If you’re planning to throw a party, you might need to rent extra tables or chairs, or perhaps even a tent or a tux. But in the 1700s, party hosts and guests looking to make a statement were in the rental market for an entirely different accessory: pineapples. The message they were trying to send? That they were extravagantly wealthy. Prior to the 20th century, when pineapple plantations made the fruit widely available, pineapples were incredibly expensive imports to Europe (and most other places). In the 18th century, a single fruit bought in Britain could cost upwards of $8,000 in today’s money. 

When you eat pineapple, it eats you back.

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Ever notice that your mouth stings when you bite into some pineapple? That’s because the juicy treat contains the enzyme bromelain, which breaks down proteins. It’s also what makes pineapple a great meat tenderizer. Some say adding salt will curb the tingle.

Christopher Columbus is credited with introducing pineapples to Europe in the 1490s after voyaging to the Americas. Just one survived his return journey, and the bromeliad quickly had an impact. Dubbed the “king of fruits,” the pineapple became a symbol of opulence and royalty because of its scarcity. Pineapples were featured in paintings of kings, printed on linens and wallpaper, and even carved into furniture. Obtaining a rare pineapple meant the buyer had money and status — and for that reason, the fruit was also often featured decor at parties and events. Eventually, European botanists learned to grow pineapples in greenhouses and reduce their cost. But until the fruits were widely available, many partygoers in Britain would seek out a pineapple for just one night, renting the fruit for a fraction of its full price and sometimes even carrying it around at the party as the ultimate (uneaten) accessory. 

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It turns out there’s a price to pay for how tasty and nutritious pistachios are: Under the right circumstances, they can spontaneously combust. Everyone’s favorite shelled nut is especially rich in fat, which is highly flammable. Thankfully, that only becomes a problem when pistachios are packed too tightly during shipping or storage. It’s important to keep the nuts dry lest they become moldy — but if they’re kept too dry and there are too many of them bunched together, they can self-heat and catch fire without an external heat source. 

“Flammable” and “inflammable” mean the same thing.

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If you watched “Clarissa Explains It All” way back when, you already know that these two words are synonyms despite appearing to be antonyms. When describing something that can’t catch fire, the word you’re looking for is “nonflammable.”

Though exceedingly rare and easy to avoid if the proper instructions are followed, pistachio self-combustion is a real enough concern that the German Transport Information Service specifically advises that pistachios “not be stowed together with fibers/fibrous materials as oil-soaked fibers may promote self-heating/spontaneous combustion of the cargo.” Don’t worry, though: It won’t happen in your pantry with just a few bags, which means you can indulge in the shelled snack of your dreams without worrying about their flavor becoming unexpectedly smoky.

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Milk and cookies go together like peanut butter and jelly, salt and pepper, Jay-Z and Beyoncé. However, there is a right way and a wrong way to dunk a cookie in milk, according to scientists. In 1998, a professor at the University of Bristol in the U.K. looked into the ideal method for dunking a British biscuit (aka a cookie) into a drink, using the concept of capillary action — the way fluids move spontaneously through small tubes in porous materials — and Washburn’s equation, which describes their journey. Eventually, he determined that the typical British biscuit is best dunked for 3.5 to 5 seconds. Using this same technique in 2016, scientists at the University of Utah’s Splash Lab determined the perfect dunk time for the much-beloved Oreo. Although the amount of time to get to “perfect” depends on preferred sogginess levels and milk fat content, the Utah researchers determined that three seconds was enough to thoroughly saturate the Oreo without losing structural integrity.

Oreos are a copy of another cookie.

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The Oreo looks like the epitome of dessert ingenuity, but it actually got its start as a near-exact knockoff of a cookie called Hydrox, released in 1908. Hydrox eventually lost popularity in part because its name sounded like a cleaning product, but the brand is still around.

Here’s the journey in slow motion. Cookies are porous, and milk travels through the small holes inside them the same way ink does through blotting paper, or a spill through a paper towel. During tests, the Oreo soaked up 50% of its potential liquid weight in one second. That number shot up to 80% at two seconds, flatlined at three seconds, and maxed out at four seconds — meaning the cookie could absorb no more milk. So if the goal was to saturate the cookie but not lose structural cohesion, three seconds was the perfect number. While this test used 2% milk as its dunking medium, the optimal dunking time will vary slightly when using other milk: The higher the milk fat (like whole milk or cream), the longer a cookie can be dunked, but only by mere fractions of a second. Mmmmm, we just made ourselves hungry.

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