Food Trivia: food facts and fun trivia about cooking, food and drinks.
Learn some interesting information, strange and unusual stuff you never knew about various foods, spices, cooking, restaurants!
- According to Big Secrets by William Poundstone, chemical analysis could only find salt and pepper out of the purported
eleven herbs and spices contained in the recipe for Kentucky Fried Chicken. - The best way to crumble blue cheese is with a fork.
- Patrick McMurray of Canada is the world champion of oyster shucking. An “oyster guru” who keeps breaking his own record, he currently holds the Guinness World Record title for shucking 39 oysters in one minute.
- Champagne should be chilled in the refrigerator for no more than 2 hours. More chilling has a negative effect on the flavor.
- Put homemade bread in the refrigerator for 10-30 minutes before slicing; it’ll make it easier to get clean, even slices.
- A piece of spaghetti can be used as a doneness tester for cakes. That way you can avoid a large knife gash.
- Corn (maize) cannot propagate without human assistance.
- Trivia quiz game: see how many foods mentioned in Shakespeare plays you can name. Click here to play.
- James Beard states that there is no plural for the word julep; one does not say “two juleps”, but rather, “julep for two”.
- More James Beard trivia: After a stint on K.P. duty on Christmas Eve 1942, wherein he and eleven others were up all night slicing 4000 pounds of turkey, James Beard was so sick of the smell of turkey that he couldn’t eat it for two years.
- Before the modern, orange colored variety became the common, mass-produced version, carrots were most commonly purple.
- FDA regulations require that less than 10% of asparagus spears can be infested with beetle eggs. Um – yuck!
- The Fourth Satire of the Roman Poet Juvenal is about a giant turbot, caught in the Adriatic Sea, and its use in flattering
the emperor Domitian. - World War II ended in 1945, but food rationing in the U.K. continued until 1954.
- Oddly, there was a ban on sliced bread in the U.S. that started January 18, 1943 during World War II in an effort to bring down the costs of bread (the idea being a loaf of bread that has been pre-sliced needs a heavier wrapper). This ban was not as successful on savings as thought and was short-lived, ending on March 8, 1943. Interestingly, news articles of the day say that bakers were always puzzled by the ban and couldn’t see how it could possibly save manpower or cut costs.
- The largest restaurant in the world (as certified by Guinness World Records) is the Bawabet Dimashq Restaurant (Damascus Gate Restaurant) in Syria, with seating for 6014 patrons.
- The world’s largest McDonald’s chain restaurant is in — Orlando, Florida. It is 19,000 square feet. Wow!
- This interesting page lists 45 McDonald’s items not available in the USA, but have been offered in other countries such as a Bacon Roll (yum!) in Great Britain, McSpaghetti (Philippines), and Poutine (Canada).
- Saffron is made from the dried stamens of crocus flowers, and is the most expensive cooking spice.
- The name of the popular canned meat product SPAM is likely an abbreviation for “spiced ham” as that was orginally what the product was called.
AUTHOR BIO : Janet Marchbanks -- Food writer, research and website content development, recipe developer, creative design. This site began out of my love for cooking, restaurants, eating and all things food!
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