Peanuts and Coke

The most common variation involves pouring salted peanuts into a bottle of Coca-Cola before consuming them together.^[2] Traditionally, glass bottles of Coca-Cola were used.^[3] The snack's appeal is often attributed to the combination of sweet and salty tastes, as well as the crunchiness of the peanuts.^[4][5] Other variations substitute different nuts or sodas.^[6] The combination has been called "the working man’s strawberries in champagne."^[7]

Writing on the Coca-Cola website, Rick McDaniel speculates that the snack could have developed in the South as early as the 1920s.^[8] Writer John T. Edge of the Southern Foodways Alliance recalls that the road trips of his childhood in Jones County, Georgia, were "fueled by a sleeve of roasted and salted peanuts and a glass bottle of Coke". He regards the snack as a form of "prototype fast-food" in the 20th century South.^[8]

It became popular in the South as a summer snack,^[9] especially in rural areas.^[10]

The snack became an internet trend in 2018.^[11]