Chow Down With This Quiz on the History of Food

In 1893, the U.S. Supreme Court voted to classify tomatoes as vegetables instead of as fruit. The case was brought before the court because of issues regarding the importing of tomatoes, as different tariffs were imposed on fruits versus vegetables. Justice Horace Gray wrote that while tomatoes are “fruit of a vine,” they’re treated as vegetables in “the common language of the people.”

The first food eaten in space was tubed beef and liver paste, enjoyed by Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin in 1961. In 1962, John Glenn became the first American to eat in space by consuming some tubed applesauce. In 1969, while on the moon, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin ate bacon squares, three sugar cookies, peaches, a pineapple-grapefruit drink, and coffee.

In 1934, Yankees slugger Lou Gehrig became the first athlete featured on boxes of Wheaties cereal, though he appeared on the back of the box at the time. The first athlete to ever grace the cover of the “Breakfast of Champions” was Olympic gold medalist Bob Richards. No athlete has appeared on Wheaties boxes more than Michael Jordan, who did so 18 times.

The ancient Egyptians considered the onion to be a symbol of eternal life due to its spherical shape and concentric ring pattern. Onions were used as funeral offerings, often depicted being held by priests in paintings, and used as adornments in the mummification process. Ancient Buddhists, on the other hand, forbade the consumption of onions, fearing they affected the liver.

Tomato-based pasta sauces didn't exist in Italy until the 16th century, as before that, pasta was primarily eaten plain. What’s more, pasta dishes were often messily consumed by diners using their hands, not utensils. Tomatoes finally reached Italy in 1548 when Spanish conquistadors brought them to Europe from the Americas.

In Greek mythology, the pomegranate is considered a symbol of fertility and rebirth. Mentioned in Homer’s “Odyssey,” the fruit has a long-standing connection with good health. In Greek culture today, pomegranates are commonly smashed on New Year’s Day — the number of seeds that scatter signify how lucky the coming year will be.

While food has been frozen in one way or another for as long as humans have lived in cold climates, modern frozen food began in the 1920s with inventor Clarence Birdseye's fish fillets. Prior to Birdseye's "flash freezing" techniques, frozen food typically possessed poor flavor and mushy texture, stemming from the formation of ice crystals during the gradual freezing process.

Famed chef Auguste Escoffier is credited with creating the cherries jubilee dessert in honor of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee celebration in 1897. The queen was known to love cherries, so Escoffier poached some of the delectable fruit in simple syrup, before then pouring brandy over the pan and lighting the dish aflame.

Cane sugar is believed to have originated as a sweetener in Polynesia before spreading to India, where it was rediscovered in 510 BCE by Persian Emperor Darius I. Sugar then made its way to Western Europe during the First Crusade in the 11th century CE.

On June 20, 1919, A&W began as a root beer stand in Wichita, Kansas. In 1925, founders Roy W. Allen and Frank Wright began selling A&W franchises, making it the oldest American chain restaurant. However, some argue that White Castle should hold the title, as it’s been serving its trademark burgers since opening in 1921.

In 1836, President Andrew Jackson received a 1,400-pound block of cheese as a gift from dairy farmers in New York, which he displayed in the White House for over a year. Before leaving office, Jackson invited anyone who wanted to come take some cheese. A firsthand account recalls men, women, and children hacking away at the block until "the carpet was slippery with cheese."

Cleopatra was known for her love of pickled cucumbers, which the Egyptian queen credited as playing a key role in maintaining both her health and her beauty. Her lover Julius Caesar also believed in the medical properties of pickles, and plied his Roman troops with the briny food in order to make them strong.

Though lox (smoked salmon) came from Scandinavia and bagels originated in China (and were refined in Italy in the 14th century), the idea to combine them for breakfast was born in the Jewish communities of New York City in the early 20th century. Bagels and lox are now usually accompanied by cream cheese, capers, onions, and other accoutrements.

Born in 1718, the Fourth Earl of Sandwich, John Montagu, is the namesake of the modern lunchroom staple. A busy British lord, Montagu did not want to be bothered to leave his work — or card games — to eat, so he asked his chef for something that he could easily consume at the table. The solution was meat layered between bread.

Though they weren’t fully sure as to why it worked at the time, ancient Egyptians were known to apply moldy bread to open wounds. This method saw them inadvertently take advantage of the science that later was used to create penicillin. Egyptians also treated wounds with honey, which is known to be a natural bacteria killer.

Tomatoes got a bad rap in the late-18th century when they were first introduced to Europe from the Americas. Many Europeans thought they were poisonous, dubbing the fruit the “poison apple.” The reputation was born because aristocrats were falling ill after eating the fruit. But the real problem wasn’t the tomato — it was the pewter plates wealthy families served them on. The acidity in the tomato leached lead from the plates, leading to lead poisoning.

While the modern waffle iron was only invented about 150 years ago in New York, waffles have been around since ancient Greece. The Greeks made them by pressing dough between two iron plates with wooden handles and then holding that over a fire or open hearth to cook. The finished product was more wafer-like than the fluffy breakfast waffles we enjoy now.

Back in 410 CE, pepper was worth more than gold — and Alaric the Goth, king of the Visigoths who spearheaded the fall of the Western Roman Empire, used that to his advantage. When he conquered Rome, he demanded 3,000 pounds of the precious spice. Pepper wasn’t so pricey just because of its taste; it cost an enormous amount to procure and transport.

President Nixon’s favorite meal was cottage cheese and ketchup, but he was opposed to soup, claiming that he wanted to eliminate soup to speed up state dinners. Nixon’s chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, realized that the actual reason Nixon wanted soup banned was because he spilled some on his vest during a dinner with Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.

As the United States fought against Germany in World War I, sauerkraut — a fermented cabbage dish brought to the U.S. by German immigrants — was renamed “liberty cabbage.” At the time, anything associated with Germany was considered unpatriotic. Other similar name changes included calling hamburgers “liberty steaks” and hot dogs “liberty sausages.”

Many foods we know and love today — including tomatoes, potatoes, and peanuts — are native to South America. The first olive trees, however, were cultivated as much as 7,000 years ago in the Middle East, before spreading throughout the Mediterranean in the early Bronze Age, and on to the rest of the world.

On November 25, 1783, after emerging victorious in the Revolutionary War, the newly independent America celebrated British Evacuation Day, marking when the British finally left the nation. Then-General George Washington celebrated by feasting on a carrot cake at Fraunces Tavern in Manhattan. It wasn’t like the carrot cakes we know today, though — this one had less sugar, more carrots, and no cream cheese frosting.

It may be a luxury meal now, but when European settlers first arrived in North America, lobster was considered a poor man’s food. The cold-water crustacean was so plentiful that it washed up on the shore in piles as much as 2 feet high. Some Indigenous tribes used it as fertilizer for their crops and to bait fishing hooks.

The original pound cake featured a full four pounds of ingredients. It was an easy recipe: one pound each of butter, sugar, flour, and eggs. The recipe emerged in the 1700s in Europe, and by 1795, the delicious dense dessert had become ubiquitous in the United States.

The Great Famine — also referred to as the Irish Potato Famine — was Europe’s worst famine during the 19th century. Taking place in Ireland, the famine was induced by the failure of the potato crop in successive years from 1845 to 1849. It was caused by a strain of water mold that led to late blight in the potato crop.

At the height of the Roman Empire, salt was considered a valuable commodity, so much so that Roman soldiers were sometimes paid in salt instead of money. The allowance was called “salarium,” with “sal” being Latin for “salt.” It was this term that eventually inspired the term “salary” used today.

The original ketchup was nothing like the sweet tomatoey concoction we know today. Ketchup (also known as “catsup”) is an Asian invention (the name derives from the Chinese word ke-tsiap, meaning fish sauce) and began as a pickled fish sauce used to season dishes hundreds of years ago (it tasted more like Worcestershire sauce). In the 17th century, British sailors adapted the sauce and began to make it out of mushrooms.Tomatoes were added by North Americans around 1801.

Oysters Rockefeller is a popular dish named after business magnate John D. Rockefeller, founder of the Standard Oil Company. The dish was created by restaurateur Jules Alciatore in 1899, and features a sauce so rich that he chose to name it after Rockefeller, who was the wealthiest man in the world at the time.

In the early 19th century, bakers in Naples, Italy, created pizza as a meal they could make with inexpensive ingredients and that workers could eat on the go. (That was true for the much later invention of the calzone, as well.) Pizza didn’t rise to international fame until many decades later, in the 1940s.

We have the Dutch to thank for the orange carrots we know and love today. Prior to the 16th century, however, carrots were mostly purple in color, with some natural mutations resulting in occasional yellow or white variations. The Dutch took mutated purple carrots and bred them together with wild carrots to create orange variants.