Did you know that many of the best dishes we’ve come to know and love were created unintentionally? Sure, several came to fruition with meticulous planning behind them, but others were happy accidents. From salty snacks to sweet treats, let’s discuss seven of the best dishes that were accidental inventions.
Potato chips
Stemming from fries, which originated in Belgium in the late 1600s, a well-favoured salty snack was born unintentionally. Potato chips can be traced back to 1853 at Moon’s Lake House, a popular restaurant in Saratoga Springs, New York.
A guest at the restaurant—shipping and railroad baron Cornelius Vanderbilt—was served fries that he deemed too thick. So he sent them back to the kitchen, asking for thinner fries. George Crum, the restaurant’s famed chef of Black and Native American heritage, responded angrily by shaving the potatoes as thin as possible and frying them to a crisp before serving them to Vanderbilt.
Much to Crum’s surprise, Vanderbilt loved the crispiness. The positive response led to an abundant curiosity surrounding this new snack. People lined up for hours to try it.
The success led Crum to open Crum’s Place, a restaurant near Saratoga, where he continued to serve baskets of potato chips to guests. Crum oversaw the restaurant from 1860 until his retirement in 1889.
Since his passing in 1914, potato chips have skyrocketed in popularity and are now a household staple and beloved for being light and crispy.
Cheese puffs
The origins of this bright orange snack stem from an animal feed factory as the by-product of animal feed. It’s rather bizarre, but it’s true.
The making of animal feed involves a grinder being used to flake corn. The cleaning process requires staff to feed moist corn into the grinder. The staff at Flakall Corporation in Beloit, Washington, were surprised when they discovered this process produced airy blobs of corn.
In 1935, an employee at the factory, Edward Wilson, thought something could become of these puffs. Wilson took the puffs home to be seasoned and to determine whether they were safe for human consumption. Spoiler alert: He loved it. Thus cheese puffs were unintentionally born.
The product was known as Korn Kurls at the time, and its rapid success led to Flakall expanding its line of products to include snacks for both animals and humans. To commemorate the new change, Flakall Corporation became Adams Corporation.
1948 was a big year for cheese puffs with the first production of the Cheetos brand, which remains popular today.
Popsicles
Typically associated with the hot summer season, this icy-cold treat was unintentionally brought to life by an 11-year-old boy in the early 1900s.
It was a surprisingly cold day in the Noe Valley area of San Francisco when Frank Epperson left a stirring stick in a glass full of water and soda powder on his back porch overnight. Epperson was amazed the following morning to find his drink had become a frozen icicle.
Calling his discovery the “Epsicle,” Epperson was eager to show his new frozen treat to his friends on the way to school. In 1924, the adult Epperson patented this innovative creation. Afterwards, he changed the frozen treat’s name to what it’s known as today, the popsicle.
To this day, you can still find children and adults spending a hot sunny day enjoying a popsicle purchased from an ice cream truck or a grocery store.
Ice cream cones
Edible wafers have been around for centuries and are typically served alongside ice cream or gelato. There are a lot of stories about how ice cream cones came to be. Let’s discuss two of the most well-known tales.
First, there’s Italo Marchiony, who immigrated to New York City from Italy in the late 1800s. He invented the ice cream cone in 1896 and was granted a patent four years later in December 1903.
It’s also said that Ernest A. Hamwi, a Syrian concessionaire, sold a similar pastry—zalabis—at the St. Louis World Fair in 1904 next to an ice cream vendor who sold out of dishes due to how prominent ice cream was. Hamwi saw an easy solution to the problem. He rolled his wafer-like pastries into cones and gave them to the vendor to use as ice cream cones. The idea was a success among happy customers, leading many to capitalize on the success and create their own versions of the ice cream cone.
Nashville Hot Chicken
A famous country scene is not all that Nashville is known for. The city is also famous for its hot chicken. Deemed a must-try when visiting the southern city, Nashville Hot Chicken has had a history within the Black community for generations.
According to legend, the origins of the hot chicken date back to the 1930s during the height of the Great Depression. Thornton Prince, a well-known womanizer, stepped out on a woman he was going steady with. The woman was getting fed up with his player ways and wanted to teach him a lesson. After staying out all night, Prince expected the lady to make him breakfast when he returned in the morning like she always did.
The woman made him his favourite fried chicken, with a twist. She used all her spices to make the chicken as spicy as possible. But the plan backfired as Prince loved the spice level and shared the chicken with his family and friends.
It’s unknown what spices the lady used, but her actions unintentionally led to the opening of Prince’s Hot Chicken Shack, which is still in business eight decades later. The popularity of the hot chicken led to similar places beyond not only Nashville but also America, where others have created their own variations of Nashville Hot Chicken.
Hawaiian pizza
For many, pizza is a popular savoury dish that almost everyone can say they love. Typically, you can find a variety of toppings, like pepperoni, cheese, sausage, bacon, ham, mushrooms, onions, peppers, and olives, on a pizza, completely customized to your liking. However, one topping has continued to spark controversy since its creation—pineapple.
After moving to Canada in 1954, Sam Panopoulos, a Greek immigrant, unintentionally made the first Hawaiian pizza at his restaurant, Satellite, in Chatham, Ontario.
The restaurant mainly specialized in traditional American cuisine, like burgers, but has since incorporated Canadian dishes, like poutine.
Panapoulos was experimenting with Chinese American cuisine and pizza when he tried pineapple as a pizza topping. He called it “Hawaiian Pizza,” as Hawaii was the main producer of pineapples globally.
In a 2017 interview, Panapoulos said, “We just put it on, just for the fun of it, see how it was going to taste.”
Panapoulos and his brothers enjoy the contrasting flavours of sweet pineapple with savoury ham. While many agree with them wholeheartedly, others don’t, and it remains a popular debate topic.
Coffee
Often credited as a highly caffeinated morning drink to provide energy throughout the day, coffee, which grows worldwide, was also discovered unintentionally.
The origins of coffee beans trace back to the ancient Ethiopian coffee forests of the 9th century. According to legend, a goat herder, named Kaldi, was tending to his goats when he noticed they were full of energy and couldn’t sleep after eating berries from a specific tree.
Kaldi told the abbot of his local monastery, who made a drink with the berries and realized that it kept him active during the long hours of evening prayer. The abbot shared this discovery with the other monks and news spread. Other parts of the world, such as the Arabian Peninsula, Europe, and the Atlantic, would also learn about coffee and make their own.