We would never have thought that raisins were originally used as a decoration in 2000 BC in the Mediterranean. It took a few centuries for humankind to put a dried grape in their mouth and realize that perhaps it was ok to eat them dry.
Before becoming popular trading items, raisins were also used as prizes for sporting events and even medicine.
Buffalo Wings
Buffalo wings are the perfect storm of American snacking ingenuity, a bar food forged from Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York.
One of two different versions claims that during the late 1960s, the barkeeper's mother, Teresa Bellismo, received an incorrect shipment of chicken wings when she actually ordered chicken necks. So she took the scraps usually meant for the soup stocks and decided to fry them and toss them in her signature sauce for their friends at the bar.
Chewing Gum
While it may seem like a new invention, people have been chewing gum for centuries, all the way back to when the Mayas and Aztecs chewed on chicle, a natural rubbery substance extracted from sapodilla trees. Sounds tempting, right?
But it wasn't until Thomas Adams Sr. got a supply of chicle through an exiled Mexican President in the mid-1800s that he tried to transform the chicle into an industrial material, only to note that when boiled and formed into pieces, and soon it was sold like chewing gum.
Bakewell Pudding
Although the true beginnings of this English dessert are not fully known, sources have it that it may have started in the town of Bakewell (obviously) back in the 1820s.
Mrs. Greaves had a cook working at the White Horse Inn who didn't follow the recipe properly. Instead of stirring the egg together with the almond paste and the pastry, she ended up smearing it on top of the jam. The baked mixture set like egg custard and soon became their customer's favorite dish.
Artificial Sweetener
Artificial sweeteners became a charming alternative to real sugar because they add virtually zero calories with only need a fraction of the powdery substance to reach an intense level of sweetness.
The story goes like this: In 1879, Constantin Fahlberg, a chemist at Johns Hopkins University, must have forgotten to wash his hands after work when he noticed a sweet taste on his palm. It was connected to overboiled chemicals - and he then tested the mixture and, upon returning to Germany, started producing the first artificial sweetener: Saccharin.