips because you only needed one hand to have both your snack and drink in one go.

It also meant that if you had a physical job and would often have dirty hands, you could enjoy the peanuts without having to touch them.

Chilli peanuts and peach-flavoured Coke was not a winning combination

But does it actually taste nice? We decided we had to try the concoction for ourselves.

Once we’d opened our bottle and the packet of peanuts, the first challenge was pouring the latter into the former without spilling nuts everywhere - it was not successful.

However with a decent amount of the peanuts having made it into the Coke, we were ready to go in for a large gulp.

It was surprisingly delicious.

Salty, sweet, crunchy and fizzy, there’s certainly a lot going on but it works, with the peanuts and the Coke complementing each other really well.

There’s certainly a knack to getting the right amount of nuts in your mouth at once, but when you get it right, it’s entirely tasty.

We then decided to investigate whether different flavour combinations of both nuts and Coke would be equally delicious.

Sadly, they were not.

We tried dry roasted peanuts with Cherry Coke and chilli peanuts with Peach Coke Zero, but neither combination worked because the flavours were too strong and they really didn’t go well together.

Perhaps it’s best to stick to the classics.