“A remarkable peculiarity of this plant is that the flowers insert their ovaries into the ground, where they complete their growth, and where the seeds or nuts ripen.” So Vilmorin-Andrieux’s The Vegetable Garden (1885) explained the peanut to Europeans. Although native to Brazil, the goober or groundnut, as it was called, became part of southern earth-food by way of the Portuguese slave trade. Because the nut was as nutritious as it was transportable,