The story behind Tarte Tatin’s came from Hotel Tatin, 100 miles south of Paris, run by two sisters, was this famous pastry’s birthplace. Stephanie Tatin, one of the sisters, was so exhausted that she overcooked apples in butter and sugar.
She smelled apples burning in the pan; even though they were meant to be for a traditional apple pie, she covered it with a pastry base and then jammed it inside the oven. She decided to present the apple pie regardless, and it proved to be a pure success among their guests.
Beer
Apparently, beer was first discovered by Mesopotamian communities about 6,000 years ago. Fermenting their cereal grains would result in beer, and this was likely a delightful accident. Beer was enjoyed by the Egyptians, where workers were partially paid in beer spiced with olives, dates, and other seemingly exotic ingredients.
Beer as we know it now began to emerge in the Middle Ages when monks and others started experimenting with hops. Next time you drink a cold beer, just remember that what you're drinking was 6,000 years in the making. Now that's pretty cool!
Pink Lemonade
Although there are pink lemons, their juice is disappointingly dull and colorless, and one of the many different versions tells us why this special lemonade was pink.
In 1857, Pete Conklin was selling regular lemonade at the circus when he ran out of water and accidentally grabbed a tub of dirty water where a performer had just rinsed her pink-colored tights. He marketed it as this new ‘strawberry lemonade,’ and since then, the word spread about ‘pink lemonade’ available to satisfy your thirst, surely now without dirty sock water.
Waffle Cones
The ice cream cone comes in various different forms. The softer cone is associated with soft serve, the harder, crunchier type, and everyone's favorite, waffle cones. But these cones have an unusual story going back more than a century. Even though Italo Marchiony was awarded a patent for producing his ice cream cone in December 1903 in New York, it was a pastry vendor named Ernest A. Hamwi whose invention at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1904 that was made in a hurry.
He ran out of dishes to serve the ice cream on, so Hamwi quickly rolled up a freshly baked waffle-like pastry that had cooled down and then placed the ice cream on top. The customers couldn't have been happier. This may be solid proof that sometimes necessity is the mother of invention.
Sandwich
We can all thank poker for the accidental invention of sandwiches, which are perhaps America's favorite lunch food. John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich, was settled at the gambling table and unwilling to leave, so he requested something to munch while he continued playing cards.
His cook brought him meat sandwiched between two slices of bread. The Earl was a fan, and soon the dish became popular, eventually being named after the town where its original eater was from. Nowadays, of course, sandwiches come in every style and shape; their convenience and ease of making are just some things we most love about them.