- I'm not gonna lie.
After watching this video,
you're probably gonna be pretty hungry.
Pizza, apple pie, coffee,
very common foods so, of course,
there can't be anything that interesting
behind them, right?
Well, of course, as it turns out,
these and several others have fascinating
origins that you are not going to expect.
Get ready to look at that cup of Joe
that you have every morning in a very different way.
Here are 10 surprising origins of everyday food.
(gentle music)
Number 10 is pasta.
Who toucha my spaget?
If I were to ask you to think of a food
that is 100% Italian, you would likely say, hmm, pasta.
You gotta put the meatballs in there
with the marinara sauce.
Mwah.
Pasta is a staple of the family dinner table,
with many enjoying a variation of the Italian dish
more than once a week.
However, most historians agree that those
tasty noodles didn't originate in Italy at all
but actually arrived in the country
with the Arabs from Libya when they invaded
in the 9th century A.D.
In fact, this has been pointed to as the moment
that Italy's cuisine was drastically changed
as other food such as eggplant, spinach
and sugarcane were introduced as well.
Of course, it was Italians who mastered
the dish, though it wasn't limited to dinner.
Many enjoyed pasta as a dessert or even a treat,
adding sugary flavors and eating it with their hands.
I'm not gonna lie, I have a crazy sweet tooth.
Put some Nutella in some noodles, mm.
Don't judge me.
Number nine is hot chocolate.
Considering the way that modern-day hot chocolate
is made, it would be understandable if you
thought it wasn't a very old invention.
However, the truth is that a variation
of that delicious, sweet beverage
has been around for literally thousands of years.
Archeologists have discovered evidence in Mexico
that the ancient Mayans used to mash cocoa seeds
into a paste and mix it with water,
chili peppers, spices and cornmeal.
They would then pour that substance back and forth
from a cup into a pot until it became frothy.
By the way, side note, if you haven't
had Mexican chocolate with the spice in it.
Huh huh huh.
Of course, the hot cocoa that we enjoy today
isn't a spicy beverage, but back then,
it was an esteemed drink.
Hot chocolate was introduced to the European
countries in 1528, where it underwent changes
to deliver a more dessert-like delicacy
enjoyed by the elite.
Number eight is sausage.
Mm, everyone loves a good sausage!
With all the effort that goes into making them,
you'd think sausages were a more modern food,
but they actually date back over 5,000 years!
Evidence has been uncovered in what is today Iraq
that ancient Sumerians who populated
the region back then enjoyed a food that
closely resembled sausage around 3000 B.C.
Much like today, making sausage was a way
to ensure all the edible parts of an animal
were used, all of it being ground up
with salt and spices to give it a taste
and longer shelf life.
Traditionally, the ingredients are encased
in the intestines of animals.
Haa.
But, today, it's often made with edible
cellulose or even plastic.
I know, all of that still sounds gross.
You know what they say about sausage.
If you like it, don't find out what it's made of.
My bad.
Number seven is Marmite.
Love it or hate it, and I definitely hate it,
Marmite is a popular food in many countries,
though its home will always be the United Kingdom.
Though it's made primarily by a British company
and has a French name, Marmite was actually
invented by a German scientist named Justus von Liebig.
And he discovered the substance by accident.
In the late 19th century, while working
with yeast extract, a byproduct of brewing beer,
Liebig found that it could be concentrated and made edible.
In 1902, the Marmite Food Company was founded
in Burton on Trent, a town in Staffordshire, England.
Today, over 25 million jars are sold worldwide!
And again, I really don't understand,
'cause I've been sent this by a fan before.
Oh, God.
Also, bonus fun fact, Liebig was dubbed
the father of the fertilizer industry.
That's right, Marmite was invented
by a fertilizer specialist,
so I guess that explains the taste.
Number six is gelatin.
As odd as it may sound, gelatin apparently began
as a form of glue, adhering things during
ancient Egypt's long history.
Archeologists have found evidence
that it was also used in paints
used to make the glyphs in caves
as it helped the paint stick to the stone walls.
Though it's thought to have become a food soon after,
the process of making jelly was not written
about in found texts until 1682.
That's when Denis Papin of France recorded his
research into an edible pure protein substance.
It wasn't until 1895 that the most
famous gelatin, Jell-O, came into existence.
That's when Pearl B. Wait, a cough syrup
manufacturer in Le-Roy, New York, and his wife May,
began adding fruit syrups to the otherwise bland gelatin.
And the rest was wiggly, jiggly history.
Number five is the hamburger.
Mm, hamburger.
When you think of fast food, more often than not,
you're picturing hamburgers, a food that has
a confusing name.
Most patties are made of beef, not pig,
so why would they be called hamburgers?
Well, it turns out that it's not the meat
that these delicious items are named after
but where they were invented.
People have been eating beef long
before the 19th century, when a chef
in Hamburg, Germany, minced up some beef,
mixed it with onions, garlic, salt and pepper
and then served it in a patty form
without a bun, kind of like a steak.
It wasn't until the Industrial Revolution,
when German immigrants to the United States
began opening food carts outside of factories
in Chicago and New York and put the patties
on buns to save on utensils.
And thus the hamburger, as we know it, was born.
And then my personal favorite character,
the Hamburglar came much later.
Bless McDonald's.
Number four is the sandwich.
This may surprise you, but not only were
sandwiches not named after a surname,
they were invented long before they even
got their name.
In ancient Turkey and Greece, meats and cheeses
were served on layers of bread with dips
long before 1762, when John Montagu,
the 4th Earl of Sandwich found himself gambling.
Montagu refused to leave a 24-hour card game
and demanded his cook bring him something
that he could eat with one hand and not make a mess.
The unnamed chef put some meat
between two pieces of toast,
and the result was delicious.
People all over England began asking
for Sandwich's meal, and the name, evidently, stuck.
There's little wonder as to why it took
a long time for the sandwich to catch on overseas.
As in Britain, the popular type wasn't ham
or tuna but tongue.
Yum.
Number three is pizza.
Sitting in the top three favorite foods
in the United States, along with numerous
other countries worldwide, pizza is a complicated
food that's evolved a great deal
from its ancient inventing.
If you ask around, people will probably claim
za was an American invention, especially if you're
in America, but its origin goes much
farther back than that.
Pizza is a more modern version of focaccia,
a flatbread-style food from ancient Rome
that's been said to have originated
in the region of Liguria.
What really made pizza the amazing meal
it is today was when tomatoes arrived
in Italy from the Americas.
Initially, people turned the red fruits away,
believing them to be poisonous,
but by the 18th century, people were adding
tomato paste, cheese and meats to
what is, bddddd, early pizza.
Number two is apple pie.
Okay, seriously, I'm getting very hungry.
If you happen to live in the United States,
odds are pretty good you've heard
someone refer to something as being
as American as apple pie.
And, sure, apple pie is definitely a staple
of many diets in the country,
but just how American is it?
Well, it turns out that, while it's evolved
as a dessert over the years, the earliest
versions of it came about long before America
was colonized by Europeans.
In 1381, a recipe for apples being baked
into an inedible crust was printed in England
by Geoffrey Chaucer, and it included other ingredients,
like pears, figs and raisins.
Now, you might be thinking what about cheese
on apple pie, that's American!
And unfortunately, you'd be wrong.
In the 1600s, England seemed to go through a dairy phase,
adding salty dairy products to desserts, including pie.
Wait, stop, I'm not gonna lie.
I've never had cheese on apple pie.
Is that a thing?
Leave it in the comments below,
'cause if it is, I need to try it.
And number one is coffee.
Woo, caffeine, woo, woo!
That little cup of joy that allows you
to get through your day and tolerate
your coworkers has a long yet humorous history.
That's because, believe it or not, you might
not have that little bit of extra energy
if it weren't for goats.
Meh.
It's widely believed that coffee originated
in Ethiopia, though several stories have
been brought forward to explain its discovery,
all or none of which are true.
The most famous tale is that of a goat herder
named Kaldi who, upon checking on his animals,
found that they were frolicking about
in a more energetic way than usual,
that after eating some strange red berries.
In the 15th century, coffee beans were
exported to Yemen, where it's believed
people tried to make wine from them,
and the first cup of coffee was born.
Imagine that, coffee's basically Ethiopian wine!
Okay, now I need breakfast and a coffee.
Goodbye.