Food

Being the new owner of a house with a garden (like I was saying two weeks ago), I started to look at what I could grow in that garden. It’s a bit late for this year, but I want to be ready for the spring.

Anyway, that led me to read some articles and I was “shocked” (it’s clearly too strong a word) to learn that someone created the strawberry.

Who Created the Strawberry?

First of all, when I’m talking about the strawberry, I’m talking about the one we eat nowadays. Turns out, wild strawberries have been used for decorative purposes since at least Ancient Rome.

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It’s been awhile since I talk about food—since I looked into the history of Peanut Butter. But I was looking into some recipes recently and this led me on a road that ended with Buffalo wings. It picked my curiosity:

Who Created Buffalo Wings?

Weirdly enough, it’s not clear. There are contradictory testimony, confusion about dates, and bars… But it definitely came from Buffalo, New York. We are going to start with the most popular story.

“It was Friday night in the bar and since people were buying a lot of drinks he wanted to do something nice for them at midnight when the mostly Catholic patrons would be able to eat meat again.” — Dominic Bellissimo, New Yorker Magazine, 1980.

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Living in France, Peanut Butter was not a part of my diet for a very long time. Nowadays, it’s easier to find some in any food store, but you won’t find it in a lot of kitchens here. The average European eats less than 1 tbsp of peanut butter a year, according to NPR. Researching its history, I understand why. It’s simply not European food.

Who Created Peanut Butter?

The answer is not George Washington Carver, even if a lot of people have credited him for it (and called him the “grandfather of peanuts”). The first peanut butter was eaten by the Aztecs and the Incas of Peru. But it’s not the kind of peanut butter we are talking about today.

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The other day, I ate a frozen pizza. It was edible. I don’t know where to buy a good pizza in my city, but I know there must be one place, somewhere, because pizza is everywhere! Even Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles like them, so it’s clearly a universal meal. But…

Who created the pizza?

To answer a simple question like this, we’ll have to determine what is a pizza. For some, it’s flatbreads with toppings. In that case, we have to go back far away in time. But how far?

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Summer is here. The best time of the year to eat ice cream, don’t you think? Of course, nowadays, we eat ice cream whenever we want. It’s easy to always have some at home, but it was not always the case. In fact, the first electrical refrigerator for home use was invented in 1913, but ice cream existed long before that—even if it was mostly flavored ice.

Who First Created Ice Cream?

The legend says that Marco Polo was introduced to ice cream during his time in the court of the Chinese emperor, Kublai Khan, and took the recipe back with him to Italy. It seems that ice cream has been made in China as long ago as 3000 BC.

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