Why do Dutch speakers call peanut butter “pindakaas”?
Zelf pindakaas maken met verschillende smaken
A2 Dutch listening practice · Dutch · Picked for people who know a little
Pindakaas is the Dutch word for peanut butter, but the literal compound is “peanut cheese” rather than “peanut butter.” The reason is regulatory: when the spread arrived in the Netherlands from Suriname in the 1940s, the word boter (butter) was legally protected for dairy products only, so pindakaas used kaas instead — a quirky workaround that stuck. Pindakaas is one of the country’s most-consumed spreads (alongside hagelslag and jam), eaten on toast for breakfast, on boterhammen for school lunch, and stirred into Surinamese-Dutch peanut sauce (pindasaus) for saté and bami.
In this clip, Het Klokhuis runs a homemade-pindakaas tutorial: “We gaan iets superlekker maken. Pindakaas. Volgens het maken van pindakaas heb je niet zoveel nodig. Natuurlijk pinda’s, geroosterd en ongezouten.”
How common are the words?
How common are the words in this A2 Dutch listening practice video?
How common in written Dutch
How common in spoken Dutch
Harder words in this video
These words are harder than A2. Here is what they mean.
Source: wordfreq 3.1.1 (general) · SUBTLEX-NL 2014 (spoken). These numbers are close, not perfect.
- ▸In Dutch food-history and etymologisch writing (Onze Taal, Etymologiebank, Trouw)
- ▸In Dutch supermarket and brand marketing (Calvé, Albert Heijn, Jumbo)
- ▸In Surinamese-Dutch food writing about pindasaus (De Volkskrant, Allerhande, NRC)
- ▸In Dutch primary-school cooking content (Het Klokhuis, Schooltv, Smaaklessen)