History
Discover facts about history. Small discoveries that change the way you see familiar things.
History
How manure helped aristocrats grow asparagus early
Rich aristocrats simply could not wait for spring vegetables. They forced gardeners to dig massive trenches, line them with steaming, decomposing manure, and…
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Mustard paste dominated heavily spiced European banquets
Forget subtle flavors; medieval palates craved aggressive seasoning. Mustard seeds were ground up and mixed with acidic fruit juices to create a sharp,…
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Cabbage sustained rural populations over freezing winters
Cabbage is the ultimate survivor vegetable. While other crops withered at the first frost, cabbage thrived in the cold and could be easily fermented into…
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Coffeehouses were once noisy male workspaces
Long before they were quiet places filled with laptops, coffeehouses were loud, chaotic environments. Men gathered to scream at each other about business,…
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Spun sugar required intense exhausting manual labor
Cotton candy used to be a grueling upper-body workout. Before motorized machines, chefs had to melt sugar and rapidly flick it back and forth using a whisk…
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Why Europeans once feared tomatoes
Aristocrats managed to terrify themselves over a simple salad ingredient. Elite Europeans ate off pewter plates, and the high acidity of tomatoes leached lead…
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Popcorn was once popped in hot sand
Microwaves made things entirely too easy. Early snackers would take dried kernels and stir them into a pot of scorching hot sand. The intense heat would…
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Macaroni referred strictly to any generic pasta shape
If you asked for macaroni a few centuries ago, you weren't guaranteed tiny little elbows. The term was wildly imprecise and used to describe basically any…
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Olympic events included professional racewalking
Nothing says 'pinnacle of human athletic achievement' quite like aggressive power-walking. Introduced in the early 20th century, racewalking demands that…
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The original hot chocolate was bitter and spicy
Your sweet marshmallow cocoa is a complete insult to its origins. Originally, chocolate was consumed as an intensely bitter, frothy beverage spiked with…
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Garlic once doubled as glue
Long before it became the cornerstone of Italian cooking, garlic moonlighted as office supplies. The sticky juice inside garlic cloves was widely used by…
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Mushrooms were grown in dark abandoned underground tunnels
Farming doesn't always happen in beautiful sunny fields. To get mass quantities of mushrooms, growers utilized creepy, damp, abandoned catacombs and railway…
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People once preserved butter in bogs
Refrigeration used to mean burying your food in the swamp. To keep butter from going rancid, it was packed into wooden barrels and sunk into peat bogs. The…
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Why some melons are grown in square boxes
Nature makes round fruit, but humans demand right angles. Elite gardeners eventually figured out that if they strapped heavy glass or wooden boxes around…
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When ice cream looked like vegetables
Rich people simply could not eat food that looked like normal food. When ice cream was a rare luxury, it was packed into specialized molds to look like…
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Vanilla is anything but a basic flavor
The undisputed champion of 'basic' flavors actually has incredibly diva-like origins. Vanilla beans come from a very specific climbing orchid that requires…
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Pretzels were baked entirely without dairy or eggs
The pretzel was designed specifically for severe dietary restrictions. Because it is made only of flour, water, and salt, it was the perfect snack for intense…
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Above the salt once meant social status
Where you sat in relation to the table salt determined your entire worth as a human being. Massive, elaborate salt cellars were placed in the middle of long…
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Why pancakes were once a pre-fast kitchen purge
Pancakes weren't a lovely weekend treat; they were a frantic kitchen purge. Before long periods of dietary restriction, households had to urgently get rid of…
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Pomegranates required intense labor to extract tiny seeds
Eating a pomegranate is a ridiculous return on investment. The fruit is essentially a leathery fortress tightly packing hundreds of tiny juice sacs around…
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When blackberries were considered weeds
Before they were packaged in tiny, overpriced plastic containers at the grocery store, blackberries were treated with intense disdain. Because they grow on…
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There was a time guests brought their own spoons
If you were invited to a dinner party centuries ago, you were expected to bring your own spoon. Hosts provided the food, but utensils were strictly BYOS.…
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How animal stomachs helped invent cheese
The greatest culinary invention is basically just spoiled milk stored in a bodily organ. Early travelers carried milk in pouches made from animal stomachs.…
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Why apple once meant almost any tree fruit
Linguistic laziness at its finest. In Old English, the word 'apple' was just a catch-all term for any fruit or nut that grew on a tree, other than berries. If…
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