Items that Were Invented by Mistake

 

Nachos

An urban fairytale of how this snack was born is about Ignacio ‘Nacho’ Anaya Garcia, who was working in the kitchen in Piedras Negras (Coahuila state, Mexico) when a handful of US military wives from a nearby base passed by the restaurant for a snack. With the chef nowhere to be seen, he threw together some tortillas topped with cheese and jalapeños and named it Nachos especiales. That result became a now widely consumed dish and what would have been the 124th birthday of Nacho last year was even commemorated by a Google Doodle. Eventually, Nacho ended up opening his own restaurant.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

One of the stories goes that Ruth Wakefield was baking chocolate cookies for her guests only to run out of powdered baker’s chocolate, so she decided to break up a Nestle’s semi-sweet chocolate bar. As some kitchen experiments do, it turned into a semi-disappointment as the chocolate pieces only melted slightly, retaining their shape. But the guests loved them and the next thing you know, her recipe was up in a Boston newspaper, increasing Nestle’s chocolate bar sales. The company later granted Ruth a lifetime supply of the chocolate from Andrew Nestle as a reward for printing her recipe on the chocolate bars.

Coffee

As coffee is said to originate from Ethiopia, a centuries-old legend has it that a goat herder named Kaldi noticed that his goats would become very energetic and not sleep at night after eating the berries of this particular tree. He reported this to a local monastery and soon everyone was sipping on this stimulating drink that helped them stay up during long hours of evening prayers. Soon the coffee beans reached the Arabian peninsula. Fast-forward to today, you might be reaching out for a sip of this goodness this very moment.

Ice Popsicles

11-year-old Fran Epperson was apparently playing with his water and powdered soda mix, leaving it with the wooden stirrer inside. After he forgot the ‘experiment’ outside overnight, it froze, and as any 11-year-old would probably do, he licked it, then quickly realizing what a revolutionary invention he’d made. He began by selling ‘Epsicles’ in his neighborhood, then eventually at amusement parks. He patented his product that later changed its name to ‘Pop’sicles’ after 20 years as it was much more favored by children. However, Epperson ended up selling the business and never again making as much money as he did at the beginning of his success.

Chocolate Brownies

One of the most delightful baked goods originating from the US is said to have been invented by Fanny Farmer, who simply adapted her chocolate cookie to be baked in a rectangular pan. Another legend surrounding the birth of chocolate brownies talks about a chef accidentally adding melted (and too much) chocolate into the dough.

Chimichangas

A popular Mexican-American fusion is a large, deep-fried burrito and Tucson, Arizona claims its fame. Historically being a part of Sonora state, Mexico, people seem to take this soul food very seriously and one story is told about Monica Flin from El Charro Cafe in 1922 accidentally flipping a burrito into the deep fryer – obviously wanting to swear, but not allowing herself to do that in front of her nieces, she yelled ‘chimichanga’ instead and that’s how the mouth-watering dish was born.

Beer

This time, it could be thanks to the Mesopotamians 6,000 years ago being very annoyed by the fact that the grains they’d been storing for producing bread would go damp and start to ferment into liquid affected by the loose yeast in the air. Soon, they realized that there was no point in ignoring the potential of making what is now one of the oldest drinks humans have ever produced. The oldest evidence of beer’s existence shows people sipping this drink through red straws out of a giant communal bowl. Party on.

Yoghurt

It’s apparently thanks to the herdsmen in Central Asia who stored goat’s milk in containers made out of different animal stomachs 8,000 years ago that the substance would curdle and the fermenting of good bacteria would add this tart flavor to it and preserve it. This way, you can imagine what Genghis Khan would potentially have had for breakfast.