Stories About How 5 of Our Favorite Dishes Came About

The story of how the John Montagu invested the idea of putting meat between two pieces of bread so that he could eat without getting up from his beloved card game is well-known.  The “sandwich” was almost certainly eaten before  Montagu, the 4^th Earl of Sandwich, formalized it but tracing it back to this colorful character gives the story more pizazz.

Intertops casino bonus players today gamble online with no need to create complicated eating strategies – just grab some of the treats below and sit down for a fun entertaining time. Yet the stories of how many of the dishes that we enjoy today were invented make interesting reading. Some of those include:

Ketchup

Ketchup, usually made with tomatoes (horse radish ketchup, hot honey ketchup, mayo and relish ketchup are just a few modern variations)  is second only to mayonnaise as a popular condiment. It’s a relatively modern innovation but you can now find ketchup in almost every country in the world thanks to America’s export of its foods.

Europeans first learned about the tomato when Christopher Columbus arrived in the Americas. Initially, Europeans believed that tomatoes were poisonous but they were soon incorporated into Italian and Spanish cooking, after which they became accepted in other parts of Europe. By the 1600s traders brought a spicy fish-based sauce called “ketsiap” back to Europe from the New World and it became a popular sauce.

Tomatoes became a popular food item in the United States in the 1800s and soon American cooks were trying to replicate the ketsiap from Europe. Ketsiap, however, was more similar to the Worcestershire sauce than the sweetish ketchup that we know today. That tomato-based sweet sauce can be traced back to James Mease who created it in 1812.

In those early years, when refrigeration was unavailable, ketchup needed to be prepared fresh and eaten immediately otherwise it would spoil. Once companies started to add preservatives, the idea that the condiment could survive on the shelf helped it gain popularity. Thus, the public was ready when Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley and Henry Heinz introduced their ketchup in 1906. They used vinegar instead of preservatives to extend its shelf life. It was an instant hit. By 1907 Heinz was producing 13 million bottles of ketchup every year.

Chocolate Bars

Chocolate bars are so common today that it’s hard to imagine a time when they didn’t exist. At one time however, chocolate had nothing to do with sugar treats which were stored in containers in shops. Customers would buy the candies by weight.

In 1847 Joseph Fry learned that, by combining cocoa and sugar, he could shape the resulting mixture into a solid bar. He and fellow enthusiast John Cadbury (wink, wink) displayed their new chocolate bars in the 1849 Birmingham (England) World’s Fair. The new concoction became popular during the Victorian era and other companies followed suit. Chocolate hearts for Valentines Day were first featured in 1868 and chocolate-covered Easter eggs were introduced in 1873.

Fry continued to introduce new chocolate candy products – at one time he produced 200 such chocolate delights. Over time, people became used to buying their chocolates and other treats in individually-priced packages.

Breakfast Cereals

Breakfast cereals were unknown until the mid 19^th century when vegetarian James Caleb Jackson, who ran a sanitarium in NY State, created a breakfast food from graham flour dough that had been dried. The dough was hard to Jackson soaked it in milk to soften it and then served it, calling it granola.

Shortly thereafter,  John Harvey Kellogg, a doctor who operated a health spa in Michigan, picked up on the idea. His inspiration seems rather unusual when looking back on it today – he believed that sex was unnatural and unhealthy (all of his children were adopted) and felt that the then-practice of eating meat for breakfast increased a person’s sexual appetite. Kellogg copied Jackson’s idea of drying dough and cutting it up to make a breakfast food. He used corn dough and made corn flakes. In 1906

Kellogg’s brother, Will, encouraged John to add sugar to the product. Will opened the Kellogg Company, to produce and sell the corn flakes commercially.

Other companies, including Post (Post Toasties) and the Quakes Oats Company (Puffed Rice) followed. Wheaties debuted after a a wheat bran mixture was spilled onto a hot stove and billed the resulting produce “Breakfast of Champions.” Cherrios was introduced in the ‘40s and to this day remains the best-selling breakfast cereal in America.

In the ‘70s, granola made a comeback amidst a flurry of monster and fruit flavored cereals (Franken Berry, Boo Berry, Count Chocula, Fruity Pebbles). People started to pay attention to just how unhealthy breakfast cereals had become.  By the 2000s the market had exploded as people searched for natural and organic foods – or even anything without “sugar” listed as the first (and most prominent) ingredient. Many of the original cereals now sell themselves as “whole grain cereals.”

Potato Chips

Potato chips started out as Saratoga Chips when a Saratoga resort chef, frustrated with a customer’s demands for chips that “weren’t too thick” sliced potatos extra thin and deep fried them. The customer turned out to be Cornelius Vanderbilt and the tycoon loved the new delicacy.

Saratoga Chips remained a Saratoga specialty for many years but their popularity started to spread. In 1895 the production of potato chips began. When Herman Lay figured out how to mass produce and market the chips, they became available to everyone.

Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola

Coca Cola and Pepsi Cola started out as two different products. Coca Cola was developed as a flavoring for the carbonated water that chemists and pharmacists dispensed as a cure for health problems and illnesses. In the late 1800s John Pemberton patented his drink and sold it to the shops as carbonated medicine.

Pepsi was created at approximately the same time by Caleb Bradham ,a pharmacist, who gave it out for free in his pharmacy’s fountain. He changed the name to “Pepsi Cola” and sold it to other pharmacies, beginning the rivalry. Bradham’s company went bankrupt in 1923 and Coca-Cola was given the chance to buy the company but they declined.

During the Great Depression the Pepsi company revived thanks to larger bottles that gave people more drink for their money. They became Coca Cola’s chief competitor and remain so to this day.