Food History

This was in my email this morning.  Check out the strange beginnings of some of our favorite foods!

Ruth's Baking Mistake

A simple cooking error led to the creation of the now-classic Nestlé Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookie. In 1930, Ruth Wakefield, who ran the Toll House Inn in Massachusetts, added chopped pieces of a semi-sweet chocolate bar to her Butter Drop Do cookie dough, expecting the chunks to melt. But the chocolate only softened and held its shape. The cookies were a hit at her inn. Eventually Ruth's recipe was published in a Boston newspaper and ended up on the wrapper of the Nestlé semi-sweet chocolate bar.

(Who knew?  Thank You Ruth for being in a hurry that day thinking the chocolate would melt and make a chocolate cookie.  We have been blessed ever since.  Probably the most popular cookie in the world.)

German Chocolate Cake Hails from the U.S.

The birth tale for this dessert begins at Walter Baker & Company. In 1852, chocolatier Sam German created a sweet baking bar named "BAKER'S German's Sweet Chocolate." When a woman from Texas sent a cake recipe using German's Sweet Chocolate to a newspaper in Dallas in 1957, sales for the chocolate bar spiked. Other newspapers picked up the recipe for German's Chocolate Cake, but at some point the apostrophe and "s" were dropped, leaving just German Chocolate Cake.

(This is my favorite cake to have on my birthday!  Through the years I've chosen white cake, angel food, but this is the clear and most consistent winner)

Popsicle's Kid Inventor

You can thank an absent-minded 11-year-old for your favorite summer treat. On a cold night in 1905, Frank Epperson left a mixture of powdered soda, water, and a stick in a cup on his porch. The next day, Epperson found a frozen pop he called the "Epsicle." His friends loved the frozen treats, and so did his own kids in later years (they always wanted "Pop's 'sicle"). In 1923, Epperson applied for a patent, then sold the rights to the brand name Popsicle to the Joe Lowe Company in New York.

(Love this!  Nothing like on on a hot summer day.)

Potato Chips: A Joke Gone Right

A chef reportedly invented potato chips in 1853, but he wasn't trying to make the world's best snack food. Chef George Crum sent the paper-thin potatoes cooked until they were crisp to a customer in his Saratoga Springs restaurant who complained that his fries were too thin. "Saratoga Chips" became a menu favorite, but potato chips didn't gain widespread popularity until they were mass-produced in the 1920s.

(I love these more than I should admit.  But they have to be Lay's.)

Taste Buds

I've been thinking about taste buds lately.

How some change and some don't.  For instance:  When I was growing up the only birthday cake I would even consider was angel food or white cake.  Now all I crave for my birthday is German Chocolate.  I hated (not a strong word in this instance) that cake when I was growing up.  Pecans (any nut for that matter) and coconut?  Not if it was the last food on the planet!  Now, I must have frosting for each bite of the slice.  How does that happen?  I love every nut now, except for walnuts because they give me cankers, and can't get enough coconut.  Love coconut cream pie and coconut cake.

And onions.  Still to this day, I cannot eat a raw onion.  Not on a burger, in a salad.  I love them grilled, caramelized, I cook endlessly with them, love the aroma (especially paired with garlic), but raw, forget it!  I can't figure it out.  Maybe it's the oozing juice, the crunch.  Can't do it.  Tried, but just can't.  I'll get sick.  Weird, huh.