Food is one of life’s greatest joys. However, it’s important to emphasize that a delightful experience primarily comes from quality food. Everyone can surely recall less pleasant moments associated with distasteful meals, such as hospital food. So yes, it’s a fundamental truth of life – not all food is created equal.
Ice cream
The inventor of the popsicle was just an 11-year-old boy named Frank Epperson. This delightful fruity treat was created by pure chance, involving only a soda-making apparatus, water, fruit flavoring, a stick, a particularly cold night, and a child’s forgetfulness. It was this forgetfulness that turned out to be the secret ingredient allowing us today to enjoy these sweet, frozen delights.
In 1905, Frank received a soda-making device as a gift. He was so captivated by this new toy that he accidentally left his homemade sweet drink outside overnight. Coincidentally, that night was exceptionally frosty, and the drink froze to the stick he had used to stir it.
When Frank discovered it the next morning, he decided to lick the frozen soda and fruit flavoring off the stick. He called his invention “epsicle.” Over time, he began sharing his creation with friends and neighbors, who all enjoyed the sweet treat. By 1924, he had patented his invention and renamed it “popsicle.”
Chocolate Chip Cookies
You might wonder how such a delectable treat, also known as cookies, could have been created entirely by accident. Well, it happened in 1930. Ruth Wakefield, along with her husband, owned a tourist lodge named the Toll House Inn.
One day, when she was preparing chocolate cookies for her guests, she discovered she had run out of one of the key ingredients—baking chocolate. Without the option to run to the store, she decided to improvise. She took a bar of Nestlé chocolate, chopped it up, and added the pieces to the cookie batter, expecting them to melt and form a chocolatey dough. However, her assumption was incorrect. Instead, she created a new kind of cookie with chunks of chocolate—known as Toll House Cookies—which gradually became one of the most popular American treats of all time. However, there is a twist to this story. It’s said that the story of the cookies’ accidental creation might not be true.
Ruth Wakefield herself reportedly stated that the cookies were intentionally invented. “We had been serving a thin butterscotch nut cookie with ice cream. Everyone seemed to love it, but I was trying to give them something different. So I came up with the Toll House cookie,” the creator explained about her treat.
Sandwich
A seemingly simple thing like a sandwich—what’s so complex about that? Just two pieces of bread with various fillings to suit a gourmet’s taste preferences. The sandwich, or open-faced sandwich, is now such a common part of our diet that it probably never occurred to you that it once didn’t exist and had to be invented.
The sandwich is the result of a card game addiction. Yes, there’s no noble tale behind it, just the sloth of a certain John Montagu, the Earl of Sandwich. He was the first, in 1700, to figure out that two slices of bread with meat in between tasted unbelievably good.
What’s his story? There are several versions suggesting why and how the sandwich came about. One popular narrative is that John Montagu played a lot. It took up so much of his time that he couldn’t leave his intense card games, and he often asked for his meat to be brought between two thin slices of bread. The reason? He could eat it without needing utensils or dirtying his hands by touching the meat directly. The first sandwich was just beef between bread, and from there, people made various combinations and variations. A specific type is known as the submarine sandwich.
It earned its name because its shape strikingly resembles a submarine. It was probably introduced to the USA by Italian immigrants, hence considered an Italian-American food. There are at least 13 specific names for this type of sandwich, the most well-known being the sub. Logically, you might now understand why a fast-food chain serving stuffed baguettes is named Subway.
