Surprising Histories of Popular Foods: From Fondue to Colored Ketchups

When you learn about the histories of these quite popular foods, you’ll be very surprised. Here are the stories of these different foods.

Fondue:

The foundation of fondue is melting cheese in a pot and dipping pieces of bread into the melted cheese using long forks. Traditional Swiss fondue is made from an equal mixture of Switzerland’s famous Emmental and Gruyère cheeses.
The name of this dish comes from the French language. Centuries ago, the Swiss used to produce bread and cheese in summer and fall to consume as provisions during winter. However, over time, the bread would become stale and hard, sometimes even requiring an axe to cut. The cheeses would also harden like stone. But with time, they discovered that by mixing the hardened cheese with wine, a thick and flavorful sauce could be obtained when heated. Moreover, when they dipped stale bread into this sauce, the bread would soften and become quite tasty. Families would gather around the hearth, dipping bread into the pot of sauce boiling over the fire, enjoying this newly discovered dish. Fondue became known outside of Switzerland in the 1960s and gained recognition in the United States in the 1970s.

In the 1800s, Baked Alaska was first created by Charles Ranhofer to celebrate Alaska becoming a state. It is a type of ice cream cake covered with ‘meringue,’ which is essentially a mixture of egg whites and sugar, creating a meringue. The meringue-covered cake is flambéed with liquor for a visual spectacle when brought to the table. It is usually made with strawberry, chocolate, or vanilla ice cream and served with a strawberry or mixed berry sauce.

Sun-dried tomatoes have been a staple in Mediterranean cuisine since the 1500s. In the 1980s and 1990s, Americans started paying more attention to their diets, and the Mediterranean diet became one of the healthiest meal options for them. Sun-dried tomatoes began to be used in everything from salads to pasta in restaurants and homes. However, American farmers quickly caught on to the trend, finding a cheaper and more profitable way to make sun-dried tomatoes accessible for every cook by placing tomatoes in large, industrial dryers instead of drying them in the sun. The market soon became saturated with sun-dried tomato-flavored bagels, crackers, and even bread. However, over time, the popularity of sun-dried tomatoes declined.

Waldorf Salad was created by Oscar Tschirky on March 14, 1893, at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York. It was introduced at a charity ball honoring St. Mary’s Children’s Hospital. Its debut coincided with the opening of the Waldorf hotel the day before. The original recipe only required mixing apples and celery with mayonnaise. Some say the original recipe also included grapes, but this contradicts Oscar’s own cookbook published in 1896. However, the first addition to the recipe was grapes. In the 1920s, walnuts were added to the salad. No one knows exactly when people started adding marshmallows to the mix, but it was likely after the 1930s. Today, the recipe typically includes diced apples, celery, grapes, and walnuts in mayonnaise dressing.

In New Orleans, the trend of bar managers offering free lunch to drinking customers started. Hard-boiled eggs were a good choice because many bars already had eggs available in certain cocktail recipes. Eggs, once cooked, could stay outside for hours, making them an ideal snack to attract patrons to the bar. Bars started serving pickled eggs for several reasons, including their longer shelf life and the ability to leave them out without refrigeration. The salty vinegar taste also made customers more thirsty, leading them to order more drinks. Besides helping prevent patrons from getting too drunk in one sitting, the protein-rich snack also prevented workers from having to peel eggshells.

In the early 2000s, ketchup enthusiasts found it challenging to make choices in the grocery store due to the plethora of options. Consumers preferred not only regular ketchup but also unconventional colors like pink, sea blue, blue, purple, orange, and green alongside their burgers and fries. The packaging, called EZ Squirt, made it easy for children to serve themselves these oddly colored ketchups onto their plates. However, due to children quickly losing interest, Heinz waited a full 2 years before adding the next colors to the EZ Squirt series. The process continued for foreign colors like Funky Purple and Passion Pink. The inability to adjust the flavor as desired led Heinz to eventually remove the tomato ketchup label from the EZ Squirt products. As parents started paying more attention to the content of food products, the colored ketchup trend abruptly ended with the removal of the label.