Interesting Food Facts (18 pics)

1

Green beans are a fruit.

2

Margarine used to be the color pink to let people distinguish between it and real butter.

3

The reason a bit of salt on your tomatoes tastes amazing is because they’re naturally rich in glutamate, and they react with the salt to create MSG

4

Fresh pineapple contains an enzyme that digests protein. If you make chicken salad with fresh pineapple and leave it in the refrigerator, the chicken will start to dissolve and get mealy.

5

Cashews are not actually nuts- they are seeds that grow out of the bottom of the cashew apple, which is also edible.

6

Broccoli is mutant cabbage. It wouldn’t exist in nature if not for selective breeding.

7

People often think of France when they hear mention of the croissant, but Austria is the true country of birth for this pastry. It’s Viennese, not French. The ‘kipferl’ was believed to be the spiritual ancestor of the croissant. It was created as a propaganda technique by the Austrians, made in the shape of the Crescent Moon of Islam so that when Austrians ate it they would be “Devouring” the Ottomans.

8

The fruit was named orange before the color. Before that, the color orange was just considering a type of mild red.

9

Fermented horse milk is a beloved drink in Kyrgyzstan.

10

The top global exporter of caraway (aka Persian cumin) is Finland, exporting approximately 30% of the world’s caraway.

11

Japanese curry was created in attempt to replicate British stew, not Indian curry

12

Mac and cheese was considered a really fancy food at one time, during the start of modern-style restaurants in America in the early-mid 1800s, it was the go-to dish to be served to you in a fancy restaurant (because all restaurants were a bit fancy then) in America.

13

Ciabatta was only invented in 1981.

14

You can “cook” shrimp in lemon or lime juice. Or both! Just throw them in a bowl of juice and watch them turn pink.

15

I didn’t learn this recently and it’s not so crazy (so I guess this doesn’t fit at all lol), but I’ve always thought it was cute that margherita pizza was invented/named for the Queen of Italy (Margherita of Savoy) and its ingredients were to represent Italy’s flag.

16

Vindaloo, the Indian dish, comes from the port city of Goa, where Portuguese traders introduced the locals to a stewed pork dish with wine (vinha) and garlic (alho), named “meat with wine and garlic,” or “carne de vinha d’alhos.” Eventually the wine became replaced with vinegar, and taboos elsewhere in India against pork eventually caused the dish to branch out to all sorts of different meats.

17

Apples are not true to seed. Meaning that if you plant the seed you won’t get the same variety of the seed that it came from. The only way to mass produce a particular variety is to graft a branch of a known variety into the trunk of another apple tree. Then that branch starts producing the variety.