Curated playlist
Snack foods
- YogurtRed wood ants have been dropped into warm milk to make yogurt. This happens in Bulgaria and Turkey.
- ChocolateChocolate began as a bitter, foamy drink, not a sweet bar. For most of its history it was reserved for the elite.
- AlmondThe almond is not a nut, but a stone fruit related to the peach and the plum. The part we eat is its seed.
- PeanutThe peanut, Arachis hypogaea, buries its own fruit, and its Latin species name means "under the earth." In 2023 the world produced 54 million tonnes of peanuts, with China supplying 36 percent of the total and India 19 percent. The plant…
- French friesFrance, Belgium, Spain and Chile each claim to have invented french fries. Historians have never fully settled it.
- ChicharrónChicharrón has a Canadian cousin called oreilles de crisse, a traditional Quebec dish of salted fatback fried until crisp. It appears in spring at the sugar shacks, the cabanes à sucre. Diners eat it between plates heavy with maple syrup,…
- PizzaThe oldest known written pizza was owed to a bishop in the year 997. A tenant owed twelve pizze every Christmas Day.
- CroquetteResearch in 2008 found that the Netherlands eats 350 million kroketten every year. Each one is a crisp breaded roll with a soft, thick filling hidden inside. The Dutch call it a kroket, Spanish speakers say croqueta, and in English it is a…
- CrêpeThe crêpe, a thin French pancake that cooks in seconds on a hot pan, comes with a ritual that has little to do with eating. In France, a cook may hold a gold coin in the left hand while flipping the crêpe with the right. If the flip…
- PirozhkiJapan's curry bread is said to have been inspired by pirozhki. Russian refugees brought the pastry there in 1917.
- PretzelThe pretzel is a baked pastry shaped into a knot. At one festival in the German city of Speyer, 22,000 of them are thrown into the crowd. Today it is a salty snack sold in shopping malls and stadiums. Yet nobody agrees on who first twisted…
- BagelThe bagel first appears in writing in 1610, in the Community Regulations of Kraków, Poland. That rule book lists it as a gift for women in childbirth. The linguist Leo Rosten points to this entry in his book The Joys of Yiddish, as the…