The Curious History of the World's Favorite Foods, Part 1
Peanuts, spaghetti, dessert, chili and more, find out where they came from!
This issue highlights the story behind some of the world's favorite foods. As each entry is relatively intensive, I'll create additional food-focused newsletters in the future.
Food is among the most popular categories, with over 850 events dedicated to what we eat and drink annually. Most food events popped up on the internet because someone decided to celebrate a specific food, which became a tradition. When there is no sponsor, anniversary, or discernable origin for the date chosen, the champion is "Unofficial Event. No Sponsor."
Cover Image: The main dining hall for professionals at Saudi Aramco, the kingdom's oil company in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. I always marveled at the skill of the chefs and people working there. The image is of a typical day at the salad bar I snapped one day on my phone.
We'll start with a misconception, the not-a-nut veggie legume we call peanut.
National Peanut Day
Date: September 13, 2022
Location: United States
Champion: Unofficial Event. No Sponsor.
Peanuts are legumes, a vegetable, and a part of the pea family. Despite their name, they are not nuts.
Based upon fossils, peanuts originated in the Zaña Valley of northern Peru about 8,500 years ago, though they've changed from their original consistency through cultivation. By the 15th century, the legume was grown throughout Central and South America and The Caribbean; Spanish and Portuguese explorers brought peanuts to Africa, Europe, and Asia. Eventually, they were introduced to North America through African slaves in the 1700s.
Today, nearly 50 million metric tons of peanuts are grown annually, with 50% cultivated in three countries: China, India, and Nigeria. Sudan is the fourth largest producer, followed by the United States at five.
Peanuts are packed with protein, fat, carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals, making them a nutritious and affordable staple. Therefore, the next time someone tells you to "Eat your vegetables," pop a peanut. Dry roasted, raw, or buttery, veggies never tasted so good!
Mooncake Festival / Zhong Qiu Jie Festival
Date: September 10, 2022
Location: China, Korea, and SE Asia
Champion: Tradition and Folklore
Mid-Autumn Festival (Zhong Qiu Jie Festival) in China is celebrated on the 15th day of the eighth month of the Chinese lunar calendar, typically on the full moon between September and October. Considered a public holiday and the second most anticipated festival in China, it is known by several names, including the Moon Festival, Harvest Moon Festival, and Mooncake Festival.
The festival is centralized on three values:
Family & Marriage
Charity
Thanksgiving
Folklore relating to the festival involves the couple Hou Yi, an archer, and his wife Chang'e. According to legend, ten suns rose in the sky, and Hou Yi shot nine down and left one to light the sky. Because of this, the gods gave Hou Yi an elixir to immortalize him. Rather than take it, Hou Yi gave the mixture to his wife for safekeeping. However, his apprentice, Peng Meng, attempted to steal the potion from Chang'e while her husband was hunting. Chang'e swallowed it, making her immortal. Rising into the night, she chose to stay with the moon to be near her husband. As a token of his love, Hou Yi placed her favorite foods in his yard for her at the harvest moon.
From this story, the tradition of setting out food for loved ones and eating mooncakes derives. Mooncakes, the eating and displaying of them within a group, is the festival's highlight. The round shape symbolizes unity and family. The festival is also the time to celebrate marriages—and occurs in several east Asian countries.
National Spaghetti Day
Date: January 4, 2023
Location: United States
Champion: Unofficial Event. No Sponsor.
National Spaghetti Day celebrates the round wheat noodle known as spaghetti. The ancient Greeks first wrote about spaghetti nearly 3,000 years ago. Later the lauded Roman statesman and poet Cicero documented his love for spaghetti and his propensity to overindulge.
When archaeologists uncovered the remains of the Mount Vesuvius and Mount Etna eruptions of the first century, they found spaghetti and the instruments used to make the pasta.
During this period, and well before the Islamic era, Arab cultures of the Gulf and Levant fashioned dried pasta in strips. Arabians of Western Asia were nomadic peoples who shared their version of dried pasta throughout East, South, and West Asia. When Islam conquered Sicily in June 827 AD, the culinary arts of Europe and Asia met. To this day, they share similarities in cuisine.
During the 12th century, Abu Abdullah Mohammed al Idrisi wrote of the importance of spaghetti to Sicilian culture in "The Book of Roger," focusing on the town of Trabia in Sicily. Here, the natives made the dough using hard wheat into long strands that they then exported to other areas.
A century later, Marco Polo traveled to and lived for several years in China, and he may have carried spaghetti with him. The Chinese also create noodles from rice. For some reason, the legend persists that Marco Polo brought pasta to Europe.
What about the red sauce now associated with spaghetti?
Tomatoes arrived in Europe from Central and South America via the Spanish Conquistadors during the 16th century. The Aztec word "xitomati" is the original name. It would take a while for the funky fruit to catch on, nearly 200 years. Legend suggests its popularity soared after being rumored to be an aphrodisiac in aristocratic circles. The French called tomatoes "love apples."
Tomatoes proliferate quickly, making them accessible to ordinary people. By the mid-18th century, this inexpensive and easy-to-grow food became a staple in southern European diets. However, the sauce would not be complete until the mid-19th century, with India's contribution of fresh basil.
Meatballs in spaghetti sauce? That is an American thing.
Therefore, if you sit down to a plate of spaghetti today, thank the Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Aztecs, Spanish, Indians, and Italians. Your plate of pleasure is 3,000 years and three continents in the making!
National Tortilla Chip Day
Date: February 24, 2023
Location: United States
Champion: Unofficial Event. No Sponsor.
November 29, 1907, is the day the Tortilla Chips inventor Rebecca Webb-Carranza was born in Durango, Mexico. Her family immigrated to the United States when she was a child.
Carranza married in 1931, and the family ran a Mexican delicatessen in Los Angeles, California, specializing in homemade tortillas. Sometime in the early 1940s, the Carranza family held a party, and she needed appetizers. Resourceful, Carranza decided that rather than throw out the scrapings from the tortillas in their factory, she cut the scraps into wedges, fried them, and served them at a party. The tortilla chips were a hit with her family and friends. Soon she began selling the chips for ten cents a bowl out of the family shop. Film crews and others in the entertainment industry were regular customers, and word of the new snack spread. The tortilla chip was born.
Though she created the tortilla chip and the business expanded, in 1967, the family was forced to close their chip factory in Long Beach, California. Larger corporations perceived the potential in the chip and were able to outproduce the family-owned business at a lower cost, driving them out of business.
Carranza had to work into her 80s, bagging groceries and assisting with the US census. Though the creator of the market and the tortilla chip, she died poor in money but rich in family. She left behind 12 grandchildren, 19 great-grandchildren, and two great-great-grandchildren.
In the mid-1990s, Carranza was among the recipients of the Golden Tortilla, an award created to honor Mexican food industry innovators by the Azteca Milling company.
Rebecca Webb-Carranza died on January 19, 2006, at 98
World Chili Cook-off Championship
Date: September 23-25, 2022
Location: Burroughs & Chapin Pavilion Place, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, US
Champion: International Chili Society
The first World Championship Chili Cook-off occurred in 1967 and continues to grow yearly. It is a highly anticipated event featuring hundreds of chefs competing for the World's Best Chili prize.
CHILI, THE MEXICAN & AMERICAN FUSION OF FLAVOR
To understand the southwestern United States, you need to understand chili. Chili is a genuine Mexican-American invention, a stew perfected on the cattle drives between northern Mexico and Montana during the western expansion of the 19th century. San Antonio, Texas, popularized the hash. Today it is cooked in a variety of ways with different ingredients. Chili is a gastronomic art form; don't mess with the chili chef!
Beans, one of the easiest to transport and inexpensive sources of protein, were the cowboys' main sustenance on the cattle trail. Often beans were all they had, so the cowboys, a large percentage of whom were Latino and influenced by Central American cuisine, mixed these with spices and chilies to take the monotony out of the hearty dish. When meat, usually beef, bison, or deer, was available, it was added, creating "chili con carne," or chili with meat.
Traditional chili does not include beans, only meat, spices, and chilis.
Homestyle chili contains beans, chilies, and spices with or without meat.
Green chili is made using various green rather than red chilis and can contain meat and beans.
CHILI’S COUSINS AND FOREBEARERS
What we call chili today isn't the first dish to play with chilis, beans, and meat.
In the Middle East, tribes, traders, and travelers make a bean-based hot stew called ful (sometimes spelled fuol), which is eaten on flatbread dipped into a common pot; some recipes are pretty hot with peppers and chilies. Like American chili, each nation in West Asia and North Africa has its unique spin on ful, and ful chefs guard their secret family recipes with vigor! Turkey has a delicious meat stew cooked and buried in a fire within clay pots called Güveç, an ancient cousin of chili without beans.
Pioneers, trappers, explorers, and homesteaders created dried chili bricks that easily traveled. The bricks were dropped in boiling water, and the dinner was ready. The bricking recipe is found in "Mexican Gold Trail: The Journey of a Forty-niner," published in 1849 by George W B Evens. Bricks included fat, beef, and spices pounded into blocks and could be combined with anything found on the trail.
Immigrants from the Canary Islands off West Africa settling in San Antonio in 1723 created a dish combining local peppers, spices, wild onions, garlic, meat, and coconut. Other stories of chili's origin point to the Aztecs, Spanish Conquistadors, laundry ladies, and even nuns. What is known is that 1828 was the first time the Mexican-American dish was referenced in a newspaper.
Chili combines with hamburgers, hotdogs, and nachos. It can be served in bread bowls, as a casserole, as a garnish, or eaten ala carte. Top it with cheese, bacon, crackers, chips, sour cream, or sesame seeds. It's really up to the chef what goes in it. Individual cultures create their versions using locally available ingredients. The only requirement for authenticity is that the recipe includes several chili varieties.
National Dessert Day
Date: October 14, 2022
Location: United States
Champion: Unofficial Event. No Sponsor.
The concept of dessert as part of a meal originated in Andalusia, Córdoba (Spain) on the Iberian Peninsula, circa 840-852 AD. Dessert was the brainchild of what you might call the first rock star-fashionista-inventor-culinary artist of the Common Era, Abu al-Hasan Ali Ibn Nafi, or as he was more commonly known, Ziryab, meaning "Blackbird" or "Jaybird" in Persian.
Ziryab was born in 789AD in what is today Iraq. He is one of the more interesting characters of history, rising from slavery to the top of the royal court during his life. Thanks to him, we have music schools, toothpaste, deodorant, clothes for different seasons, asparagus, and a three-course meal, and those are just his most well-known contributions.
THE THREE-COURSE MEAL
Before Ziryab, dining didn't have much of a protocol. Instead, the food arrived on the table in a pile, and people grabbed whatever they wanted with their hands. Ziryab worked for the royal family in Córdoba. As part of his duties, he sought ways to make events memorable. "Why did dinner have to be dull?" he thought.
Ziryab invented presentation, dressing up the table with fine linens, crystal glasses, and different size spoons. He also reorganized how food arrived on the table, changing it to a procession rather than presenting all dishes simultaneously. At the time, this was revolutionary.
A man of many talents, Ziryab figured out that if you started with a soup (to prep the stomach and get digestion going), then moved on to the main dish of meat, veggies, and starches; the entire meal became an event when topped off with something sweet.
Andalusia's royal court and aristocracy loved this new idea of three courses and making a meal a celebration. The custom of three courses and table dressing soon spread throughout the kingdom, upper classes, and the rest of Europe and the world.
That sweet topping off the meal became known as dessert about 900 years later when the French donated the word "desservir" or "clear the table" to denote the last item served.
Of course, today's dessert can be a sweet treat, a cup of coffee, tea, or liquor. Today, we tend to eat dessert whenever we want. Still, technically, it's only dessert if it comes at the end of a meal.
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That's a wrap for this issue. Thanks for reading and subscribing. I'll see you in a few weeks for October Surprises.