Invented at NC State, The Honey-Roasted Peanut!

RALEIGH — Bill Hoover played with food.

For most of his 94 years, he lorded over bubbling beakers in his basement lab, dabbling in cocktail sauce, fiddling with cheese spread, burrowing to the essence of sweet potatoes. Over his long career, most of it at N.C. State University, you could taste Hoover’s work in Carolina Treet barbecue sauce or any number of three-bean salads.

But Hoover, who died in Georgia this month, deserves a golden-brown monument on the National Mall for his greatest invention, a treat nibbled by many a coach-seated air traveler: the honey-roasted peanut.