Southern Tradition: Why People in the South Are Adding Peanuts to Coke

Is adding peanuts to Coca-Cola truly “delicous”? Well, to put it briefly, yeah. Putting the salty snack in the soda is really one of the more prevalent customs, along with comfort food and sweet tea, among the many that Southerners know and love.

In addition to Southern cuisine staples like fried chicken and pecan pie, there’s an odd custom of popping peanuts in cola. Historian Rick McDaniel claims that this custom dates back to the 1920s, when rural businesses began offering shelled peanuts for sale with bottled Coca-Cola. Perhaps in an effort to avoid using unclean hands on every peanut they handled, workers started to mix them.

Another hypothesis connects it to travel. It is permissible to put peanuts in Coke bottles for a hands-free snack when driving a standard manual automobile. Use ordinary Coke with salted peanuts (ideally in a glass bottle for maximum flavor) for the authentic experience. This strange-sounding Southern tradition dates back generations, and it offers a distinctive combination of salty and sweet that many find surprisingly enjoyable.