What baseball park snack can also be used to make dynamite?

The baseball-park snack that can also be used to make dynamite is peanuts. More precisely, peanut oil can be processed to produce glycerol, which is used in making nitroglycerin, a historically important component of dynamite.

This does not mean whole peanuts are mixed directly into a stick of dynamite. Their connection is through the oil they contain. Glycerol can be obtained from fats and oils, and it can then be converted into nitric esters such as nitroglycerin. Alfred Nobel patented dynamite in 1867 by stabilizing nitroglycerin with an absorbent material, making the explosive safer to handle than liquid nitroglycerin alone.

Peanuts became a classic baseball snack in the United States partly because they were inexpensive, portable, and easy to sell in their shells. They are also closely linked with Cracker Jack, the caramel-coated popcorn-and-peanut snack celebrated in the song “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” A common mix-up is treating Cracker Jack as the answer: it contains peanuts, but it is the peanut oil—not the branded snack itself—that creates the explosive connection. Other vegetable oils can also yield glycerol, but peanuts are the canonical trivia answer.