The internet is drowning in breathless retrospectives of discontinued junk food, most of them treating the demise of every short-lived novelty snack, from 3D Doritos to green ketchup, as a tragic cultural loss. In reality, most forgotten snacks earned their demise. The novelty wore off, sales plummeted, and food conglomerates pulled the plug on products … Read more
There is an unspoken conspiracy in popular food history that requires the ancient Romans to be credited with inventing everything we eat. If a food exists in modern Western culture, an internet article somewhere insists a Roman legionary carried it in his rucksack or an emperor demanded it at a banquet. If the Romans can’t … Read more
Klondike abruptly killed the beloved Choco Taco in 2022, setting off nationwide grief. Despite rumors of poor sales, the treat was actually profitable. Here is the true story of its 1983 structural invention, its mechanical manufacturing bottlenecks, and the corporate audit that doomed it.
Pop history creators, whether videos or text, love to reduce complex food history questions to easily digestible factoids. One such sensational claim concerns the origin of dessert. According to this claim, mersu, a 4,000-year-old Babylonian preparation of dates, flour, and fat, is “the world’s oldest dessert.” Certainly, this makes for an irresistible hook, promising a … Read more
If you open up a brown paper bag of Chinese takeout in the United States, you will almost certainly find a handful of familiar condiment packets tossed into the bottom. Alongside the standard packets of hot mustard and soy sauce will be a bunch of orange to yellow gel labeled simply, Duck Sauce. Every day, … Read more
During the mid-1950s, Campbell’s Soup began running bizarre full-page ads in major magazines. The ads pictured an elegant old-fashioned glass filled with ice cubes. The amber liquid from a can of Campbell’s Bouillon (Beef Broth) is being poured over the ice. The headline boldly commands: “Soup on the Rocks!” When modern people stumble onto articles … Read more