In countless homes, breakfast isn’t completed without a bowl of corn flakes with milk. This renowned food product was discovered by accident, too. The story goes that while working in a sanitarium in Michigan, W.K. Kellogg, the founder of the Kellogg Company, attempted to make granola as a healthy vegetarian treat for some patients at a sanatorium at Battle Creek that he ran with his brother.
While making the dish, W.K. Kellogg and his brother accidentally left wheatberry cooking in the kitchen and found later that the kernels had flaked. The brothers kept on experimenting with cooking different grains and eventually flaked corn, thus creating a recipe for corn flakes that they really enjoyed. The cereal became the most loved morning meal worldwide and today its numerous variations can be found everywhere.
7. Nachos
The story of the creation of nachos is quite interesting. The famous Mexican snack is credited to Ignacio “Nacho” Anaya who was the head waiter at a restaurant called the Victory Club in Piedras Negras, Mexico. One afternoon in 1943, a group of military wives from the US had crossed the border into Mexico from the Fort Duncan Army base to do some shopping.
In the evening, they came to the Victory Club restaurant to have a meal but were disappointed to find that the chef had left. Anaya didn’t want the women to leave and decided to prepare something new – covering a plate of tostadas with grated cheese, passing it through a salamander oven while heating the plate from above, and then adding a few sliced jalapeño peppers as a topping.
The women adored the dish and one of them dubbed it “Nacho’s especiale” (“Nacho’s special”). Later on, it was shortened to just ‘Nachos’ and came to be the well-known snack we all recognize today.
8. Chocolate Chip Cookies
In the year 1930, an American woman named Ruth Wakefield was mixing a batch of cookies for her roadside inn guests when she found that she had run out of the baker’s chocolate she generally used for making them. To compensate, Wakefield added broken up pieces of Nestle’s semi-sweet chocolate instead. She hoped that the chocolate would melt and absorb into the dough to create chocolate cookies. The chips didn’t spread. However, when Wakefield removed the pan from the oven, she found that she had accidentally created chocolate chip cookies.
The guests loved the chocolate chip cookies, and it became Wakefield’s specialty, which she called “Toll House Crunch Cookies”. The recipe for the cookies was published in a Boston newspaper and shortly afterward, chocolate chip cookies became the most popular variety of cookies in America. It didn’t take long for this delicious recipe to reach different parts of the world as well. So, the next time you are savoring a pack of those yummy chocolate chip cookies, do remember to thank Ruth Wakefield for inventing them.
9. Slurpees
Slurpees are arguably the most popular drinks found in convenience stores all over the world. This frozen carbonated beverage is a favorite among kids in the summer. The first Slurpee was made in 1958 by Omar Knedlik, a Kansas-based Dairy Queen owner. Back then, Knedik’s store didn’t have a fountain and he would often keep his soda shipments in the freezer to keep them cool. Once, Knedlik accidentally left the sodas in the freezer a little longer than he had intended and they turned out to be partially frozen.
Knedlik decided to take a chance and sell them anyway. Surprisingly, the customers loved the partially frozen drinks. They became so popular, in fact, that Knedlik built a new machine to keep producing the partially frozen sodas and this is how the very first Slurpee machine was born.
10. Beer
Did you know that beer is the oldest recorded recipe in the world? The brewing process was first documented by the ancient Egyptians on papyrus scrolls around 5,000 BC. These first beers were blended with a mixture of such ingredients as dates, pomegranates, and other indigenous herbs. Their taste is likely to have been quite bitter and harsh. It is said that the Egyptians consumed these beers during religious ceremonies.
Even before the Egyptians, however, the ancient cultures of Mesopotamia are believed to have been the first brewers way back in 10,000 B.C. Historians say that when the Mesopotamians began storing grains for bread, their storage spaces would at times become damp, causing the grains to ferment. This fermentation process led to the creation of the earliest beer. Let’s raise a glass then to the Mesopotamians.
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