My Science School

Chilling food in your refrigerator slows down the two main causes of decay - the growth of mould and bacteria, and chemical breakdown, as in the over-ripening of fruit.

In a domestic refrigerator the temperature is kept between about 34 and 41°F  (1 and 5°C). This is low enough to keep most of the food we use fresh for up to a week. Growth of decay causing organisms is slowed down but low temperatures do not destroy the organisms. Similarly, chemical breakdown is also slowed but not stopped completely so the food will spoil if kept for too long.

The temperature in a home freezer is normally about 0°F (-18°C), which will preserve food for anything from a month to a year, depending on the quality and type of food frozen.

 

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Switch on the microwave oven, and you are switching on a powerful magnetic field which oscillates in the same frequency band that is used for radio broadcasts and radar. Microwaves in the field can be used to cook food rapidly by making the water molecules in the food vibrate at almost 2500 million times a second. This action absorbs energy from the magnetic field and heats the food.

As all the energy is absorbed by the food and not wasted on heating the surrounding air on the oven itself, the process is far quicker and more economical than traditional cooking methods.

The microwave energy does not heat the utensils in the oven because the materials they are made of such as China and glass do not absorb energy from the magnetic field. However, the plates do not come out of the oven cold, because they are heated by the food.

Special cookware

Many other materials besides China and glass can be used in a microwave oven - such as plastic, paper and cardboard. And special cookware - which is transparent to microwaves - has been developed for use in microwave ovens.

Metal container should not be used because metal does not transmit microwaves but reflects them. So foods should not be covered with aluminium file. Wooden utensils are also best avoided in microwave ovens because wood always contains some moisture, and this can cause it to split when it heats up.

 Long wave radio waves have a wavelength measured in thousands of metres. The microwaves used in microwave ovens have a wavelength of about 5in (120 mm).

An electromagnetic wave is a vibration of electrical and magnetic fields, constantly going from negative to positive. Microwave oven is operate with the waves that vibrate 2450 million times a second- a frequency of 2450 megahertz MHZ.

Water molecules have a positively charged end and negatively charged end. The vibrating positive negative microwaves interact with the positive negative water molecules, attracting and repelling them and making them twist first one way, then the other. This also happens 2450 million times a second.

The most important part of the microwave oven is the electronic tube, or magnetron, that generates the microwaves. The magnetron was developed in 1940 by British researchers at Birmingham University, and was first applied usefully in radar. It’s domestic potential was first realised buy the Raytheon Company in the United States in the early 1950s.

 

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As long as 5000 years ago, seaweed was used as a food and medicine in China. And today it is still eaten around the world. It is found in the Japanese fish and rice dishes sushi, in Welsh laver bread (seaweed fried with oatmeal) - and in ice cream.

Seaweeds provide ingredients called alginates and carrageenans, which are used in ice cream as stabilisers, so that ice cream does not become grainy in the freezer.

When ice cream is made, most of the water content freezes into very small ice crystals about 50 microns in size. (A micron is 1000th of a millimetre). As the thermostat of a deep freezer switches the refrigeration off and on, the temperature in the freezer fluctuates. Water melts off the crystals as the temperature rises, causing smaller ones to disappear. Then as the temperature drops again, the water freezes on to the remaining crystals, which grow in size. This causes the texture to coarsen.

Stabiliser slow the growth of the ice crystals, by forming protective layer around them, so the ice cream retains its smooth texture longer.

Carrageenan is obtained from red seaweeds found around rocky shores in northern Europe and North America. The seaweed is harvested, then dried to preserve it. Carrageenan can be extracted by immersing the dried seaweed in hot water. The extract is purified and then ground to a fine, cream-coloured powder. Alginates are exhorted in a similar way from brown seaweed in several parts of the world.

Before being used in ice cream, the alginate or carrageenan is usually blended with other compounds such as guar gum (extracted from the seed of the guar plant of India and Pakistan) and Locust bean gum (from the seeds of the Locust bean or carob tree, which grows in the Mediterranean area) to provide mixtures which are more effective than a single stabiliser.

Stabilisers are used in ice cream at about 0.2% of weight, so that a litre of ice cream contains less than a gram of the seaweed extract.

 

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Blue cheeses are the result of moulds that produced blue pigments. Originally cheeses must have been accidentally contaminated by natural moulds floating in the air as spores. Once the mould had grown, it would colonise cheese cellars or storage caves and subsequent cheeses stored there would also be contaminated.

Modern blue cheese production minimises the chances of the mould failing to grow. A suspension of the mould spores is either added to milk at the same time as starter bacteria or is sprayed over or injected into curd pieces which have been drained of the liquid component of milk, whey.

The mould used to make blue cheese is called Penicillium roquefortii, named after Roquefort in France.

The cheese has to be porous since the mould needs oxygen and space to grow, so pressing - the compression of curd in the mould, used for some other types of cheese - is avoided.

The cheeses drain slowly and are relatively soft. They have to be turned each day or they lose shape.

The temperature and humidity vary according to the type of cheese and its age. Typical conditions at between 41 to 59ºF (5 to 15°C) with humidity of 90-95%. Too high humidity encourages excessive growths of yeast and bacteria; to low causes the cheese to crack.

As the cheese matures, the supply of oxygen to the mould growing in the pores can be increased by piercing the cheese with stainless steel needles. For Stilton cheese, 4-48 holes maybe made at each piercing. The former use of copper needles led to the popular misconception that the blue colouring was caused by copper wires oxidising in the cheese. As the mould grows it not only produces the blue colour, but also enzymes. These break down the fats and proteins, producing the characteristic flavour, and making that cheese softer.

 

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The French author Honore de Balzac drank his coffee black, cold and thick as soup to keep him awake while writing through the night. He is said to have consumed 50,000 cup in his lifetime. The French philosopher Voltaire drank an estimated 72 cups a day and Beethoven is said to have used 60 beans for every cup.

Today, coffee drinkers in many countries use the instant variety, which is what remains after ground coffee beans have been ‘brewed’ and the water evaporated. In Japan, Australia and Britain, about 90% of coffee drunk is instant. In the USA, however, it accounts for only a quarter of the coffee drunk, while almost all Scandinavian and Italians prefer their coffee freshly ground.

Attempts to make instant coffee in the late 1800s failed because of poor flavour. Then, in 1906, George Washington, a Belgian born engineer of English parentage, was visiting a mountainous region of Guatemala when he noticed a brown deposit on the outside of a coffee pot that had boiled over. Tasting it, he thought its flavour was pleasant and the deduced that this was due to lower atmospheric pressure at high altitude. The lower boiling point of water at the higher attitude, he decided, allowed the water to evaporate with less heat damage to the dissolved coffee.

Three years later, he opened the G. Washington coffee refining company in Brooklyn, New York. His instant coffee’s immediate success was boosted during the first world war, when the US Army included it in infantry rations.

Making instant coffee involves ‘brewing up’ on a giant scale. Coffee is delivered to the manufacturer ready roasted, blended and ground. It is then percolated - the process of filtering hot water through the grounds - in batches of up to 2000lb (900kg) at a time. Some of the water is evaporated from the coffee to leave a highly concentrated liquid.

To produce powered is instant coffee, the liquid passes through a large cylinder in which it is subjected to hot air, which evaporates the remaining water. This leaves the powdered coffee ready for sealing into jars or packets.

Granular instant coffee is made by freeze drying. The concentrate is first frozen, and broken up into granules. The granules are then heated gently inside a vacuum chamber. Because water boils at low-temperature in a vacuum, the remaining moisture can be evaporated off without subjecting the coffee to create heat and impairing the flavour.

 

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Any hacker who has ever bivouacked up a mountain will appreciate the advantages of freeze-dried ready meals. They are a quarter of the weight of fresh foods, remain tasty for years in sealed packages and can be eaten hot by adding boiling water.

The process was first used in the 1950s when the American government sponsored a scheme to provide lightweight ration packs for astronauts, explorers and the armed services.

The freeze drying process preserves food by rapid freezing, followed by complete dehydration to remove all the moisture. The food is placed in a tightly sealed chamber between hollow plates containing refrigerant liquid, which freezes the food while a high-powdered pump creates a vacuum.

When the food is frozen hard and the pump has removed nearly all the air, the cold refrigerant liquid in the hollow plate is replaced by warm gas. The ice in the food is then converted directly into vapour without first turning into the water.

To keep its nutrients, flavour and appearance, the food must be frozen as quickly as possible, but the drying process is quite slow. The steam is immediately removed by the vacuum pump, but the food takes about 20 hours to dehydrate completely. It must then be packaged to protect the contents during handling, and to seal out all oxygen and moisture.

The freeze drying process gives the food an open texture, and if oxygen enters, any fat becomes a rancid . If moisture gets in, microbes in the food group, causing it to decay like fresh food.

Because the food must be frozen rapidly, the best results are obtained with the food which is sliced or ground. Fish, meat, vegetables and fruit can all be freeze dried, but coffee and made up meals with chopped ingredients are particularly successful.

Today, improvements in technology have shortened the process and ‘accelerated freeze dried’ products are becoming more common. They are still expensive, but are extremely convenient when weight and lack of every refrigeration have to be considered. The are reconstituted by adding boiling water, and retain their nutrients, appearance and flavour very well for several years.

 

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Meals that have been bombarded with the radiation are served to transplant patients - and patients in intensive care units - in many hospitals. Some countries irradiate supermarket foods. Similar food is also eaten by American and Russian astronauts during their missions in space.

Food irradiation is designed to kill bacteria that cause food poisoning - a particularly grave threat to weak hospital patients, or astronauts who are cut off from medical help. Irradiation also helps to prevent food from going bad while it is being stored. Although at the low recommended doses it does not give indefinite preservation.

The process has been known since 1921 when an American scientist discovered that X-rays could  kill a parasite, Trichinella spiralis, which can contaminate pork.

Irradiation now is done by exposing food on a conveyor belt to the radio active isotopes caesium 137 or cobalt 60 in the lead shielded chamber with walls 5 feet (1.5m) thick. The isotopes give off electromagnetic ionising radiation in the form of gamma rays. Alternative methods used X-rays or beta rays, both forms of radiation.

Doses of radiation

The effect of radiation is measured in units known as Grays (Gy). Doses less then 1kGy are used to kill parasites in meat. Low doses are also used to kill or sterilise insects in cereals, cocoa beans and other groups. They prevents stored crops such as potatoes and onions from sprouting, and slow down the ripening of some fruits.

Medium doses from 1-10kGy - can extend the shelf life of food by reducing spoiling organisms in meat, fish, fruit, vegetables and spices. They also killed food poisoning bacteria such as salmonella, in raw poultry and shellfish. About half the poultry sold contains live in salmonella, which are usually killed by cooking. However, some of the bacteria can survive if the poultry is not cooked right through.

For complete sterilisation of foods, high doses of above 10kGy are used. Animals on sterile diets regularly eat food irradiated up to 25kGy with no observed ill effects. Sterile diets are used when scientists are seeking side effects in various trials - and want to eliminate food poisoning.

Food irradiation is governed by international agreement through United Nations agencies.

 

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Every year 1 million tons of prawns and shrimps are caught for the frozen food industry and sold through restaurants in supermarkets. Until the late 1950s, when peeling machines were developed, shrimps and prawns had to be shelled by hand, making them a luxury food. Now they are almost all shelled by machines and have become more reasonably priced items supermarket freezes.  Whereas an expert hand peeler can be 56lb (25kg) of prawns an hour, machine can peel 880lb (400kg) an hour.

The great bulk of a prawn fishermen’s catch, however, is wasted. Only about sixth consists of shrimps and prawns the rest is called ‘trash fish’ or ‘by-catch’ which is thrown back into the sea.

The head of the prawns, which is in fact the stomach, thorax and head, is usually removed by hand at sea immediately after the catch has been sorted. It has to be removed as quickly as possible because enzymes and bacteria can cause unsightly dark patches on the prawns called black spot. The fishermen are experts at snapping the heads off two prawns at a time, one in each hand.

After the heads have been removed the catch can be stored in ice for up to 4 days. Once it has been landed it is quickly transferred to a processing factory.

The prawns are inspected for quality and graded in size on the machine with angled rollers. As the gap between the rollers gradually widens, successively larger prawns fall through onto different conveyor belts.

The prawns are carried to machines which have been adjusted to peel a specific size range. The prawns slide into slots where they are pressed down onto a blade that splits the shell and flesh down to the ‘vein’ along the length of the tail.

The prawns then pass onto a bed of narrowly spaced dollars. Adjacent rollers turn in opposite directions, pulling the shells through the gaps and leaving the flesh which is too large to pass between.

Finally the vein has to be removed. The vein is really the prawn’s intestine, which is full of food and sand. Removing it increases the value of the prawns and improves their keeping quality. The vein should have already been dislodged by the cutting process and as the prawn passes through a revolving cylinder with a rough surface, the vein catches on the indentations and is washed away by water.

The prawns are cooked in boiling water, emerged in iced brine and individually quick frozen, packaged and distributed.

 

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In 1987, just one fast food chain- McDonald’s hamburgers - sold upwards of 200,000 million French fries or chips, throughout the world. And they were all nearly identical in length and thickness.

To ensure that their chips have a consistent taste and that they are ready at the same time as the hamburgers, a fast food chain puts call it’s potato through the same preparation process.

Before the potatoes are even planted, the company agrees to buy a farmers entire crop. It also specifies the type of potatoes and their growing conditions, such as soil treatment and fertilisers. Varieties of potatoes are chosen - such as Majestic Maris Piper or Russet Burbanks - for their keeping quality, because they will be needed all year round. Large, round ones are preferable because they are easy to peel and clean and there is little waste.

Once harvested, the potatoes are loaded into silos or large boxes and kept in the dark at a constant temperature of 48-50°F (9-10ºC), which shows down organic changes that would make them deteriorate. They are regularly inspected and batches that show any signs of rotting are removed.

At the processing plant potatoes are again inspected and weighed to check their density, which reveals if they have become soft and ‘floury’. They are passed over sieves to remove small stones on dirt, and magnets and electronic detectors remove any metal particles. After the potatoes have been washed, the skins are softened with alkali and removed with steam.

Next, they are sliced into square sectioned strips. Thin strips will cook faster but will become hard if they are overcooked. An ideal size for fast food chips is a cross-section of about 1/4in (6mm).

The cut strips are blanched on the wire mesh conveyor belt which passes them through a tank of hot water or a dilute solution of phosphate or citrate salt. This helps to prevent them discolouring.

The cut potatoes are done frozen, bagged in polythene, packed into cartons and kept at -4°F (-20°C) until collected for delivery to the fast food outlets in refrigerated vans.

Within only minutes of being removed from freezers in the restaurants, a bagful can be fried and served up.

 

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Stuffed olives - those popular cocktail - hour appetisers- are usually stoned and stuffed by machines. The pimiento (red pepper) filling is a kind of paste, made by mixing the pimiento with a gelling agent.

The olives are aligned in rows on a perforated conveyor belt, and the stones removed by an automatic machine head, rather like a dentist’s drill. A nozzle then pumps the pimiento paste into the drilled hole in the olives.

The stones are later ground and used for animal feed - or to produce a low-grade oil.

Some high quality stuffed olives, containing anchovy, smoked salmon, chopped almonds or other nut fillings, are stoned with handheld scoop and then filled by hand.

Olive stuffing machines can process 1800 olives a minute. Manual olive stuffers mostly in Portugal can average only around 18 a minute, and a poorly paid.

Olives are grown around the Mediterranean, and in Peru, Chile, California, British Columbia and Australia. The green variety, preferable for stuffing because of their firmer texture, are the unripe fruit.

Before the stuffing process, olives are soaked in the solution of sodium hydroxide (caustic soda), which reduces their bitter flavour. Then, after washing in water, they are immersed in brine with added lactic acid to neutralise any remaining alkali. While soaking they are allowed to ferment, which encourages harmless bacteria and yeast to grow to achieve the correct characteristic flavour and texture.

 

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Cut a fresh pineapple on the kitchen chopping board and the slices will vary in diameter, because of the tapering shape of the food. But buy a can of sliced pineapple and the rings are all the same diameter. This is because the pineapples are put through an almost entirely mechanical process to make them fit into the cans.

A machine called a Ginaca processes up to 120 pineapples a minute. It cuts out a cylinder of the pineapples and juicy flesh, removes the horny outer shell, cuts off the shell at top and bottom and punches out the core. A device called an eradicator scraps off surplus flesh adhering to the shell to make crushed pineapple juice.

The cylinders of pineapple flesh are inspected on the conveyor belt my teams of trimmers, who remove remaining fragments of shell and any blemishes. The cylinders are then carried to a slicing machine, which produces the precision-rings. Packers inspect the rings and put them in the cans.

Each can of rings is topped up with either syrup or pineapple juice, mechanically lidded and sealed under vacuum. They are then cooked in pressure cookers known as retorts. Finally, sterilised cans of fruit are cooled in water or by air labelled and packed.

Most of the worlds pineapples are grown in Hawaii., The Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Taiwan, Kenya and the Ivory Coast.

Over a three-year period, pineapple plant produces two fruits, each weighing about 4.8lb (2.2kg). To simplify harvesting, the plants are made up to flower at the same time being sprayed with a growth regulator such as ethephon. This means that the fruits all ripen at about same time - between June and September. In Australia there are two harvests, one in May-June and a summer harvest in January.

 

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Round strings of spaghetti, macaroni with holes, flat ribbons of tagliatelle – all these are pasta, which is Italian for ‘paste’. They are made from coarsely ground wheat flour, called ‘semolina’, mixed into a stiff paste with water.

You can make the dough in your own kitchen, but usually it is done with large mechanical mixers in pasta factories. The paste is then formed into whatever shape is required. In the kitchen, you can simply roll it out and cut it with a knife into strips of tagliatelle, or you can extrude it through a simple press (like a mincer with holes that do not rotate) to make spaghetti.

In industrial pasta presses, the dough is squeezed by a screw like the one in the middle of a mincer, an forced under high pressure through a perforated die.

Outside the die, a knife cuts off the strings of pasta as they emerge. When the knife moves slowly you get long strings, when it goes more quickly you get long strings, when it goes more quickly you get short pieces, and at top speed it gives thin slices.

The shape of the holes in the die governs the shapes of the pasta – round holes for spaghetti, star-shaped holes for little stars, and so on.

For macaroni, however, the hole has to be more complicated. It has a solid centre connected to the edges by fine spokes. The sticky paste comes through under high pressure, leaving the large hole in the middle, but the gaps left by the spokes join up again afterwards.

 

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Have you ever cooked? Made a sandwich, perhaps? Or something more interesting that needed lightning a stove or switching on the oven?

Cooking is a useful skill. Good cooks are in great demand, they have more friends than others. Cooking will make sure you will never starve. Sure, readymade foods are a dime a dozen now, and shops fill their shelves with “add-hot-water-and-eat” food items, but can all this be equal to homemade stuff? And psychologists tell us that cooking is therapeutic. It helps to develop patience, it teaches us to be careful, and when the dishes come out, the effort and result give us a sense of achievement. Confidence with a plate of corn fritters!

So, it is a good idea to know the different ways of cooking. Dependency on the type of ingredients and the recipes you choose to follow, you can pick from these various methods of preparing a dish.

Baking

Baking is when you apply dry convention heat to your food in an enclosed environment. Baking can be done in an oven run on coal, wood, electricity or microwave. Most people today bake in ovens run on electricity. The dry heat in the baking process makes the outside of the food go brown, and keeps the moisture locked in. There are any number of very tasty items you can bake, but the most popular are cakes, pastries, bread, casseroles in bake-and-serve dishes. Ever tasted lasagne? A mug cake – made in a mug and eaten from it?

Steaming

As the name suggests, in this method, food is cooked or a large vessel and the food is placed over it in another vessel. When put on the burner, the water boils, sends steam up and steam cooks the food. Some people even bake a cake by steaming it. The best examples of steamed food items are the south-Indian puttu and idlis. Steaming is a healthy form of cooking.

Frying

This means cooking your food in fat. There are different ways to fry food.

Deep-frying, where the food is completely immersed in hot oil. Stir-frying, where you fry the food very quickly on high heat in a pan with a little oil. Pan-frying, where food is cooked in a frying pan with oil. Sautéing, where the food is browned on one side and then the other with a small quantity of fat or oil.

Frying is one of the quickest ways to cook food. There are some dishes that need this form of cooking. How do you make puris? Or French Fries without immersing the potato slivers in hot oil? The only problem with frying is that doctors tell us that reuse of the frying oil is harmful for health.

Roasting

When you roast chicken, what do you do? Roasting is cooking food on high heat. It is a form of baking, but unlike baking, roasting is done openly. In earlier times, when people cooked in open spaces, say after a hunt, they would install two Y-shaped sticks at some feet away, rest a strong stick across the crooks of the Ys and hang a pig by its legs from the stick in the middle. This is called a “spit.” Cooks would light a fire below and keep turning the pig so it would cook slowly in the heat. The animal will be cooked in its own fat. In this form of cooking, the meat gets drier and browner on the outside and soft on the inside. Of course, you can roast vegetables by coating them with oil.

Poaching

Here is how you “poach” an egg. Break the egg, take what is inside in a large spoon. Lower it gently in a vessel with water boiling in it. See that the egg does not scatter. You can do that by holding it in the spoon till it cooks a bit. Food is “poached” in water, but try milk, broth or vegetable stock! Common foods cooked by poaching are fish, eggs and fruit.

Stewing

A stew is what you need on a cold day, or when you are nursing a cold. You first shallow fry or sauté the meat, chicken or vegetables and then cook it in liquid with herbs, pepper and salt. That is, the food is sautéed or seared first, and then cooked in liquid. To make a stew, you need to cut the vegetables and meat into small cubes.

Grilling

In this method, cooking is fast, dry and done on high heat. The food (have you tasted grilled sandwiches?) is placed under intense radiant heat. Grilling can be done with wood burning, coal, gas flame, or electric heating. For grilling, you prepare the food by coating it with various herbs, lemon juice, etc. Close to grilling is broiling, where the heat source comes from the top instead of the bottom.

 

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How it all began?

The origin of gingerbread is unclear, but many food historians believe it was born after the 11th Century crusaders returning from the eastern Mediterranean brought ginger to Western Europe.

It was initially prepared only in aristocratic households. However, as the price of ginger and a few other spices dropped, gingerbread became popular among the common people. Some historians say the first-known recipe for gingerbread came from Greece in 2400 B.C. However, there is no definite proof to this theory.

In Medieval period, “gingerbread fairs” were held regularly, and gingerbread was a very popular dish among the people. These gingerbreads were made in several shapes such as animals, birds and humans. An evidence of the cookie’s popularity is its mention in Shakespeare’s “Love’s Labour’s Lost” (1597).

A royal connection

Queen Elizabeth I is credited with the invention of the gingerbread men. She gifted the dignitaries visiting her court, gingerbread cookies that resembled them.

All the way from Germany

The iconic gingerbread houses prepared in western countries during Christmas, originated in Germany during the 16th Century.

However, these intricately decorated cookie houses became popular only following the 1812 fairytale of ‘Hansel and Gretel”, written by Brothers Grimm.

Across the ocean

Gingerbread was introduced in a few other regions, including North America, during the period of colonisation. Today, gingerbread is an inseparable part of North American holiday season.

The type of gingerbread prepared in this part of the world is a little different from those in Europe. For instance, the gingerbread prepared in the U.S. is moist and soft, whereas the ones in Britain are dense and harder.

Why is gingerbread a Christmas tradition?

Nutrition experts suggest that this could be due to the medicinal properties of ginger. Ginger, as a spice, can provide warmth for the body during winter and can also be an effective calming agent for a festive season that involves eating a lot of heavy treats. Some believe that during the Medieval period, gingerbread preparation was restricted to gingerbread chefs or masters most of the year, except during Christmas and Easter, due to the high price of ginger. The common people, therefore, prepared the dish only during the festive season, making gingerbread a season-specific dish.

Wide varieties

The three most iconic-flavours of gingerbread are brown, wafer-based and honey. There are several offbeat flavours as well, and these include cranberry, oatmeal, gluten-free, paleo, orange-scented, caramel, chocolate and almond spice. Apart from the usual gingerbread men and houses, there are many other adaptation such as gingerbread pie, cheesecake, cake, granola, latte, French toast, scones, pancakes, trifle, doughnuts and waffles.

 

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The pizza story

Flatbreads with toppings have been consumed for centuries by the ancient Egyptians, Romans and Greeks. One of the earliest reference to a pizza-like food is documented in the “Aeneid”, an epic written by Roman poet Virgil between 29 and 19 BC. The modern variant of pizza was born in the city of Naples, Italy. Naples had a large number of working class people who preferred affordable food that could be consumed on-the-go. Pizzas served this purpose. These street-side pizzas were flatbreads with various toppings such as tomatoes, cheese, oil, anchovies (a type of fish) and garlic.

In the mid-1800s, King Umberto I and Queen Margherita of the Kingdom of Italy visited Naples. This is seen as an iconic event in the history of pizza. The royal couple wished to dine on an assortment of pizzas made in the city.

Until then, pizzas were primarily consumed by the working class and were frowned upon by the Italian elite. The queen’s favourite pizza was called pizza mozzarella, which was topped with the cheese, tomatoes and basil. Since the, this pizza has been known as pizza Margherita.

However, the popularity of pizza never spread to the rest of the world, until it became a hit in the U.S.

Taken to the U.S. by immigrants from Naples in the early 1900s, pizza became an instant hit in the region. After World War II, pizza came to be known as a fun fast-food. Food historians claim that pizza became popular in its birthplace Italy only after the war.

Today, there are several pizza chains across the world and several flavours to cater to local palates.

Want to study pizza at college?

You can now include pizza studies to your curriculum. One such famous programme is offered by the Manchester Metropolitan University, England.

This is a degree-level apprenticeship provided in partnership with Pizza Hut. The training aims to focus on academic and practical skills, including financial analysis, food production and hospitality leadership.

Cheesy facts

Did you know that pizza has been delivered to space? In 2001, a pizza was delivered to the International Space Station on-board a re-supply rocket. The entire process cost over one million dollars.

Pizza was one of the first items to be sold online.

In 2013, a group of NASA-funded scientists invented a 3-D printer that could cook pizza in just 70 seconds.

Spin it..

Did you know that spinning pizza dough is an art from according to UNESCO? Known as ‘Pizzaiuolo’. This art form has four stages and is passed on to future generations by Master Pizzaiuolos.

Regional adaptations

One of the primary reasons for pizza’s international fame is its regional adaptations. Most communities that consume pizza have adapted it to suit their preferences. For instance, chicken tikka and paneer makhani pizzas in India, and miso, mentaiko (pollock roe) and fermented soyabeans pizza in Japan.

 

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