Dutch Delight: Pindakaas (Peanut Butter)
Periodically, EM reviews typical Dutch food products together with EUR international students. This edition, Yulia Prokhorova (Master Economic and Business – specialization: Marketing) from Moscow, Russia tastes and reviews peanut butter (Dutch: pindakaas). The Review
Yulia expects the peanut butter to taste sweet. She has seen it before when she visited the United States, but she has never found a good occasion to actually try it. Yulia fills a spoon to finally taste it.
The first things that strike Yulia when tasting the peanut butter are the oily but at the same thick texture and the peanut flavor. “It’s more salty than I expected”, she adds. Also, Yulia remarks that the paste is quite heavy: “I could not eat more than a spoonful every time.’ Yulia cannot imagine consuming the paste as a sandwich topping. “I imagine it is being eaten for breakfast and provide lots energy during the day, but personally it would be too much of a heavy breakfast for me.”
In addition, she remembers that peanut butter is available in her home country Russia as well. It is being imported from abroad, however: “To the best of my knowledge peanut butter is not produced in Russia, which makes it a quite expensive product when purchasing it in stores in Russia”, she adds.
All in all, Yulia grants peanut butter 3 out of 5 stars. “I like it. I would recommend eating a bit of it as a fast breakfast, but it is not for every day.”
Score according to Yulia: 3
1= I flushed it down the toilet
2= If you bought it anyway, eat it, why not?
3= Quite nice actually
4= Really good food
5= Best food I’ve ever tasted
The Product
In The Netherlands, the product of peanut butter is commonly referred to as pindakaas, which literally translates to ‘peanut cheese’. This is because the Dutch word for butter (‘boter’) was copyrighted when peanut butter entered the Dutch market in 1948. Peanut butter is generally being applied as topping on a sandwich. Also, pindakaas is an ingredient of certain soups and sauces.
