Tasty Accidents

You know what I had the biggest hankering for last night?

Chocolate chip cookies.
 
Who doesn’t love them?  They’re the perfect dessert, after school snack and reminder of home.

But did you know that they were actually an accident?

Actually, a lot of our favorite foods were discovered accidentally. Cookies, potato chips and even ice cream cones were food accidents. Who would’ve thought such popular food items were unintentional?

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Can you believe that chocolate chip cookies have only been around since 1930? Ruth Wakefield was preparing chocolate cookies but had run out of baking chocolate. In attempts to still have chocolate dough, she broke a semi-sweet chocolate bar and mixed the tiny pieces into the dough, believing it would melt.

But instead of the pieces incorporating into the dough, the chips remained in place and helped create the first chocolate chip cookie. Wakefield started selling the cookies from then on and helped create a favorite American snack.

Sandwiches

I find it amusing that the sandwich was actually named after the Earl of Sandwich. Apparently in the 1700s, the Earl could not bring himself to leave the gambling tables in order to get a meal. So he ordered for meat to be delivered to him between slices of bread, starting the trend.

Another version of the story involves the Earl being too involved with work. Instead of having his meal brought to him with a fork and knife, he requested it to be placed between two slices of bread.
 
Potato Chips

Sometimes, customer complaints can be a blessing in disguise. A customer at Moon Lake Lodge in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., had ordered a side of French fries from chef George Crum in 1853. Apparently the fries were too thick.

Crum returned to the kitchen, making a thinner batch of fries, and returned them to the customer. The customer was still not pleased, and Crum set out to make the thinnest fried potatoes possible. He ended up creating the potato chip, which the customer, as well as other diners, absolutely loved.

Iceberg Lettuce

Who doesn’t love natural mutations? Iceberg lettuce came from the Crisphead lettuce family and was discovered during a 1920 Crisphead crop. While farmers originally dismissed the crop, they decided to keep breeding it as shippers were happy to see the Iceberg last longer.

Ice Cream Cones

An ice cream vendor at the 1904 World Fair in St. Louis had run out of cups to serve ice cream to customers. A neighboring vendor selling pastries quickly helped out by taking some of his pastries and rolling them into cones for the ice cream. Regardless of the incident, a patent for an ice cream cone had been filed the previous year by an Italian immigrant.

Huitlacoche

This is by far the most bizarre food accident here. Huitlacoche is actually corn smut, created from a fungus that grows within the plant. Most farmers dispose of any crops infected by the smut, but in Mexico, it’s used in many meals and is even considered a delicacy.

The blackened kernels are used as filling for food, and while it is not widely popular in the United States, canned huitlacoche can be found in certain grocery stores. The Adobo restaurant chain, which has a location in Indianapolis, even serves a huitlacoche quesadilla.

So there you have it! Such widely popular foods are not always the result of genius. Sometimes, crop misfortune and unhappy customers can lead to the happiest, tastiest accidents.