• Noodles

A 4000 year old bowl of noodles unearthed in China is the earliest example ever found of one of the world’s most popular foods. Noodles have been a staple food in many parts of the world for at least 2000 years. But who inverted the noodle? This is a hotly contested topic – with the Chinese , Italian and Arabs all staking a claim.

•Ice cream

The first ice cream was probably made by chance when someone left some milk outside on a cold night and it froze!

Alexander the great enjoyed ice cream made with milk, fruit juice, honey and snow in the 4th century B.C. and the Roman emperor Nero ordered ice to ne brought from the mountains and combined it with fruit toppings. The Chinese also had a method of making ice creams and some believe that ice cream came to Europe from China.

It was Quintus Maximus, a roman general, who first wrote down a recipe for ice cream. Marco Polo brought the Chinese recipe to Venice after his visit to Peking. The king of England, Charles I is supposed to have offered his chef a handsome reward to keep his ice cream recipe a secret!

You favourite ice cream cone was invented by a pastry maker Ernest Hamwi in 1904, at the World Fair in St. Louis. He put a scoop of ice cream on his pastry when an ice cream seller in a neighbouring stall ran out of dishes- and it became an instant hit!

• Chocolate

Cocoa, from which chocolate is made is said to have originated in the Amazon atleast 4000 years ago. The origins of chocolate can be traced back to the ancient Mayan and Aztec civilization in central America, who first enjoyed ‘chocolatel’, a much prized spicy drink made from roasted cocoa beans, the Aztecs believed that the cocoa tree was a gift from their God, Quetzalcoatl. According to legend, He had been banished by the other gods for giving the tree to mankind, but he promised to return to them one day.

The Spanish, led by Hernando Cortez, invaded Mexico in the 16th century. When the Aztecs saw Cortez, they believed their god had returned and welcomed him with a golden cup of chocolate! When Cortez returned to Spain in 1528, he loaded his galleons with cocoa beans and equipment for making the chocolate drink. Soon ‘chocolate’ became a fashionable drink enjoyed by the rich in Spain.

It was in 1847 that solid chocolate, as we know of today, was made by Fry and sons of Bristol by mixing sugar with cocoa powder and cocoa butter and your favourite treat was born.

• Chewing gum

Thousands of years ago people chewed gum in it’s natural form. The most common ancient chewing gum was tree resin lumps, but people chewed various sweet grasses, leaves, grains and waxes also. The first commercial Chewing gum was made and sold in 1848 by John Bacon Curtis. He made a sticky, rubbery material from the spruce tree which could be chewed. In the 1860’s, Thomas Adams began selling chicle, a gum from the sapodilla tree of Mexico’s Yucatan desert.

Thank you for reading. Have a nice day!🌼