You ever wonder.......HOW???

[MisterTinkles]

People born into the industrial and technological age take pretty much everything for granted. Rarely does anyone ever question, "how did they ever come up with that"?

Example: Chocolate Chip Cookies
People eat these by the tons on a daily basis. But where did the recipe come from?
Who had the foresight to create such a concoction?

Here is the story on that....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocolate_chip_cookie


Do you ever wonder "who ever thought of that and why", as far as popular food stuffs are concerned?

I've always wondered how anyone ever came up with the Dill Pickle! First, who would have ever thought that you could preserve cucumbers by adding vinegar, water, and some alum, much less adding dill weed????

I know most combined food stuffs we take for granted have been accidents. But I would like to know WHO, WHAT, WHERE, and WHY.

As far as pickles are concerned, I cannot find any information on anyone who started the pickle sensation as we know it.

I mean, did someone have a vision of these ingredients? Was it an accident? Was someone just fooling around in the kitchen one day and had some left over cuc's and thought to brine them would help preserve them? And who thought of adding dill weed? And why?

And who thought of the brilliant idea of slicing them up and putting them on hamburgers????

I just wonder this kind of stuff sometimes.

[VileKyle]

Thomas Edison invented it all.

Murca, fuck ya!

[dfiant]

Honestly???

No

[CellarDweller]

Honestly???

No

LOL I'm the same way.

[Bowyn Aerrow]

Brining (pickling) may have developed when people discovered that food packed in salt preserves longer than food left out in the open air.

From there someone must have had an 'ah-ha' moment and decided to try other things to brine or preserve food.

http://www.nyfoodmuseum.org/_ptime.htm places pickles way back in Mesopotamia 2400BC

Pickling may go back even further, its sort of along the lines of who figured out how to make vinegar, or for that matter wine - or beer or any of the processes that lead to alcohols and vinegars.

Preserving food is something that would be a major push factor early in the development of mankind.

It may have been accidental.

Vinegar has been around as long as written history, The Babylonians kept accounts of pickling stuff. http://humantouchofchemistry.com/know-ho...stence.htm will tell you that just letting fresh cider or wine sit uncapped out int he air will eventually turn into vinegar.

Legend states that a courtier in Babylonia discovered wine that was formed from unattended grape juice. This lead to the eventual discovery of vinegar. History also states that before 5000 BC, a civilization of ancient Babylonia used vinegar as a cleaning agent. The Babylonians later discovered that vinegar slows or stops the action of bacteria that spoils food and so they started using it as a preservative. They also used it as a condiment.

Thus the question now becomes - who invented wine or cider? Big unknown - goes way hella back to the dawn of time.

Wine:

Basically, they believe that the discovery of wine was made by ancient peoples when they found their grapes had spoiled and fermented, creating fermented grape juice. Many believe that this is when the wine making process was invented and this is where most stories about the origins of wine begin.

Source:http://wine.lovetoknow.com/wiki/Who_Invented_Wine

Beer (fermented grain) is a product readily able to happen via accident, as in wet grain left out will ferment - and it is beer that we have to thank for the grain based economy, settlement and who all of civilization. We didn't become farmers for food, we became farmers n order to drink - excessively I might add.

So it would appear that when it comes to pickles it was a process of accidents and people using those accidents. Fermented grapes give way to to wine, old wine gives way to vinegar - and in a world where nothing is wasted well we figure out some use for this old, bitter wine.

Drop a cucumber, and egg, whatever into the vinegar and see what happens....


Oh and yes, I do think about a lot of things of this nature... A lot of stuff has a history lost to us and it is thought that many of the things (like yeast bread) were fortunate accidents. Then developed and streamlined later on.

[MisterTinkles]

Honestly???

No

Nobody was talking to YOU!!!!!!

Crawl back into your dingo cave.

[LONDONER]

During the last world war in the UK when food was rationed and nothing was wasted, also in the days when very few people had refrigerators and food was kept in a larder, it was not uncommon for flies to get in and lay their eggs on meat. The common practise then was to wash the meat in water liberally dosed with vinegar.

[dfiant]

Nobody was talking to YOU!!!!!!

Crawl back into your dingo cave.

see, nobody appreciates honesty and gets all defensive...what can I say?

[MisterTinkles]

see, nobody appreciates honesty and gets all defensive...what can I say?

Aaaawwwwww, our poor little dingo baby feels unappreciated....

Come and give us a HUUUUUGGGG!!!!!

[princealbertofb]

People born into the industrial and technological age take pretty much everything for granted. Rarely does anyone ever question, "how did they ever come up with that"?

This may be true, but I must say I often wonder about things like that. How on earth did they come up with this or that way of cooking something, or that idea for a food combination?

With my dad, we often have this discussion and we generally conclude that it was either trial and error, or something that went wrong in the first place but was serendipitous.... like raw meat accidentally spilt into a fireplace and then humans discover the pleasures of cooked meat... etc.

But then, humankind is also inventive and curious, and probably greedy so they've tried combinations, jsut to see if they worked out for our taste buds...