What's In a Reeses?

I don't like Reese's. Never have. Oh, I eat them; on the average of one every three years. I ate one today, in fact. (For the record, I'm running a low-grade fever, too.) Just never reconciled the two widely different tastes in my mouth.

Let's be clear about one thing from the outset: That stuff inside the chocolate is not now nor ever has been peanut butter. I've eaten PB since I was three years old. I've eaten gourmet peanut butter and I've eaten that stuff the government gives away (do they still do that?). Search all across the peanut butter spectrum and you will not find a jar full of that substance anywhere.

The so-called peanut butter center of a Reese's is gritty and pasty. It reminds me of kindergarten paper paste, sand, and oh yes, a hint of actual peanut butter. Now, I know some of the reasoning behind the compostion of this filling. A tour of the Hershey factory in Modesto, California back in 1970-something revealed that malformed Reeses can be returned, melted, separated(!) and reformed to avoid waste. Were it not for the strange combination of ingredients in the filling, the separation would not be possible because (I'm guessing here) peanut butter and milk chocolate melt at similar temperatures.

That aside, you'd think modern technology would allow Hershey to add some kind of chemical to to real peanut butter and squirt that into the otherwise really tasty milk chocolate. But, alas, no. Oh well, hand me a Mallo Cup!