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.
Coffee and tea, together at last
Like coffee? Great. Like tea? Superb. Visit Hong Kong, and you can drink both of them at the same time.
The origin of crops
In 1924 Nikolai Vavilov, a Russian / Soviet scientist, identified the geographic regions where crops were first domesticated: the Vavilov Centres of Diversity.
Judas goat
Sheep are followers. But what if they were following… a traitor?
Culinary diplomacy
A government that employs soft power aims to coerce rather than control – to build influence with other nations through non-violent means. For the government of Thailand, this approach includes restaurants.
Decade potato
NASA famously freeze-dried ice cream so that astronauts could enjoy it in space. But this method of food preparation actually dates back hundreds of years: the South American chuño, or freeze-dried potato, remains edible for decades.
The second eradicated disease
Most people know that smallpox was the first disease that we have completely eradicated in the wild. But what was the second, and what does it have to do with Egyptian plagues, measles, and cattle?
