Original photo by Olena Serzhanova/ Shutterstock
The culinary world is full of happy mistakes. Whether thanks to unusual weather or broken machinery, some foods that are now commonplace were invented by complete chance. Snack on these six facts about tasty accidental treats.
Chocolate Chip Cookies
As the co-proprietor of the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts, Ruth Graves Wakefield was known for baking delectable desserts for her guests. One night in 1930, Wakefield was baking a popular Colonial-era recipe for Butter Drop Do cookies and decided to improvise by adding chocolate. Realizing she had run out of baker’s chocolate, she chopped up a block of Nestlé chocolate gifted to her by a representative from the Nestlé company. Instead of the chocolate dispersing while baking and creating a solid chocolate cookie, it remained in the form of gooey globs. The result was a hit with her guests, and Wakefield dubbed her new invention the “Chocolate Crunch Cookie.”
The tasty treat grew in popularity after it was advertised on an episode of The Betty Crocker Cooking School of the Air radio show, and Wakefield later included the cookie in her 1936 cookbook, Toll House Tried and True Recipes. Wakefield went on to strike a deal with Nestlé, providing them with the rights to the recipe in exchange for a lifetime of free chocolate, and the recipe first appeared on the back of Nestlé packaging in 1939.
Corn Flakes
John H. Kellogg may be best known for his patented Corn Flakes — the dry, flaked cereal that transformed breakfast tables around the world — but Kellogg’s original intention had less to do with creating a delicious cereal and more with living a healthy lifestyle free of sin. Kellogg was a doctor, nutritionist, and health advocate who became superintendent of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, a popular health resort in Michigan, in 1876. While there, Kellogg experimented with various foods to promote wellness for his guests.
Kellogg believed that simple, bland foods would improve digestion and also help steer people away from carnal sins, an ideal he called “biological living.” One day, Kellogg was working on a new kind of wheat meal that had been rolled out and forgotten overnight. Instead of loaves of bread when baked, it produced thin flakes that proved popular with guests. John’s brother, William Keith Kellogg, saw an opportunity to broadly market the product by adding sugar to make the flakes more flavorful, and went on to found the Kellogg Company. A former patient of John Kellogg’s, C.W. Post, was also inspired by this accidental invention, and created Grape Nuts.
Slushies
In the late 1950s, Omar Knedlik was operating a Dairy Queen in Coffeyville, Kansas, and his machinery kept breaking down. After the restaurant’s soda fountain malfunctioned, Knedlik decided to store bottles of soda in the freezer to keep them cool, only to find that they were partially frozen when removed. Despite the unexpected texture, customers loved the slushy treat that Knedlik had inadvertently created and asked for more. He conceived of a machine that utilized an air-conditioning unit from a car to produce the same slushed effect.
The drink grew so much in popularity that Knedlik held a competition to name the product, and the winning entry was “ICEE.” In 1965, 7-Eleven convenience stores began installing Knedlik’s machine and rebranded the product as the Slurpee — their ad director thought it reflected the sound made when sucking the product through a straw.
Worcestershire Sauce
It may be a tough name to say out loud, but the invention of Worcestershire sauce was an easy, albeit accidental process — one that just took a little time. The savory condiment was created in Worcester, England, in 1835, when a former governor of India known as Lord Sandys was looking for sauces that reminded him of his favorite flavors from the Asian subcontinent. He asked drugstore owners John Lea and William Perrins to come up with a product. The owners tested a fish-and-vegetable mixture that produced a strong odor, leading them to store the sauce in the cellar of their store — which they then forgot about.
Two years later, the owners rediscovered the sauce while cleaning the basement. In that time, it had fermented and obtained an appealing flavor, which eventually became popular as a condiment throughout the United Kingdom. Named after the town where it was invented, Worcestershire sauce was first exported to America in 1839.
Nachos
The origins of nachos can be traced back to the border town of Piedra Negas, Texas, where the dish was invented in the early 1940s in a frantic effort to please customers. Ignacio Anaya, who went by the nickname Nacho, was the maître d’hôtel of the Victory Club when a group of women arrived at the eatery outside of business hours, after the cooks had gone home. Not wanting the customers to leave, Anaya ran to the kitchen and gathered up a few ingredients that he had lying around — fried tortilla chips, colby cheese, and jalapeños — which he combined and baked until the cheese melted. The diners loved the concoction and requested seconds, so the restaurant added it to the menu. Capitalizing on the local success of his new snack food, Anaya even went on to open his own restaurant.
It would be an entirely different person who popularized nachos on a national level, however. Frank Liberto took Anaya’s concept and changed the delivery process so that the cheese “sauce” didn’t need to be refrigerated. Liberto’s version of nachos was introduced at a Texas Rangers game in 1976, and today nachos are a staple at sporting arenas across the country.
Popsicles
Frank Epperson may not be a household name, but he’s responsible for coming up with a universally beloved summertime treat when he was just 11 years old: the Popsicle. In 1905, Epperson absentmindedly left his cup of soda with a stirring stick on the porch overnight, during which temperatures dropped below freezing. The weather was a rarity in the Oakland area, where Epperson lived, but those unusual temperatures paid off. The next day, Epperson discovered his drink had frozen over and transformed into a delicious treat, which he dubbed the “Epsicle.”
Epperson brought the idea to his schoolmates, who loved the frozen treat, and he later introduced it to his own children. They referred to the treat as “Pop’s ‘sicle,” a name that Epperson patented in 1923. That same year, Epperson extended his sales beyond his hometown by selling the Popsicle at Neptune Beach in the San Francisco area, and it soon grew in popularity. So the next time you find yourself cooling down with a Popsicle on a hot summer day, you can thank Frank.
Bennett Kleinman is a New York City-based staff writer for Optimism Media, and previously contributed to television programs such as "Late Show With David Letterman" and "Impractical Jokers." Bennett is also a devoted New York Yankees and New Jersey Devils fan, and thinks plain seltzer is the best drink ever invented.
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