FoodFEB 21, 2023

30 People Share Unexpected Food Facts That May Satisfy Your Appetite For Knowledge

Austėja Akavickaitė and Adelaide May Ross

169

Knowledge is power. And when it comes to power in the kitchen, the more you wield, the more delicious and exciting your meals can be. So when you are throwing a dinner party or preparing a meal for your beloved partner, you might want to sprinkle some fun food facts atop their dishes, alongside that fresh parmesan you’re grating.

#1

30 People Share Unexpected Food Facts That May Satisfy Your Appetite For Knowledge

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

UrukHaiGuyz, Young in Panama

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233points

To gain more insight on this topic, we reached out to Bintu from Recipes From a Pantry, and she was kind enough to have a chat with us. Bintu shares a wide variety of recipes on her website, including mouth-watering African dishes, brilliant air fryer recipes, easy instant pot recipes, delicious vegetarian recipes and much more. So first, we wanted to know what Bintu loves most about cooking. "For me, it’s all about good food made with real ingredients," she told Bored Panda. "I love creating fresh, exciting recipes with color, flavor, and a dash of spice."

We were also curious if Bintu had any wild cooking facts up her sleeve. "I don’t think this can be considered crazy, but I grew up in Sierra Leone helping my Gran and favorite Aunt cook meals for our super-extended family. Now that I live in the UK, I love being able to introduce people to foods, spices, and recipes they've never heard of or experienced before!" she shared.

#2

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

slogginmagoggin, Marco Verch

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232points

#3

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.

BittenAtTheChomp, amirali mirhashemian

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188points

When it comes to common cooking myths Bintu would like to dispel, she told Bored Panda, "I know a lot of people think that cooking is complicated and difficult. But, I truly believe that anyone can do this! It just takes practice and a little imagination."

"I want to get people excited about created dishes from whatever ingredients they find in their pantry," Bintu went on to share. "Understanding how to use an item many different ways and what flavor pairings work together makes it possible to cook affordable meals that are flavorful, colorful and never boring."

#4

Broccoli is mutant cabbage. It wouldn’t exist in nature if not for selective breeding. That said, as a species it is still over 2000 years old.

Here’s another wild one for y’all: More or less every citrus fruit you’ve ever had is descended from the following 3 fruits: Citrons, Mandarins, or Pomelos. The Wikipedia page on Citrus taxonomy explains it well.

benjiyon, Annie Spratt

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184points

#5

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.

Who_said-that, Elizabeth Tr. Armstrong

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182points

And for anyone out there looking for ways to increase their culinary knowledge, Bintu shared, "The internet is full of all sorts of amazing information and advice! I started my site with the goal of making cooking colorful, easy, and fun for all, which is why you will find really easy recipes with detailed step by step instructions, accompanying images, and some videos, so people can easily follow along in their own kitchen."

If you'd like to expand your skills in the kitchen today, be sure to check out Bintu's website Recipes From a Pantry right here!

#6

Oregano is from the Greek meaning "mountain of joy" and I agree

ClementineCoda, Rudy Issa

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181points

#7

You know how Hershey's milk chocolate tastes "pukey" to a lot of people? (Especially Europeans who are traditionally more used to high quality chocolate)

It's butyric acid, and it is intentionally part of the flavor. Back in 1899 shortly after Hershey started making chocolate, they developed the "Hershey method" which was "less sensitive to milk quality." What that means is the milk would spoil on the way to the factory or in holding, and you would end up with that acidic flavor. Well, people in America essentially just got used to it, especially after M&Ms became part of WW2 rations, and now it's just "their flavor." How they do it now isn't public knowledge but it's assumed they partially lipolyze their milk to produce butyric acid. Letting the milk spoil wouldn't fly with modern food safety laws.

So yes, it does taste like puke, and it's totally on purpose.

camchapel, Famartin

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175points

#8

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

fcewen00, rawpixel

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166points

#9

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.

tongamoo, Gabriel Yuji

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166points

#10

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

bigbagofbaldbabies, Lena Khrupina

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159points

#11

The orange is a hybrid between pomelo and mandarin.

The_Derock, Mae Mu

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150points

#12

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

Prestor_Jon, Ocdp

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145points

#13

When tomatoes were first discovered in the Americas by European colonizers, they thought the plant was poisonous. They recognized some of the plant's features as a member of the nightshade family, and in Europe they immediately thought of nightshades such as *Atropa belladonna*, a fairly well-known poisonous plant. Plus, they noticed that when they sliced the fruits, and left them on metal plates, their juice would eat away at the plates' surfaces. This was actually because of the low amount of acids in the tomatoes, and wasn't actually dangerous to humans.

CrazyPlato, Josephine Baran

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144points

#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.

LadyFreightliner, Daniel Lee

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139points

#15

Palmolive (the soap company) was literally named after the two oils they use(d) to make their soaps. Learnt that at a soap making workshop!

ironicmenswear

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133points

#16

ciabatta was only invented in 1981

fozziwoo, Valeria Boltneva

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133points

#17

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.

WeDriftEternal, Hermes Rivera

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125points

#18

Spam= SPiced+hAM

margalingo, Hannes Johnson

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121points

#19

Another etymological fun fact: 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.

Interestingly, "aloo" means potato in most South Asian languages, so despite the etymology having nothing to do with potatoes, many versions of the dish eventually included potatoes, too.

BirdLawyerPerson, stu_spivack

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119points

#20

It was posted recently on TIL that ketchup was originally a Chinese Fish Brine Sauce in the 17th century. then Brits encountered it in Malaysia, and made a mushroom-based sauce out of it in the 18th century. And theeennn in the 19th century, it became tomato based, and finally by 1850 it dropped anchovies as an ingredient and all semblance of its original fish-based existence was lost.

TheGreyPotter, Anshu A

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115points

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