Despite the famously repeated New York legend that the egg cream never contained eggs or cream, the historical record proves otherwise. In fact, there can be no question. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, long before it evolved into today’s iconic mix of milk, seltzer, and chocolate syrup, the original egg cream absolutely … Read more
We can count cows and pigs. We can certainly count sheep. But we don’t eat a beef, we eat some beef, and we would never say “three porks.” Yet if you open old volume of the Oxford English Dictionary, you’ll find a strange historical artifact: the official plural of beef was once beeves and the … Read more
We have a number of familiar and iconic peanut butter brands. There is Jif, Skippy, and Peter Pan, flanked by store brands and upscale organic jars. But, isn’t something missing? Where in the world is Planters Peanut Butter? It’s one of the most persistent curiosity gaps on the food internet. Planters is the undisputed, century-old … Read more
As of 2008, Shreddies had been one of Canada’s most popular breakfast cereals for nearly seventy years. First introduced in 1939, the lattice-woven whole-wheat squares, similar to Chex in the US were a household fixture. They were reliable and nutritious. They were also undeniably square. Then, Kraft and advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather announced a … Read more
In the corporate branding industry, a self-serving myth has taken hold over the last few decades. It’s the idea that consumer food brands achieve multi-billion-dollar success through predictive psycho-linguistics. According to this theory, brand strategists and corporate consultants carefully construct names using phonetic sound symbolism, manipulating front vs. back vowels and soft fricatives vs. hard … Read more
For anyone who grew up in the 1950s to mid-1970s, few childhood memories carry as much magic as the neighborhood “penny candy store.” It was rarely a gleaming, brightly lit confectionery. More often than not, it was a dark, cramped little shack. A neighborhood corner grocer, or a family-run dry-goods shop. But for a child … Read more