Unintended Food and Drink Creations That Turned The World Upside Down
Who would think that running out of baker’s chocolate would lead to one of the most beloved cookies in history? In 1938, Ruth Wakefield was making her regular chocolate cookies at the Toll House Inn in Massachusetts when she discovered she was out of baker’s chocolate
The sparkling wine we know as Champagne started as a mistake in the cold cellars of France. In the 1600s, monks would bottle their still wines before winter set in, but the cold temperatures would stop the fermentation process.
You might think someone carefully planned the creation of Worcestershire sauce, but you’d be wrong! In 1837, two chemists named John Lea and William Perrins tried to copy an Indian sauce recipe for a nobleman.
In 1905, 11-year-old Frank Epperson left a mixture of powdered soda, water, and a wooden stirring stick on his San Francisco porch during a cold night. The next morning, he found the mixture had frozen around the stick, creating what he called the “Epsicle.”
The accidental creation of potato chips in 1853 changed snacking forever. George Crum, a chef at Moon’s Lake House in Saratoga Springs, New York, had a fussy customer who kept sending back his French fries, saying they were too thick.
Dr. John Harvey Kellogg accidentally created Corn Flakes in 1894 while trying to make healthy food for his sanitarium patients. He accidentally left some cooked wheat out, which went stale. Instead of throwing it away, he and his brother Will Keith Kellogg decided to process it through rollers, creating wheat flakes.
Legend has it that tofu was accidentally created over 2,000 years ago in China when a cook mixed some ground soybeans with seawater. The natural minerals in the water caused the soy milk to curdle, forming white blocks of what we now know as tofu.