Vintage Recipe Roulette: Circus Peanut Salad
The worst idea ever, by popular demand
Many years ago when chatting with my beautiful and talented friend Denise about my penchant for Jell-O salads, she mentioned that she loves Circus Peanuts. Along the way in this increasingly ludicrous conversation, she mentioned that her mother used to make a recipe for a true abomination that I still cannot get my head around: Circus Peanut Salad. Since then, I’ve had many other friends bring it up by way of suggesting a new review, and it looks like this is finally the week.
In retrospect, perhaps they are my enemies.
Now look, some people genuinely enjoy these little terrors, like Denise, who is otherwise a fully sane and reasonable individual with an incredible eye for beauty, and let’s chalk it up to the haze of nostalgia for times and loved ones passed on. You can’t put a value judgement on it — it’s as specific to you as your fingerprints, and there’s nothing whatsoever wrong with that. But, that means my opinion is just as valid, even if different.
So, I’d like to say that in my opinion (although it’s worth noting I do have scientific evidence to back me up), circus peanuts are the worst confection in the history of the universe. They have all the charm and artistry of a block of foam sealant carved into the shape of a botfly larva, and almost as much personality. The pinnacle of perverse culinary achievement, they have the distinction of being the first candy to receive the coveted Amityville Prize for Excellence in Food Science, Distillation Division; there’s a full serving of scary clown extract in each peanut.
But surely, I can hear you saying, the Turkey Dinner Candy Corn was worse? The Taco Truck Jellybeans? The Sour Cream and Chive Candy Canes? No. No, they were not, because those were at least hilarious. Circus peanuts are a black hole of humor, a bad taste singularity. Lacking even the cheerfully disgusting stretch of your garden variety marshmallow, the orange circus kind is openly hostile and nihilist, as though someone somehow crossbred cotton candy with Friedrich Nietzsche. With no discernible variation in flavor or texture, they exist only as a joyless expanse of aggressively orange spume.
Speaking of flavor, the contention that they are “banana flavor” is not only a bald-faced lie, but a slap in the face to the scientific studies of botany, organic chemistry, and nutrition, not to mention ethics. All the histories claim the likely explanation for their name is that they were an early penny candy literally served at circuses, but this is obviously an attempt to paper over the truth — that they are a(n alleged) foodstuff analogous to a badly taxidermied sideshow monkey-fish “mermaid”. Perhaps this embrace of winking obfuscation accounts for why they taste as much like banana as a box of galvanized roofing nails…or maybe it really is that banana was one of the only artificial flavors widely available in the wartime 1940s.
In other words, it’s the perfect thing for me to make! There are a few different versions running around, but they mostly have the same main ingredients shown below even though ratios and techniques vary. The oldest one I can find is from the 1976 Stump Creek. PA community cookbook, but it’s so widespread that I think it’s probably older than that. I’m guessing it was after use of polyethylene packaging became widespread in the 1950s, because prior to that, waxed paper bagged peanuts would have been so stale at the point of sale as to be only marginally softer than the aforementioned roofing nails.
As for prep instructions, several people who have tried it had difficulty getting the peanuts to dissolve in hot water, and it looks like the most successful ones microwave them a bit — two of my favorite food bloggers and former interviewees, Emmymade and That Midwestern Mom both tried it that way, a la Southern Living Magazine’s recipe (which isn’t on their site anymore, likely due to embarrassment, but you can still see it written out on Emmymade’s blog here).
Opening the bag released a toxic cloud of fake banana flavor dense enough to be visualized on the Weather Channel’s radar. Fake fruit flavor is all terrible, but banana is especially sinister. Still, it’s been at least 30 years since I ate one of these, and a good chef always tastes the ingredients, so I ate one. This package is relatively fresh, so the “skin” (ugh) was thin, and the interior soft. The sweetness…I don’t know whether I can ever really convey how extreme it is. They’re sweeter than regular sweet, presumably because the corn syrup is mostly fructose, which is actually sweeter than sugar by volume, and in fact the sweetest natural carbohydrate in existence. Consider The Wall from Game of Thrones, the massive face hundreds of feet tall, featureless, impassive, unforgiving. Imagine that instead of ice, it’s made of sugar cubes. Now, in your mind’s eye slowly dissolve all 300 miles of them into a cup of tea. Take a sip. As you swallow, an undead fructose dragon soars past and burns you to a crackle with fire made entirely of carbohydrate. That’s almost, but not quite, as sweet as circus peanuts.
As per usual when I have something really suspect on the docket, I’m just making half the recipe, which after a little math instructs us to chop 16 circus peanuts roughly (reserving at least 6 for garnish). That just seems inadvisable to me. What if these are like planaria or hammerhead worms, and cutting them haphazardly just results in them growing back multiplied? They could strangle me in my sleep. Although I have a chaotic evil streak when it comes to fun food, I tend toward lawful good on the Moral Alignment Chart in most other areas. I think this situation calls for thorough, systematic dismantling, so I’ve sliced carefully to stay true to myself and scientifically informed. Then, per instructions, I added 2 T hot water, microwaved 1 minute, and stirred.
When they’re subjected to microwave radiation, they swell alarmingly, so be sure you use a big enough bowl. Also alarming is the Kraft mac cheese packet color. Then, the instructions say to stir until smooth. I stirred for a long time, but a few little undissolved blobs remained. *Shrug* I don’t think this is going to impair gelling. Good enough for government work!
In a separate bowl, you mix a 3 oz. package of orange Jell-O with 1/4 c plus 2 T boiling water, and stir thoroughly, until dissolved. Pour into the melted circus peanuts and blend.
There’s a layer of foamy stuff on top after I mix mine, and I don’t think I want that in the finished product, so I’m going to take a cue from That Midwestern Mom’s version and chill things a bit before adding the fruit, so that everything will stay suspended instead of sinking like a toddler in the Chuck E. Cheese ball pit. I like the idea of the non-chilled version Emmymade uses, which magically separates into layers, but I remember Jell-O’s late-last-millennium layered product (Jell-O 123), and I didn’t like the upper layer, which was a little sytrofoamy. I’ve got an ice bath going to thicken to jelly consistency, thus speeding me to my doom.
Next, we are instructed to mix 8 oz. of crushed pineapple with 1/2 a container of whipped topping, and fold into the orange stuff after it thickens up.
One of the advantages of a transparency is that you can see it when you haven’t stirred things up from the bottom of the bowl. A few streaks in this kind of dish are okay — it’ll still mesh as long as it’s there’s gelatin throughout, and overmixing can cause things like whipped cream or topping to collapse — so don’t overdo it. But, any time you’re trying to make a congealed salad, it’s important to take time to coax everything together. If there are big pockets of canned fruit or stubborn blobs of gelatinous resistance, it’s not going to hold together.
It was at this point in mixing that I noticed the banana flavor smell had faded mercifully. I have no such hopes for the flavor.
Here it is all mixed up and in the slightly greased pan. It may be unholy orange, but I feel a bit green. I added the circus peanut garnish just before serving instead of during chilling, because I was afraid they would absorb some liquid and develop a gross slime layer at the bottom, true to larval form.
Plus, we wouldn’t want them to go stale, hahahahhaa.
It cuts fairly cleanly for something with fruit in it, and it lifts out of the pan easily, but as you do this, there’s a faint popping sound, sort of like Rice Krispies in a distant bowl. It’s as though hundreds of little gelatin-bound bubbles suddenly cried out in terror and then were suddenly silenced. It’s not an appetizing sound. May the force be with me.
I do love how about half of the Spangler brand peanuts have their name on them. It’s just cute.
Okay, I’m taking a bite. I’m shocked to report that there is little fake banana flavor. Actually, I don’t even notice fake orange, which I expected to take over. It’s just pineapple as far as the tongue can see. Maybe if you mix fake banana and fake orange you get fake pineapple? It’s uncannily sweet, though, ugh. It’s the texture that’s the real problem, though — wobbly, poppy, squishy, like a bubble wrap omelet. And then, when you get to the garnish, it’s like that plus a circus peanut. No, just 100% no.
Look, as a late Cretaceous late 20th century person, I get why circus peanuts are appealing in that historical context. Think of it — you’re a kid in the 1930s in a small town, your beloved Christmas stocking sweets consist of nuts and oranges, and then the circus comes to town, full of mind-blowing carnival music, shiny costumes, wild animals, and more sugar than you’ve ever had in your life. Those circus peanuts were freshly made, soft and insanely sweet, and you can bet that in that context, I’d have been over the moon when the circus came to town again, too.
But I’m from a different time, with different influences and experiences. Things that were considered reasonable at one point can start to look dated and reprehensible. When you know better, you do better. I’ve met all kinds of candy, some I liked and some I didn’t, and really, I love all of it, even the ones I hate. It’s a big tent! What I love is having the choice. Not only does this give me (and everyone else!) the opportunity to have things I really love, like chocolates and licorice twists, real Swedish fish and pillow mints, peanut butter cups and chamoy pops, but it also gives me the opportunity to complain about things I hate in vivid detail. It’s such a wonderful past time, as long as you keep it in perspective, and since I try to sneak some nutrition in here from time to time, I hope my complaining is a force for good.
Spangler Candy Company still makes and sells these little monsters — you can get 20 lbs for under $100. Why would you want to? Um, it saves money? And an honest-to goodness point in their favor is that Spangler brand circus peanuts are extremely allergy friendly, with no soy, dairy, gluten, egg, nuts in the ingredients or on shared equipment, as of this writing. That’s also true of several of their classic candies, which many allergy families like mine deeply appreciate around the fall and winter holidays. I do love that. And I also love my friend Denise, so if circus peanuts make her happy, I’m happy too…as long as she doesn’t make me eat them with her.
And, as much as I love to hate Spangler’s Circus Peanuts, one Spangler family dynasty member, Amy Keller, has a newer product than I can’t say enough good about — Climate Candy Faves. (I swear this is not an ad.) They’re made from fruits (and shhhh…even a few vegetables) that would otherwise go unharvested, and that’s pretty much it — there’s just a little rice flour and pectin for thickening, so these are made with real food and even have a little fiber in them. I’ve seen them on the Thrive Market and Misfit Foods websites as well. They have a lovely, chewy texture, soft and bouncy, with no tendency for gelatin’s toughness. They’re plenty sweet, but they’re also a bit tart, and there’s nary a hint of fake banana in any of the different flavors. The slogan? “We turn problems into candy.”
That’s certainly an improvement over this Circus Peanut Salad recipe, which turns candy into a real problem.
RD note: No deals, sponsorships, or samples here for any products or services mentioned. I bought all the ingredients myself, including the Climate Candy, which I really hope you’ll try. I also hope you’ll take the messaging behind it to heart — we only have one planet, and as of now, there’s no plan B.
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