Mad honey
Honey takes on the chemical properties of nectar gathered by bees. This fact turns out to be quite useful if you’re fighting the ancient Romans.
Twelve grapes
What is it about this time of year and the number twelve? In Spain and countries culturally connected to Spain, twelve grapes is a New Year tradition.
Flapdragon
A Christmas Eve parlour game played in Victorian England involved grabbing burning raisins with your hands and eating them while they were still alight.
Oldest winery and shoe
The Areni-1 cave in southern Armenia is the site of the oldest shoe, and also the oldest winery, in the world.
Largest kitchen
Jagannath, the deity from whom we get the word juggernaut, receives offerings of food from the world’s largest kitchen.
Rotten before it is ripe
Chaucer, Shakespeare, Cervantes, and Rabelais all wrote about the medlar fruit, which must rot before it is ready to eat.
Can’t opener
The first tin cans of food were manufactured around 1813. The first can openers arrived more than thirty years later.
Australian tablespoons
If you’re using an Australian recipe book, watch out for the tablespoon, or your baking will turn out all wrong.
Original cabbage
What’s your favourite green vegetable? Kale? Broccoli? Cabbage – regular, red, or savoy? Brussels sprouts? Cauliflower? Trick question. They’re all the same species.
The king, the twins, and coffee vs. tea
King Gustav III of Sweden was so convinced that coffee was bad for you that he enlisted two criminal twins to prove his case scientifically.
Strip-mined country
Eighty percent of the surface area of the Pacific country Nauru has been strip-mined; most of its land has been shipped to Australia, New Zealand, and Britain.
Food for a day
The humanitarian daily ration (HDR) is a small non-perishable package designed to provide one day’s food supply to anyone, regardless of religious dietary restrictions. Just don’t make it the same colour as a bomb when you airdrop it.
Pineapple on pizza
Who can we blame / credit for the creation of the Hawaiian pizza? Apparently, the Italians, Greeks, Canadians, Chinese, and maybe the Germans. But not Hawaiians.
Since sliced bread
We all know that chocolate chip cookies are the best thing since sliced bread. But what is older than sliced bread? Well, the list is long: Betty White. Sidney Poitier. The ex-pope.
Bean feast
“I want a bean feast” announces Veruca Salt in the 1971 film Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. I used to think this was just another of her random demands, but it turns out that a bean feast is a real thing.
