So your first anniversary is just around the corner and your friends are bugging you for a treat. Going through the recommended options you suddenly realise that fine dinning restaurants con you off your hard earned money for no rhyme or reason. But you can cheer yourself up with the knowledge that many foods that we now consider to be classy and/or expensive were common man's least favourite option for supper. Your future does look better.
#5
Lobster
It's no surprise that lobster didn't have much of a reputation. It is, literally, a sea insect. The lobster belongs to the same animal group as both the spider and the common bug, which should be your first clue. They were initially thought of as giant hassles that got in the way when fishermen were fishing for, you know, fish.
Then how did it get so fancy?
Somebody went and invented the railroad. Soon, rich people, who were painfully unaware of what was cool, were tricked into buying the sea insects. But after tasting them, they realised that they must have discovered the long-lost gatekeeper for butter.
#4
Oysters
The oyster is the cousin of snail, nature's glue stick. Oyster also hang out with, and look like, rocks: further proof that giving in to peer pressure is an important survival technique.
Furthermore, in the olden days, eating one required a hell lot of effort. If you succeeded in prying them off of rock without just giving up, you still had to open it. So you can see why the abundance of oysters in the 19th century led to their being mostly eaten by the working poor in the U.S. and the U.K. (also they are not very nutritious).
Then how did it get so fancy?
The industrial age brought a population boom and many, many oysters were eaten and killed, driving up price and demand, and therefore catching the interest of rich people.
To fix this problem, foreign oysters were brought in to replenish the population. Unfortunately, 19th century medical science was still in its Flinstone's car stage, and nobody thought to point out that the local and foreign oysters might carry diseases that the other might not be immune to, leading to tons of oysters becoming rocks for real.
Thus, oysters were made permanently scarce and pricey proving that rich people will spend money on anything, if doing so means that you can't have it.
#3
Foie Gras
Foie gras goes back to ancient Egyptian times, when man discovered that a 10% larger liver of a really, really fattened goose was a lovely primeval combination of tasty and gross.
The dish almost died out in the Middle Ages, when most people were chiefly concerned with trying to stay away from the burning piles of plague victims. Geese were probably able to stop having nightmares about waking up in bathtubs full of ice.
Then how did it get so fancy?
The Renaissance brought back interest in things other than just conquering people, which meant that royals were getting back to the business of conquering their arteries. People travelled to the Jewish ghettos in Rome to buy lobes of foie gras; these lobes found their way in to the kitchens of the royals, who were getting frustrated waiting for the deep fried bacon to be invented.
Then, word got around that foie gras was awesome, the French started putting it in everything and charging $10 an ounce.
#2
Polenta
Polenta is basically gruel. But Polenta is gruel made from corn. Much like gruel, working class families in Italy and Latin America largely depended on this corn mash, which can take an upwards of three hours to cook from scratch, has to be stirred constantly and tastes like something you'd feed to cattle.
Then how did it get so fancy?
Celebrity chefs! Fairly recently, polenta went from being the dish that every rags-to-riches person thought they'd never had to eat again, to the dish that is costing them $25 in a restaurant run by the only person left on earth not shy of wearing Crocs, Mario Batali.
His fine dining restaurant even did an all-polenta meal. But make no mistake, fine dining polenta is mostly still plain old peasant polenta that is spruced up for the rich and famous. The Food Network's Rocco DiSpirito even has a special recipe for polenta in which the only special ingredient is that Rocco DiSpirito is telling you about it.
#1
Sushi
The idea behind sushi is that you've got fish, plus stuff wrapped around it to preserve the fish. The fermentation of the rice keeps the fish from giving you varied types of illness. So originally sushi followed the formula of fish = "yum"; rice = "silica packet".
Back then the boozy, fermented rice was discarded, presumably because they were already very busy with all the opium. Then a 17th century Japanese doctor, Matsumoto Yoshiichi, hit upon the idea of adding vineger to the rice to make it an edible part of the dish.
Like most Japanese things, sushi eventually became pocket-sized. Sushi's portability, cheapness, as well as the allure of eating both a food and its wrapper at the same time turned sushi into the hot dog of the Japanese Edo period. The popular sushi street stalls were the original fast food joints.
Then how did it get so fancy?
Post WWII, sushi arrived in the U.S. with the word "exotic" attached to it.
Now there are sushi restaurants that charge up to $400 a meal (before booze) with a straight face. Masaharu Morimoto, writes in his cookbooks about the short, specific time limits he has for eating pieces of sushi.
This seems reasonable until you remember, this is like a century from now reading a celebrity chef talking about how he can only eat his chicken McNuggets exactly 236 seconds after they have left the fryer.
#5
Lobster
It's no surprise that lobster didn't have much of a reputation. It is, literally, a sea insect. The lobster belongs to the same animal group as both the spider and the common bug, which should be your first clue. They were initially thought of as giant hassles that got in the way when fishermen were fishing for, you know, fish.
Then how did it get so fancy?
Somebody went and invented the railroad. Soon, rich people, who were painfully unaware of what was cool, were tricked into buying the sea insects. But after tasting them, they realised that they must have discovered the long-lost gatekeeper for butter.
 | |||
| Come to mama |
Oysters
The oyster is the cousin of snail, nature's glue stick. Oyster also hang out with, and look like, rocks: further proof that giving in to peer pressure is an important survival technique.
Furthermore, in the olden days, eating one required a hell lot of effort. If you succeeded in prying them off of rock without just giving up, you still had to open it. So you can see why the abundance of oysters in the 19th century led to their being mostly eaten by the working poor in the U.S. and the U.K. (also they are not very nutritious).
Then how did it get so fancy?
The industrial age brought a population boom and many, many oysters were eaten and killed, driving up price and demand, and therefore catching the interest of rich people.
To fix this problem, foreign oysters were brought in to replenish the population. Unfortunately, 19th century medical science was still in its Flinstone's car stage, and nobody thought to point out that the local and foreign oysters might carry diseases that the other might not be immune to, leading to tons of oysters becoming rocks for real.
Thus, oysters were made permanently scarce and pricey proving that rich people will spend money on anything, if doing so means that you can't have it.
#3
Foie Gras
Foie gras goes back to ancient Egyptian times, when man discovered that a 10% larger liver of a really, really fattened goose was a lovely primeval combination of tasty and gross.
The dish almost died out in the Middle Ages, when most people were chiefly concerned with trying to stay away from the burning piles of plague victims. Geese were probably able to stop having nightmares about waking up in bathtubs full of ice.
Then how did it get so fancy?
The Renaissance brought back interest in things other than just conquering people, which meant that royals were getting back to the business of conquering their arteries. People travelled to the Jewish ghettos in Rome to buy lobes of foie gras; these lobes found their way in to the kitchens of the royals, who were getting frustrated waiting for the deep fried bacon to be invented.
Then, word got around that foie gras was awesome, the French started putting it in everything and charging $10 an ounce.
#2
Polenta
Polenta is basically gruel. But Polenta is gruel made from corn. Much like gruel, working class families in Italy and Latin America largely depended on this corn mash, which can take an upwards of three hours to cook from scratch, has to be stirred constantly and tastes like something you'd feed to cattle.
Then how did it get so fancy?
Celebrity chefs! Fairly recently, polenta went from being the dish that every rags-to-riches person thought they'd never had to eat again, to the dish that is costing them $25 in a restaurant run by the only person left on earth not shy of wearing Crocs, Mario Batali.
His fine dining restaurant even did an all-polenta meal. But make no mistake, fine dining polenta is mostly still plain old peasant polenta that is spruced up for the rich and famous. The Food Network's Rocco DiSpirito even has a special recipe for polenta in which the only special ingredient is that Rocco DiSpirito is telling you about it.
#1
Sushi
 | ||||
| Fishtravaganza |
The idea behind sushi is that you've got fish, plus stuff wrapped around it to preserve the fish. The fermentation of the rice keeps the fish from giving you varied types of illness. So originally sushi followed the formula of fish = "yum"; rice = "silica packet".
Back then the boozy, fermented rice was discarded, presumably because they were already very busy with all the opium. Then a 17th century Japanese doctor, Matsumoto Yoshiichi, hit upon the idea of adding vineger to the rice to make it an edible part of the dish.
Like most Japanese things, sushi eventually became pocket-sized. Sushi's portability, cheapness, as well as the allure of eating both a food and its wrapper at the same time turned sushi into the hot dog of the Japanese Edo period. The popular sushi street stalls were the original fast food joints.
Then how did it get so fancy?
Post WWII, sushi arrived in the U.S. with the word "exotic" attached to it.
Now there are sushi restaurants that charge up to $400 a meal (before booze) with a straight face. Masaharu Morimoto, writes in his cookbooks about the short, specific time limits he has for eating pieces of sushi.
This seems reasonable until you remember, this is like a century from now reading a celebrity chef talking about how he can only eat his chicken McNuggets exactly 236 seconds after they have left the fryer.
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