| Date | Event | Source |
| c450B.C. | Pythagoras describes the fava bean, Vicia fava, the only bean known in pre-Columbian Euroe (although they had chick-peas, lentils, andpeas of all kinds), as unwholesome. Whether Pythagoras had favism in mind or was merely referring to the general tendency of beans to cause flatulence, we can only speculate.
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| c. 100A.D | The four most priminent families in Rome bear the names of famous legumes: Fabius (fava bean), Lentulus (lentil), Pisa (pea), and Cicero (chickpea). | |
| 1070: | Roquefort cheese first made in France . (Some historians put the date 200 years earlier and say that Roman emperor Charlemagne was a fan) | |
| 1493 | Christopher Columbus finds papayas, tomatoes and pineapples, cultivated for centuries from Paraguay to Panama in the West Indies. | |
| 1522 | New World tomatoes make their way to the Italian table via the Spanish, who rule Naples. | |
| 1493 | Columbus returns to Spain from New World bring the seeds of Phaseolus vulgaris - the bean as we know it. | |
| 1519 | One of explorer Hernando Cortes' men reports that Aztec ruler Montezuma drinks 50 cups of cocoa a day, and that it is believed to be an aphrodisiac. | |
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| 1532 | A Franciscan friar writes the first full description of vanilla in New Spain. The bean is the pod of an orchid and has been mixed into cacao by the Aztecs. | |
| c. 1600 | Phaseolus beans reach Languedoc, in France, and cassoulet is born.
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| 1607 | Capt. John Smith of Jamestown VA, writes that there is such an "abundance of fish, lying so thicke with their heads above the water, as for want of nets... we attempted to catch them with frying pans." American Salmon, much large than the European variety, swim up 30 North American rivers. | |
| 1611 | The English lexicographer, Randle Cotgrave, defines "Faseols" as "Fasels, long Persons, Kidney Beanes, Sperage Beanes, French Beanes, Romane Beanes, Garden Smilas" but now we know they all taste the same. | |
| 1662 |
Popcorn has been indicated by Andrew Smith to make its way up from Mexico and Central America slowly. It is mentioned in a report to London's Royal Society in 1662. It caught the eye of Benjamin Franklin, a man always interested in the inner workings of things, who in 1785 described popcorn this way: "Each Grain bursts and thows out a white substance of twice its bigness."
Smith, Andrew. Popped Culture: A Social History of Popcorn in America. (University of South Carolina Press, $24.95). | |
| 1698 | A Benedictine cellar master, Dom Pierre Perignon, fine-tunes the champagne-making process by corking the sparkling wine in heavy bottles to allow for a second fermentation. The winched-in corks allow for the manufacture of the bubbles that give champagne its effervescence. | |
| 1756 | One account credits Duc de Richelieu with inventing mayonnasie by combining two egg yolks with 200 grams of olive oil, the juice of half a lemon and a bit of salt and pepper. | |
| 1775 | Diderot's Encyclopedie recommends the nourishing qualities of the dried beans "to those who have a good stomach, and who are young and robust, or who exercise heartily, but persons who are delicate...should abstain from them, for they are windy, heavy on the stomach, and hard to digest." | |
| 1792 | Culinary scholars trace America's first printed ice-cream recipe to a 1792 Philadelphia cookbook. Advertisements touted the desserts as early as 1800. A Philadelphia cookbook of 1851` celebrated the city's obsession by publishing a record 34 ice-cream recipes. | |
| 1886 |
In 1886, Mrs. Rorer's Philadelphia Cook Book got right to the point:" " To make good Philadelphia ice cream, use only the best materials. Avoid gelatine, arrowroot, or any other thickening substance. Good, pure cream, ripe fruit, or the best canned in winter, and granulated sugar, make a perfect ice cream." She then describes 16 recipes, all based on the no-custard method. Themost intriguing begins with directions to wash a quart of spinach, "boil rapidly three minutes and drain...pound rapidly three minutes and drain...pound until reduced to a pulp." The result spinach juice is used to color pistachio ice cream. ("If no spinach is at hand, clover, or lawn grass may be used.")0 | |
| 1891 | Mrs. Lincoln's Boston Cook Book suggests that baked beans "afford a nutritious and cheap food for people who labor in the open air. | |
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| 1900 | Milton Hershey sells off his caramel candy business for a million dollars and gets into chocolate. The Hershey chocolate bar is started. | 1 |
| 1902 | Animal Crackers are created. | 1 |
| 1902 | The Fannie Farmer cooking school is established in Boston | 1 |
| 1903 | James Beard is born in Portland | 1 |
| 1904 | At the St. Louis World's Fair, the ice cream cone is created.
At the St. Louis World's Fair Quaker Oats Company shoots rice out of Spanish Civil War cannons to promote its new "puffed rice" cereal.
Canned tuna became available
The first "tea bag" is marketed by Thomas Sullivan of New York City.
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| 1907 | The Oregon Agricultural College in Corvallis hired Dr. Margaret Comstock Snell to be dean and sole professor of the School of Domestic Science and Art
Pure Food and Drug Act is passed.
Hershey Kiss is born | 1 |
| 1910 | Gas ranges find their way into the kitchen, slowly replacing coal, wood, and petroleum stoves. | 1 |
| 1912 | Julia Carolyn McWilliams Child is born in Pasadena CA
Nabisco introduces the Orego Cookie
Life Savers hit the stores
Morton develops a convenient form of table salt that's granulate and free-flowing.
The "Whitman Sampler" box of chocolate appears. | 1 |
| 1913 | The Standard Electric range, with its insulated warming pot and an oven unit on top, is tempting home cooks, even though it has only two burners.
Vitamin A is discovered by Dr. Elmer McCollum and his lab assistant, Marguerite Davis.
Campbell's introduces cream of celery soup. | 1 |
| 1912 | German-American delicatessen owner Richard Hellman begins packing his mayonnaise into glass jars. By 1927, he has manufacturing plants in Chicago; San Francisco; Atlanta; Tampa, Fla; and Dallas. | |
| 1915 | Frigidaire's self-contained electric and gas refrigerators have been out for several years, but the tried-and-true iceboxes last for another decade.
New York City deli-owner Richard Hellmann begins mass-marketing his popular mayonnaise.
Corning introduces Pyrex baking dishes. | 1 |
| 1916 | The first self-service market is opened by Clarence Saunders on Jefferson Avenue in Memphis, Tenn.
Items for sale are pre-packaged, labeled, and priced, which is in complete contrast to the existing service where most goods are sold in bulk, priced according to weight or quantity and delivered. | 1 |
| 1917 | New York Chef Louis Diat creates a startling new soup, vichyssoise, at | 1 |
| 1930 | Twinkies are created and sell two for a nickel. | |
| 1940 | J.I. Roale uses the term "organic" for the first time in a magazine called Fact Digest.
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| 1940s | World War II creates a banana shortage. Consequently the classic banana-cream filling in twinkies is replaced with vanilla cream.
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| 1941 | Lewis Browning, a mailman in Shelbyville, Ind., begins treating himself to a Twinkie a day. By 1997 the Twinkie King had consumed 20,440 Twinkies. | |
| c 1943 | Beans are a staple in C-rations for U.S. troops in World War II(as they have been for armies for centuries). Our army floated waterproof bags of beans from ships to solidiers on beachheads.
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| 1950 | Brown'n Serve produts introduced under technology donated by General Mills.
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| 1952 | Ray Kroc establishes McDonald's franchise. | |
| 1953 | Pizza gains popularity. | |
| 1956 | Congress authorizes 'soil bank' plan | |
| 1957 | First meat analogs from soy protein isolate.
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| 1958 | congress provides for GRAS food additive review.
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| 1959 | Bakers promote continuous mix bread.
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| 1959 | The FDA sizes a fraction of the cranberry crop because of pesticide. Although only a miuscule amount of contamination was found, consumers avoided cranberries that
Thanksgivvings. | |
| 1966 | Poppin' Fresh, the Pillsbury Doughboy, introduced. | |
| 1980 | Twinkies turn 50. Continental Baking celebrates with a 10-foot-long Twinkie that weighs more than a ton and is the equivalent of 32,300 regular Twinkies. It takes five days and 100 hours to bake. | |
| 1999 | The Twinkie is chosen to be included in the nation's millennium time capsule, representing "an object of enduring American symbolism." | |
| 1999- 2000 | On April 6, Hostess throws a birthday part at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry, and the world's tallest birthday cake is constructed. | |
| 2000 | "Pinto Beans" appear in the NYTimes crossword pubble (Clue: "A food Columbus introduced to Europe"), the very same week that the Dreaded Broccoli tasting panel fails to distinguish one bean from another. | |
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1 Roberts-Dominguez, J. 1999March 12. Farewell to the 20th Century. Albany (OR) Democrat-Herald. Corvallis (OR) Gazette-Times, p. 33.
Cato the Censory published the first pie recipe in Rome, according to John Lendorff of the American Pie Council. It consisted of goat cheese, honey and a rye crust.
The word pie originates from the magpie bird, known for its multi-colored feathers and messy nest.
The average American will eat about one pound, or six to seven good-sized pieces of commercially prepared pie, this year.
English trandition credits Queen Elizabeth I with making the first cherry pie.
Updated: Monday, August 27, 2007.