When Whitney Meyer gave birth to her twin daughters, she was stunned. One of her girls, Kalani, had very light skin. Her sister, Jarani, was visibly darker. For Whitney, who is white, and her partner Tomas Dean, who is Black, it was something they never imagined. “Kalani was as white as can be,” Whitney told
TODAY. “I was just in denial because you know the odds of this? I would never think I would have a black and white twin.”

“I would never think I would have a black and white twin.”

— Whitney Meyer

The rare occurrence has made Kalani and Jarani internet-famous, and their story has become a heartwarming reminder that beauty, love, and family come in many forms.

Tomas was equally surprised. “I was like, ‘Yeah, she’s a little light,’ but I thought maybe babies are that way when they’re first born,” he said. “But then a couple of minutes later, her sister came out a little darker. In a million years, I never thought I’d have a girl with blue eyes.”

“In a million years, I never thought I’d have a girl with blue eyes.”

— Tomas Dean

Their story, shared widely online and in media, is not just about the rarity of their birth, it’s about unity. “I hope that a lot of people can see that color really isn’t a big thing. What’s important is love,” Tomas added.

People are often confused when they see the twins together. Whitney says that people question whether they’re sisters even when dressed alike. Yet when you look beyond their skin tone, the resemblance is clear in their smiles, faces, and bond. Kalani is said to take after her older white brother, Talan, while Jarani reminds the family of Whitney’s late son, Pravyn, who passed away in a tragic accident.

What genetics can’t predict, love makes possible

Scientifically, this phenomenon is rare but not impossible. According to Dr. Bryce Mendelsohn, a medical geneticist at the University of California, San Francisco, what we see in someone’s appearance is just a fraction of their full genetic story. “The physical traits you can see in a person are just a very small sliver of the genetic diversity across human populations,” he explained. “A lot of times we only focus on the things our eyes can see, but what we see is a tiny tip of the iceberg.”

“What we see is a tiny tip of the iceberg.”

— Dr. Bryce Mendelsohn

Whitney and Tomas aren’t the only parents with this experience.
Khristi Cunningham, a mother from Ohio, also has fraternal twins with different skin tones. Like the Deans, she and her husband, a Black man, see their children’s differences as a teaching opportunity. “Get ready for a lot of conversations with strangers!” Khristi said. But rather than shying away, she embraces those moments as chances to educate.

“We did feel that we were obligated to share our story with others,” she told
TODAY. “We felt we were given these two beautiful children for a positive purpose, that purpose was to educate those who are ignorant to the fact that these things are possible, and to initiate a conversation on race in America.”

For Khristi, the lesson is simple: skin color is chance, not choice. “No one on this Earth gets to stand in line to pick their skin color. It is only by chance we are brown, or Black, or white.”

Two babies, one powerful message

The stories of families like the Deans and the Cunninghams are powerful. They shine a light on racial identity, genetics, and how love always transcends appearance. Their openness reminds us all that difference is something to be celebrated, not questioned.

These stories have surfaced before, such as the widely known tale of
Lucy and Maria Aylmer from England. Though twins, Lucy has pale skin, red hair, and blue eyes, while Maria has darker skin and black curly hair. Their mom, Donna, is of mixed Black and white heritage, and their dad is white. Like Kalani and Jarani, Lucy and Maria defied expectations and embraced their identities.

Whether it’s in Ohio, California, or Gloucester, these families are all telling the same truth: there is no one way to look like family. And that’s a beautiful thing.

In the years since…

Kalani and Jarani Dean may have started life as a viral sensation, but they’ve grown into so much more. Now, elementary schoolers, the inseparable sisters continue to spread joy, one with light skin and blue eyes, the other with brown skin and brown eyes, reminding everyone who sees them that love doesn’t come in one color. Their mom, Whitney, still proudly calls them her “miracle babies,” and their big brother Talan sums up the family motto best: “We don’t worry about color in our family.”

Across the pond, Lucy and Maria Aylmer have taken that same message into adulthood. Now in their 20s, these UK twins with polar-opposite looks are still the best of friends and living proof that race is just a label, not a bond. Whether they’re laughing off disbelief or using their story to challenge assumptions, both sets of sisters are helping the world see what really matters, shared hearts, not shared skin.

In a time that still struggles with division, Kalani, Jarani, Lucy, and Maria shine as symbols of unity. They are different on the outside but soul-deep sisters through and through, and the world is lucky to have them.

This article originally appeared last year.

  • Why Gen Z is falling in love with film photography
    Photo credit: Yasin Akgul/AFP via Getty ImagesChildren look at developed film in a darkroom during an analog photography workshop held in southeastern Turkey on June 14, 2026.
    ,

    Why Gen Z is falling in love with film photography

    Analog cameras offer a slower, social antidote to digital life.

    Film photography is experiencing a resurrection, summoned by unlikely conjurers: Gen Z.

    It wasn’t too long ago that analog photography – which uses photographic film and chemical processing – was declared all but dead, relegated to the province of niche hobbyists and professional artists.

    Digital cameras had taken over nearly all areas of photographic production. Film industry titans like Polaroid and Kodak had shrunk dramatically from their heyday, becoming shells of their former selves. Darkrooms, where students learned how to manually develop and print film, shuttered at high schools and college campuses across the country, replaced by digital labs. For most people, the spirit of analog photography was mainly channeled through Instagram filters.

    But within the past five years, younger people have been increasingly drawn to the old way of doing photography.

    In 2025, 35% of the 42 million active film camera users worldwide were reported to be between the ages of 18 and 30. The year prior, online searches for analog photography saw a 41% rise.

    Disposable camera sales have been steadily increasing since 2023. The photography journal PetaPixel went a step further and announced 2024 as “film’s best year in decades,” as major brands have introduced new cameras in response to renewed demand and revived classic modelsMore than 30% of respondents to a 2024 Ilford Photo survey on film photography were in the 25-34 age group.

    As I’ve witnessed more and more of my undergraduate art and design students embrace analog photography, I’m not seeing this as a trend rooted in a nostalgic yearning for the past. Instead, I’m seeing it as young people rejecting algorithms, breaking free from the alienation of social media and reacting to childhoods spent on Zoom and TikTok – a deliberate move to redefine the future of art, social connection and engagement with the world.

    Pining for a ‘third place’

    In my work as a historian of photography and lecturer at the University of Southern California, I’ll often ask my students about how they take photos – whether they’re using digital cameras their smartphones or analog devices.

    This year, for the first time, some of my students discussed images they’d printed and the physical photography albums they’d put together of their friends and family. They talked about how they’d also been sending postcards, writing letters and tacking photographs to their bedroom walls.

    Young Black man wearing a black hat and black sweatshirt holds a small camera up to his eyes to snap a photograph.
    New York Knicks forward OG Anunoby snaps a photo with a disposable film camera during the team’s victory rally on June 18, 2026, after winning the NBA Finals. Craig T. Fruchtman/Getty Images

    I couldn’t help but think about how so much of the language tied to early social media seemed to refashion physical gestures for a virtual world – “posting” on a “wall,” “poking,” “tagging” and “bookmarking,” not to mention “friending.”

    This was a rhetorical move by social media companies, likely designed to help people feel as though they were in a familiar terrain of social connection. Yet the underlying business model of these platforms depended more on maximizing engagement and advertising revenue than on nurturing authentic relationships.

    Everyone knows what happened next: The more connected young people became online, the more isolated and detached they started to feel. The COVID-19 lockdown pushed social life online even further, and researchers are only now starting to see how the combination of increased screen time and isolation negatively affected adolescents’ mental health. By 2023, 51% of American teenagers reported they spend at least four hours a day on social media.

    I see the attraction of analog photography as a response to life lived through screens, a pathway toward community engagement and the desire for what sociologists call “a third place.”

    Coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg in his 1989 book “The Great Good Place,” third places are meant as a space separate from home and work. They offer a reprieve for the in-between, generating the conditions needed for creative cross-pollination. They might include a local cafe, a neighborhood writing group, a weekly Magic: The Gathering game or a college fraternity – any space that allows for social interaction and personal growth.

    These spaces also combat loneliness. They get people out of their heads and into a community. Oldenburg also referred to them as “havens of sociability,” places or gatherings where people can arrive alone to join others, and the atmosphere is “democratic and festive.”

    Analog communities IRL

    In April 2026, the inaugural AnalogCon took place in Los Angeles. Organized by the Los Angeles Center of Photography, where I serve as executive director and chief curator, it was a festival for all things analog photography. It didn’t just serve as a third place for photography enthusiasts; it also showed how analog photography – as a practice, ritual and community – is flourishing.

    Vendors, industry leaders, artists and teachers participated in the two-day event, which included exhibitions, panels, demonstrations and guided photography tours around Little Tokyo. The excitement and thirst for similar events was palpable.

    Photography now joins a broader trend of a generational preoccupation with physical cultural objects and media. Although music streaming represents 82% of revenues generated in the music industry, vinyl records sales have been rising for over a decade, crossing the US$1 billion threshold in the U.S. in 2025.

    A table featuring an array of camera equipment spanning different eras, with hands holding some of the objects.
    Customers peruse vintage film cameras at a stall on Brick Lane in London’s East End on June 14, 2026. Richard Baker/In Pictures via Getty Images

    Nearly 60% of Gen Z are now purchasing records. VHS tapes and VCR players are also making a strange comeback, with stores like Be Kind Video and Videotheque in California offering VHS, DVDs and Blu-ray rentals.

    But beyond that, record stores and video rental shops have become third places in their own right. There’s a big difference between selecting a film to stream from your bed and getting out of the house, going to a store and talking about movies with a clerk and fellow film enthusiasts.

    Think about the sound a tape cassette makes when you open and close it, or the vibrant graphics on the covers of DVDs or VHS tapes. Think about rewinding or making a mixtape for your recent crush. These are objects of belonging that signal specific cultural moments, rituals and aesthetics, and many young people today are starting to experience them for the first time.

    Now, think about gently inserting a roll of film into a camera. Think about choosing an angle carefully when snapping a photo, because the number of frames is limited and you want to make them count. Think about the thrill of discovery when the pictures finally emerge as objects on paper.

    To me, these are more than fleeting trends. They signal a push against a digital culture that is designed to cultivate envy and reward outrage, insults and humiliation.

    Instead, armed with rolls of film, more and more Gen Zers appear to be opting out of their algorithmic feeds in favor of experiencing life in ways that feel more deliberate, personal and tangible.

    This article originally appeared on The Conversation. You can read it here.

  • As Route 66 turns 100, what is it that we’re actually celebrating?
    Photo credit: Heather Diehl/Getty ImagesA stretch of Route 66 in Albuquerque, N.M., pictured on June 7, 2026. Towns and cities located along the highway are gearing up to celebrate the iconic road’s centennial.
    ,

    As Route 66 turns 100, what is it that we’re actually celebrating?

    The Mother Road’s milestone comes with a complicated legacy

    Working in concert, the American Association of State Highway Officials and the Bureau of Public Roads adopted a uniform highway numbering system and corresponding map on November 11, 1926. The numbering system and map replaced the confusing patchwork of highways and trails, like the Lincoln Highway or the Old Trails Road, with an official network of numbered highways sanctioned by federal and state highway authorities.

    Since then, a small group of these highways have attained the status of cultural icon. There’s Route 1, which snakes all the way from Maine to Florida. Route 101 is celebrated for its majestic views of the Pacific Ocean, while Route 6 was immortalized in “On the Road,” Jack Kerouac’s classic novel.

    The most famous, though, is arguably Route 66, nicknamed the “Main Street of America” and the “Mother Road.”

    Yet as the towns that dot the highway prepare to celebrate its centennial, I’ve found myself wondering what it is, exactly, that’s being celebrated.

    As a historian of Route 66, I’ve written about how there are really two versions of this 2,448-mile (3,940-kilometer) stretch of pavement.

    There’s the actual highway, which reflected the 20th-century expansion of the nation’s infrastructure. Then there’s the mythic highway – a cultural icon imbued with nostalgia for a specific, 20th-century idea of romance, adventure, freedom and the American West.

    There was almost no 66

    As state highway commissioners in the 1920s wrangled over the specifics of the nation’s new highway system, they prized highway numbers that ended in zero, since they indicated a cross-country route. The thinking went that these routes would get the most traffic and, with it, the most business.

    Oklahoma State Highway Commissioner Cyrus Avery had been a big booster for a Chicago-to-Los Angeles road in order to juice highway traffic through the Midwest. He suggested calling it Route 60, claiming a coveted cross-country number.

    But commissioners from Kentucky and Virginia objected, noting that Avery’s proposed road didn’t go from coast to coast. As an alternative, they suggested 62. Avery countered with a number that he thought had a better ring to it: 66.

    With the numbering controversy settled, the map of America’s first highway system was approved. But another 12 years would pass before Route 66 was fully built out, making it the first U.S. highway to be paved end to end.

    A map of the southwestern United States with a web of highways marked in red.
    In this detail of the official highway system map adopted in 1926, Route 66 winds through New Mexico and Arizona before ending in Southern California. United States Geological Survey/Wikimedia Commons

    Adventure, redemption and reinvention

    While it took over a decade for the full, physical stretch of road to be completed, the making of the Route 66 myth began almost immediately.

    Construction of the road had barely begun when Avery, John T. Woodruff and other prominent civic leaders along the highway’s path convened in January 1927 to form the U.S. Highway 66 Association to promote travel along the route.

    The association began advertising Route 66 as the best West Coast travel route and even trademarked a slogan for the road, “The Main Street of America.” The association also sponsored spectacles like the Trans-American Footrace to help publicize Route 66.

    The race, which started on March 4, 1928, in Los Angeles, received widespread media coverage. Reporters breathtakingly described the epic struggles of the racers, coupled with vivid descriptions of the Southwest landscape. The effect was a marriage of Route 66 to ideas of adventure and romance in America’s collective subconscious.

    During the Great Depression and Dust Bowl years, thousands of migrants from the Great Plains and Midwest traveled west along Route 66, hoping to rebuild their lives in California.

    Author John Steinbeck dubbed Route 66 the “Mother Road” in “The Grapes of Wrath,” likening it to an umbilical cord that delivered Oakie refugees fleeing the Dust Bowl in the Oklahoma Panhandle to a new life in California. Working for the New Deal-era Farm Security Administration, photographer Dorothea Lange documented the same Oakies fictionalized by Steinbeck. Her 1938 photograph “Family on the Road” captured a husband, wife and their two young children hitchhiking on Route 66 near Weatherford, Oklahoma, after losing their farm.

    Black-and-white photo of an old car hauling a trailer of belongings along a dusty stretch of highway.
    For families devastated by the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, Route 66 served as a conduit for redemption and reinvention, inspiring author John Steinbeck to call it ‘The Mother Road.’ Bettmann/Getty Images

    Together, Steinbeck and Lange helped imbue Route 66 with new layers of meaning tied to loss and redemption. Then, after World War II, Route 66 came to mythologize the postwar boom.

    Bobby Troup’s 1946 song “(Get Your Kicks) on Route 66,” first recorded by the Nat King Cole Trio, cast the road as a postwar rite of passage. Millions of Americans went on to take family vacations to the American Southwest via Route 66, staying at roadside mom-and-pop motels, grabbing burgers at neon-lit diners and posing beside oversized roadside landmarks.

    Myth versus reality

    But the iconic imagery and myths of Route 66 are often at odds with the reality of the road.

    I’ve come to see Troup’s song as encapsulating the tension between these two versions of Route 66.

    In 1946, when Nat King Cole recorded “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66,” Cole and his band were unable to get their own “kicks” on Route 66. That’s because few businesses located along Route 66 were willing to serve them. Jim Crow-era copies of the Green Book – a directory of businesses that would accommodate Black road trippers – show just how few options there were.

    Faded sign featuring a Route 66 highway logo and the text 'Get Your Kicks.'
    ‘(Get Your Kicks on)’ Route 66’ helped immortalize the highway in American culture. Al Drago/Getty Images

    It would take passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 – and subsequent enforcement efforts by the Justice Department – for the travel amenities and services along Route 66 to be equally available to all Americans, regardless of their race.

    Yet by the time the highway’s motels, diners, auto repair shops and gas stations were open to all travelers, Route 66’s downturn had already begun.

    The 1956 Federal Aid Highway Act turbocharged the construction of new, limited-access interstate highways. These new postwar highways prioritized fast travel between major cities and their suburbs, where Americans were flocking to in large numbers.

    Fast travel, however, came at the expense of small towns bypassed by the new highways, depriving many Route 66 businesses of the customers they needed to survive.

    In contrast to older mom-and-pop businesses, national corporate chain motels, restaurants and gas stations dominated the new interstate highway exits. Rather than risk exposing themselves to Justice Department Civil Rights scrutiny, they made it known that they welcomed all travelers, further enticing drivers away from older establishments.

    Now, as Route 66 turns 100, there’s a gap between how the road is remembered by some and how it functioned for most. Free and easy travel on the road and “getting your kicks” were limited to white Americans. Much of Route 66’s iconography emerged from early highway association marketing efforts aimed at white Americans. Few African American or Latino travelers likely feel the same nostalgia.

    Today, a lot of Route 66 nostalgia has a “back to the 1950s” vibe that celebrates pre-Civil Rights America as a purer, simpler, more authentic era. This faux-authentic America better reflects the place some Americans today wish they could live in – a less complicated, less diverse land of adventure, romance and opportunity, rather than the nuanced, complicated America they actually inhabit today.

    A roadside motel at dusk with a vintage car parked in the lot and a large blue and pink neon sign reading 'Blue Swallow Motel.'
    Oversized neon signs, like at this Route 66 motel, enticed weary drivers to stop and stay, but these establishments were not available to all travelers. Al Drago/Getty Images

    This article originally appeared on The Conversation. You can read it here.

  • In America’s sandwiches, the story of a nation
    Photo credit: Anna_PustynnikovaA tasty sandwich
    ,

    In America’s sandwiches, the story of a nation

    A nation’s story, stacked between slices.

    Everyone has a favorite sandwich, often prepared to an exacting degree of specification: Turkey or ham? Grilled or toasted? Mayo or mustard? White or whole wheat?

    We reached out to five food historians and asked them to tell the story of a sandwich of their choosing. The responses included staples like peanut butter and jelly, as well as regional fare like New England’s chow mein sandwich.

    Together, they show how the sandwiches we eat (or used to eat) do more than fill us up during our lunch breaks. In their stories are themes of immigration and globalization, of class and gender, and of resourcefulness and creativity.


    A taste of home for working women

    Megan Elias, Boston University

    The tuna salad sandwich originated from an impulse to conserve, only to become a symbol of excess.

    In the 19th century – before the era of supermarkets and cheap groceries – most Americans avoided wasting food. Scraps of chicken, ham or fish from supper would be mixed with mayonnaise and served on lettuce for lunch. Leftovers of celery, pickles and olives – served as supper “relishes” – would also be folded into the mix.

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    The versions of these salads that incorporated fish tended to use salmon, white fish or trout. Most Americans didn’t cook (or even know of) tuna.

    Around the end of the 19th century, middle-class women began to spend more time in public, patronizing department stores, lectures and museums. Since social conventions kept these women out of the saloons where men ate, lunch restaurants opened up to cater to this new clientele. They offered women exactly the kind of foods they had served each other at home: salads. While salads made at home often were composed of leftovers, those at lunch restaurants were made from scratch. Fish and shellfish salads were typical fare.

    A 1949 ad in Ladies’ Home Journal announces a ‘Revolution in Tuna.'
    A 1949 ad in Ladies’ Home Journal announces a ‘Revolution in Tuna.’ Internet Archive Book Images

    When further social and economic changes brought women into the public as office and department store workers, they found fish salads waiting for them at the affordable lunch counters patronized by busy urban workers. Unlike the ladies’ lunch, the office lunch hour had time limits. So lunch counters came up with the idea of offering the salads between two pieces of bread, which sped up table turnover and encouraged patrons to get lunch to go.

    When canned tuna was introduced in the early 20th century, lunch counters and home cooks could skip the step of cooking a fish and go straight to the salad. But there was downside: The immense popularity of canned tuna led to the growth of a global industry that has severely depleted stocks and led to the unintended slaughter of millions of dolphins. A clever way to use dinner scraps has become a global crisis of conscience and capitalism.

    I like mine on toasted rye.


    East meets West in Fall River, Massachusetts

    Imogene Lim, Vancouver Island University

    “Gonna get a big dish of beef chow mein,” Warren Zevon sings in his 1978 hit “Werewolves of London,” a nod to the popular Chinese stir-fried noodle dish.

    During that same decade, Alika and the Happy Samoans, the house band for a Chinese restaurant in Fall River, Massachusetts, also paid tribute to chow mein with a song titled “Chow Mein Sandwich.”

    Chow mein in a sandwich? Is that a real thing?

    I was first introduced to the chow mein sandwich while completing my doctorate at Brown University. Even as the child of a Chinatown restaurateur from Vancouver, I viewed the sandwich as something of a mystery. It led to a post-doctoral fellowship and a paper about Chinese entrepreneurship in New England.

    The chow mein sandwich is the quintessential “East meets West” food, and it’s largely associated with New England’s Chinese restaurants – specifically, those of Fall River, a city crowded with textile mills near the Rhode Island border.

    The sandwich became popular in the 1920s because it was filling and cheap: Workers munched on them in factory canteens, while their kids ate them for lunch in the parish schools, especially on meatless Fridays. It would go on to be available at some “five and dime” lunch counters, like Kresge’s and Woolworth – and even at Nathan’s in Coney Island.

    Fall River’s famous chow mein sandwich.
    Fall River’s famous chow mein sandwich. Roadfood

    It’s exactly what it sounds like: a sandwich filled with chow mein (deep-fried, flat noodles, topped with a ladle of brown gravy, onions, celery and bean sprouts). If you want to make your own authentic sandwich at home, I recommend using Hoo Mee Chow Mein Mix, which is still made in Fall River. It can be served in a bun (à la sloppy joe) or between sliced white bread, much like a hot turkey sandwich with gravy. The classic meal includes the sandwich, french fries and orange soda.

    For those who grew up in the Fall River area, the chow mein sandwich is a reminder of home. Just ask famous chef (and Fall River native) Emeril Lagasse, who came up with his own “Fall River chow mein” recipe.

    And at one time, Fall River expats living in Los Angeles would hold a “Fall River Day.”

    On the menu? Chow mein sandwiches, of course.


    A snack for the elites

    Paul Freedman, Yale University

    Unlike many American food trends of the 1890s, such as the Waldorf salad and chafing dishes, the club sandwich has endured, immune to obsolescence.

    The sandwich originated in the country’s stuffy gentlemen’s clubs, which are known – to this day – for a conservatism that includes loyalty to outdated cuisine. (The Wilmington Club in Delaware continues to serve terrapin, while the Philadelphia Club’s specialties include veal and ham pie.) So the club sandwich’s spread to the rest of the population, along with its lasting popularity, is a testament to its inventiveness and appeal.

    A two-layer affair, the club sandwich calls for three pieces of toasted bread spread with mayonnaise and filled with chicken or turkey, bacon, lettuce and tomato. Usually the sandwich is cut into two triangles and held together with a toothpick stuck in each half.

    Some believe it should be eaten with a fork and knife, and its blend of elegance and blandness make the club sandwich a permanent feature of country and city club cuisine.

    The club sandwich: A perfect blend of elegance and blandness.
    The club sandwich: A perfect blend of elegance and blandness. Alena Haurylik

    As far back as 1889, there are references to a Union Club sandwich of turkey or ham on toast. The Saratoga Club-House offered a club sandwich on its menu beginning in 1894.

    Interestingly, until the 1920s, sandwiches were identified with ladies’ lunch places that served “dainty” food. The first club sandwich recipe comes from an 1899 book of “salads, sandwiches and chafing-dish dainties,” and its most famous proponent was Wallis Simpson, the American woman whom Edward VIII abdicated the throne of Great Britain to marry.

    Nonetheless, an 1889 article from the New York Sun entitled “An Appetizing Sandwich: A Dainty Treat That Has Made a New York Chef Popular” describes the Union Club sandwich as appropriate for a post-theater supper, or something light to be eaten before a nightcap. This was one type of sandwich that men could indulge in, the article seemed to be saying – as long as it wasn’t eaten for lunch.

    New York City’s Union Club served an early version of the club sandwich that was a hit.
    New York City’s Union Club served an early version of the club sandwich that was a hit. GryffindorCC BY-SA

    ‘The combination is delicious and original’

    Ken Albala, University of the Pacific

    While the peanut butter and jelly sandwich eventually became a staple of elementary school cafeterias, it actually has upper-crust origins.

    In the late-19th century, at elegant ladies’ luncheons, a popular snack was small, crustless tea sandwiches with butter and cucumber, cold cuts or cheese. Around this time, health food advocates like John Harvey Kellogg started promoting peanut products as a replacement for animal-based foods (butter included). So for a vegetarian option at these luncheons, peanut butter simply replaced regular butter.

    One of the earliest known recipes that suggested including jelly with peanut butter appeared in a 1901 issue of the Boston Cooking School Magazine.

    “For variety,” author Julia Davis Chandler wrote, “some day try making little sandwiches, or bread fingers, of three very thin layers of bread and two of filling, one of peanut paste, whatever brand you prefer, and currant or crabapple jelly for the other. The combination is delicious, and so far as I know original.”

    The sandwich moved from garden parties to lunchboxes in the 1920s, when peanut butter started to be mass produced with hydrogenated vegetable oil and sugar. Marketers of the Skippy brand targeted children as a potential new audience, and thus the association with school lunches was forged.

    The classic version of the sandwich is made with soft, sliced white bread, creamy or chunky peanut butter and jelly. Outside of the United States, the peanut butter and jelly sandwich is rare  – much of the world views the combination as repulsive.

    These days, many try to avoid white bread and hydrogenated fats. Nonetheless, the sandwich has a nostalgic appeal for many Americans, and recipes for high-end versions – with freshly ground peanuts, artisanal bread or unusual jams – now circulate on the web.


    The Daughters of the Confederacy get creative

    Andrew P. Haley, University of Southern Mississippi

    The Scotch woodcock is probably not Scottish. It’s arguably not even a sandwich. A favorite of Oxford students and members of Parliament until the mid-20th century, the dish is generally prepared by layering anchovy paste and eggs on toast.

    Like its cheesier cousin, the Welsh rabbit (better known as rarebit), its name is fanciful. Perhaps there was something about the name, if not the ingredients, that sparked the imagination of Miss Frances Lusk of Jackson, Mississippi.

    The United Daughters of the Confederacy cookbook features a take on the Scotch woodcock.
    The United Daughters of the Confederacy cookbook features a take on the Scotch woodcock. McCain Library and Archives, The University of Southern MississippiCC BY-SA

    Inspired to add a little British sophistication to her entertaining, she crafted her own version of the Scotch woodcock for a 1911 United Daughters of the Confederacy fundraising cookbook. Miss Lusk’s woodcock sandwich mixed strained tomatoes and melted cheese, added raw eggs, and slathered the paste between layers of bread (or biscuits).

    As food historian Bee Wilson argues in her history of the sandwich, American sandwiches distinguished themselves from their British counterparts by the scale of their ambition. Imitating the rising skylines of American cities, many were towering affairs that celebrated abundance.

    But those sandwiches were the sandwiches of urban lunchrooms and, later, diners. In the homes of southern clubwomen, the sandwich was a way to marry British sophistication to American creativity.

    For example, the United Daughters of the Confederacy cookbook included “sweetbread sandwiches,” made by heating canned offal (animal trimmings) and slathering the mashed mixture between two pieces of toast. There’s also a “green pepper sandwich,” crafted from “very thin” slices of bread and “very thin” slices of green pepper.

    Such creative combinations weren’t limited to the elites of Mississippi’s capital city. In the plantation homes of the Mississippi Delta, members of the Coahoma Woman’s Club served sandwiches of English walnuts, black walnuts and stuffed olives ground into a colorful paste. They also assembled “Friendship Sandwiches” from grated cucumbers, onions, celery and green peppers mixed with cottage cheese and mayonnaise. Meanwhile, the industrial elite of Laurel, Mississippi, served mashed bacon and eggs sandwiches and creamed sardine sandwiches.

    Not all of these amalgamations were capped by a slice of bread, so purists might balk at calling them sandwiches. But these ladies did – and they proudly tied up their original creations with ribbons.

    This article originally appeared on The Conversation. You can read it here.

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