Food History: fun facts and quiz

Early farmers slowly reshaped wild plants, keeping seeds from the best ones. Wild wheat dropped its seeds when ripe; farmed wheat holds on to them for harvest.

Key fact
Maize was bred from teosinte, a wild grass, in Mexico.

Bread is one of the oldest cooked foods. Charred flatbread found in Jordan is about 14,400 years old, older than farming itself, made from wild grains.

Key fact
Ancient Egyptian workers were often paid in bread and beer.

Potatoes from the Andes became a staple across Europe, feeding fast-growing populations. Ireland came to depend on them, so when blight struck in 1845, a terrible famine followed.

Key fact
Potatoes were first grown in the Andes of South America.

People have long salted, smoked and dried food to keep it. Sealed tin cans appeared around 1810, first feeding sailors and soldiers.

Key fact
The can opener came almost 50 years after the can.

The sandwich is named after the 4th Earl of Sandwich, an 18th-century English lord said to eat meat between bread so he never had to leave his card game or desk.

Key fact
People ate food between bread long before; the Earl just gave it a name.

Ancient Romans grabbed hot food from street counters called thermopolia; one found in Pompeii still had food traces in its pots. Burger chains came much later.

Key fact
White Castle, from 1921, is often called the first fast-food chain.

Before electric fridges, people kept food cold with ice cut from frozen lakes. In the 1800s, “Ice King” Frederic Tudor shipped New England ice as far as India.

Key fact
Home electric fridges became common in the US in the 1930s.