Hello everyone,
This is Arjun. I hope you have been enjoying my earlier
podcasts and posts. Today I have brought to you another interesting podcast.
This podcast is about the history of 3 food items. Now, that you know what I am
going to tell you today, let’s jump into the world of food.
Chocolate- We all must have tasted chocolate whether in ice
creams or in cakes, but do you know where chocolate originates from? It is
believed that the first cacao trees- the plants from which we obtain chocolate,
were cultivated in 1400 BC in Honduras in South America. The Aztecs, a tribe
from Central Mexico, used to cultivate cacao in a large quantity. The Aztecs called
chocolate xocoatl which when translated into English means ‘bitter
water’. To make the chocolate tastier the Aztecs drank the chocolate with
chillies. When the Spanish conquered the Aztecs, they were introduced to
chocolate. The Spanish mispronounced the word ‘xocoatl’, and instead called
it ‘chocolatl’. When the Spanish took chocolate back to Spain it caught
on and new additions were added to it. Soon, chocolate was no more had with a chilli,
instead the chilli was replaced by ingredients like vanilla, sugar, and
cinnamon. The dish also spread to England where the English called it
‘chocolate’. This is how ‘xocoatl’ transformed into the ‘chocolate’ we
know of today. My favourite chocolate is a milk chocolate with rose flavour
that I bought in Rome. Yum! Now, let’s go to another tasty and equally popular
food item.
Mayonnaise- We all have eaten
mayonnaise sauce, whether in sandwiches or in salad dressings. However, did you
know how mayonnaise was invented? In 1756 the French army under their
commander, Duc de Richelieu conquered the port town of Mahon in Minorca, in the
Balearic Islands from the British. To celebrate his success, Richelieu asked
his chef to prepare a banquet. Unfortunately, the cook wasn’t able to find any
cream so that he could make a French sauce. Fortunately, he found that a local
ingredient called aïoli- a mixture of lemon juice, olive oil, egg yolk and raw
garlic, was suitable if the garlic was removed. Later, when the sauce was
served at the banquet, Richelieu liked it so much that he named it ‘mahonnaise’
to commemorate his victory (Mahon- mahonnaise get it!). Later, the name evolved
into ‘mayonnaise’. This is how mayonnaise was invented. Now, can you guess what
the next dish is going to be? If you said sandwiches, then your right!
We all have eaten different kinds of sandwiches, like mayonnaise
sandwiches or cheese sandwiches. But did you know how it was invented? The
sandwich was invented in 1762 in Sandwich, England. The 4th Earl of
Sandwich, John Montagu loved to play cards. He was so fond that he didn’t even
want to stop for lunch. So, he asked his cook to make a dish that comprised of
meat and cheese in between two slices of bread, which he could he eat while
playing with the other hand. The earl popularised the dish and soon people in
London were eating it too. It is thought by some historians that John Montagu got
the idea from somewhere else. The earl had travelled throughout the
Mediterranean, and he may have got the idea from the Turkish and Greek mezze
platters which have dishes in which dips, cheeses and meats are ‘sandwiched’
between two slices of bread.
And with that we come to the end of my 5th podcast. I
hope you enjoyed it and will share it with your friends and family. Goodbye and
see you next time!
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