Arachibutyrophobe (pronounced a-ra-chi-bu-tyr-o-pho-be)
One who suffers from the fear of peanut butter sticking to
the roof of one's mouth.
1977: A compound word, the construct being the Latin arachis (peanut) + butyrum (butter) + -phobe (fear of). The –phobe suffix was a combining form used to form personal nouns corresponding to nouns. It was from the French phobe, from the Latin –phobus (fear; panic), from the Attic Greek -φόβος (-phóbos), combining form of φόβος (phóbos), ablaut variant of φέβεσθαι (phébesthai), middle infinitive of φέβομαι (phébomai), from the primitive Indo-European bhegw. Cognates included the Slovak bežať (run), the Polish biec (run), the Lithuanian bėgti (run), the Albanian dëboj (throw out, drive away, expel, banish). The related German form is -phob. The –phobe suffix can cause confusion because it can mean, depending on context, either “fear of” or “hatred of” and is often used in a political context; an Anglophobe being one with a dislike of the English while an Anglophile is an admirer. The –phile suffix is from the Latin -phila, from Ancient Greek φίλος (phílos) (dear, beloved).
Phobias
Phobias need not be widely diagnosed conditions; they need only be specific and, even if suffered by just one soul in the world, the criteria are fulfilled. In this sense, phobias are analogous with syndromes. A phobia is an anxiety disorder, an unreasonable or irrational fear related to exposure to certain objects or situations. The phobia may be triggered either by the cause or an anticipation of the specific object or situation.
The fifth edition of the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5 (2013)) made some interesting definitional changes from the earlier DSM-4 (1994): (1) A patient no longer needs to acknowledge their anxiety is excessive or unreasonable in order to receive a diagnoses, it being required only that their anxiety must be “out of proportion” to the actual threat or danger (in its socio-cultural context). (2) Symptoms must now, regardless of age, last at least six months. (3) The diagnostic criteria for social phobias no longer specify that age at onset must be before eighteen, a change apparently necessitated by the substantial increase in reporting by older adults with the DSM editors noting the six-month duration threshold exists to minimize the over-diagnosis of transient fears.
Whether it was already something widely practiced isn’t known but Lindsay Lohan is credited with introducing to the world the culinary novelty Oreos & peanut butter in The Parent Trap. According to the director, it was added to the script “…for no reason other than it sounded weird and some cute kid would do it." Like some other weirdnesses, the combination has a cult following and for those who enjoy peanut butter but suffer arachibutyrophobia (the morbid fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of one’s mouth), Tastemade have provided a recipe for Lindsay Lohan-style Oreos with a preparation time (including whisking) of 2 hours. They take 20 minutes to cook and in this mix there are 8 servings (scale ingredients up to increase the number of servings).
Ingredients
2 cups flour
1 cup unsweetened cocoa powder (plus more for dusting)
¾ teaspoon kosher salt
Powdered sugar, for dusting
Filling Ingredients
½ cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
A pinch of kosher salt (omit if using salted peanut butter)
Filling Instructions
(1) With a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, the butter & peanut butter until creamy.
(2) Gradually add powdered sugar and beat to combine, then beat in vanilla and salt.
Whisking the mix.
Instructions
(1) Preheat the oven to 325°F (160°C). Line two baking sheets with parchment paper.
(2) In small bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa powder & salt.
(3) In a stand mixer fitted with a paddle attachment, cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Mix in the vanilla extract. With the mixer running on low speed, add the flour mixture and beat until just combined (it should remain somewhat crumbly).
(4) Pour mixture onto a work surface and knead until it’s “all together”; wrap half in plastic wrap and place in refrigerator.
(5) Lightly dust surface and the top of the dough with a 1:1 mixture of cocoa powder and powdered sugar.
(6) Working swiftly and carefully, roll out dough to a ¼-½ inch (6-12 mm) thickness and cut out 2 inch (50 mm) rounds. Transfer them to the baking sheets, 1 inch (25 mm) apart (using a small offset spatula helps with this step). Re-roll scraps and cut out more rounds, the repeat with remaining half of the dough.
(7) Bake cookies until the tops are no longer shiny ( about 20 minutes), then cool on pan for 5 minutes before transferring to wire rack completely to cool.
(8) To assemble, place half the cookies on a plate or work surface.
(9) Pipe a blob of filling (about 2 teaspoons) onto the tops of each of these cookies and then place another cookie on top, pressing slightly but not to the extent filled oozes from the sides.
(10) Refrigerate for a few minutes to allow the filling to firm up. Store in an air-tight container in refrigerator.
The manufacturer embraced the idea of peanut butter Oreos and has released versions, both with the classic cookie and a peanut butter & jelly (jam) variation paired with its “golden wafers”. As well as Lindsay Lohan’s contribution, Oreos have attracted the interest of mathematicians. Nabisco in 1974 introduced the Double Stuf Oreo, the clear implication being a promise the variety contained twice crème filling supplied in the original. However, a mathematician undertook the research and determined Double Stuf Oreos contained only 1.86 times the volume of filling of a standard Oreo. Despite that, the company survived the scandal and the Double Stuf Oreo’s recipe wasn’t adjusted.
Scandalous in its own way was that an April 2022 research paper published in the journal Physics of Fluids wasn’t awarded that year’s Ig Nobel Prize for physics, the honor taken by Frank Fish, Zhi-Ming Yuan, Minglu Chen, Laibing Jia, Chunyan Ji & Atilla Incecik, for their admittedly ground-breaking (or perhaps water-breaking) work in explaining how ducklings manage to swim in formation. More deserving surely were Crystal Owens, Max Fan, John Hart & Gareth McKinley who introduced to physics the discipline of Oreology (the construct being Oreo + (o)logy). The suffix -ology was formed from -o- (as an interconsonantal vowel) + -logy. The origin in English of the -logy suffix lies with loanwords from the Ancient Greek, usually via Latin and French, where the suffix (-λογία) is an integral part of the word loaned (eg astrology from astrologia) since the sixteenth century. French picked up -logie from the Latin -logia, from the Ancient Greek -λογία (-logía). Within Greek, the suffix is an -ία (-ía) abstract from λόγος (lógos) (account, explanation, narrative), and that a verbal noun from λέγω (légō) (I say, speak, converse, tell a story). In English the suffix became extraordinarily productive, used notably to form names of sciences or disciplines of study, analogous to the names traditionally borrowed from the Latin (eg astrology from astrologia; geology from geologia) and by the late eighteenth century, the practice (despite the disapproval of the pedants) extended to terms with no connection to Greek or Latin such as those building on French or German bases (eg insectology (1766) after the French insectologie; terminology (1801) after the German Terminologie). Within a few decades of the intrusion of modern languages, combinations emerged using English terms (eg undergroundology (1820); hatology (1837)). In this evolution, the development may be though similar to the latter-day proliferation of “-isms” (fascism; feminism et al). Oreology is the study of the flow and fracture of sandwich cookies and the research proved it is impossible to split the cream filling of an Oreo cookie down the middle.
The core finding in Oreology was that the filling always adheres to one side of the wafer, no matter how quickly one or both cookies are twisted. Using a rheometer (a laboratory instrument used to measure the way in which a viscous fluid (a liquid, suspension or slurry) flows in response to applied forces), it was determined creme distribution upon cookie separation by torsional rotation is not a function of rate of rotation, creme filling height level, or flavor, but was mostly determined by the pre-existing level of adhesion between the creme and each wafer. The research also noted that were there changes to the composition of the filling (such as the inclusion of peanut butter) would influence the change from adhesive to cohesive failure and presumably the specifics of the peanut butter chosen (smooth, crunchy, extra-crunchy, un-salted (although the organic varieties should behave in a similar way to their mass-market equivalents)) would have some effect because the fluid dynamics would change. The expected extent of the change would be appear to be slight but until further research is performed, this can’t be confirmed.
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