Food Inventions that Made our Lives Easier
“This is the best thing since sliced bread.”
This is a phrase that commonly frequents conversion even today just as it has since the inventing of sliced bread in 1928. Sliced bread is the first of many culinary inventions which have made our lives significantly easier and more enjoyable.
In this article, we are going to take a closer look at some of the food inventions that we have come to love and rely on. But first – let’s learn about the origins of sliced bread.
1. Sliced Bread
Bread remains a staple in every household across the globe. After all, what would we do without sandwiches, french toast and all of our other favourite bread recipes?
However, sliced bread has only been a purchasable option since July 6, 1928, when Otto Rohwedder invented the machine in Chillicothe, Missouri. And – what makes this uncanny – is that Rohwedder was actually a jeweller!
Initially, he invented his bread slicing invention in 1917 but tragically lost his prototype and blueprints to a fire. His inventions faced much scepticism and critique from local bakers who believed that factory-sliced bread would go stale faster or crumble when sliced.
Despite the pushback he received, Rohwedder’s newly built bread slicer found its new home at Frank Bench’s bakery – the Chillicothe Baking Company.
After an enthusiastic article was published in the Chillicothe Constitution-Tribune, sliced bread became the new big thing with particular attention to the fact that each slice was the same size as the other beside it.
By 1930, sliced bread could be found in most towns across the United States.
2. Sliced Cheese
Who does not love a good old grilled cheese sandwich or a burger topped with a few slices of sliced cheese? As with our first contender above – sliced bread – sliced cheese is also a food invention that revolutionised our lives.
While many argue that sliced cheese is not the same as the real deal, the convenience offered by the product cannot be argued. Today there are dozens of processed cheese brands all over the world enjoyed by people all over the globe.
Processed cheese was first developed in 1911 by Walter Gerber and Fritz Stettler. The process involved shredding and heating cheese with sodium citrate which, upon cooling, produced a firm layer of cheese.
While the original intention for this process was to improve the shelf life of cheese for shipment purposes instead of cheese slices.
Meanwhile, in the United States, James Lewis Kraft was also working on a similar process of the blending and heating of natural cheeses which, after been heated and stirred, was packed in glass jars or cans for purchase.
However, the patent obtained by Kraft in 1916 did not describe any emulsifying salts or ingredients. Later, in 1921, George Herbert Grastin of the Phoenix Cheese Company patented the use of these emulsifying salts in the process.
Over the years the process was modified until in the 1940s and early 1950s, methods and equipment to form cheese slices was developed which created a flexible, glossy cheese slice as we know it today.
3. Chocolate Milk
Young or old, chocolate milk is a cold drink enjoyed and beloved by all. We can all recall fond childhood memories of enjoying a cold glass of chocolate milk after a long day of school or evenings in front of the TV accompanied by a tall glass of deliciousness.
The exact origins of chocolate milk remain unknown, the first patented form of chocolate milk was created in Jamaica by Irish physician Hans Sloan in the late 1700s.
While Sloane was in Jamaica, he encountered the cocoa bean. He observed the locals drinking it mixed with water which, according to reports, Sloane was not fond of at all and, it is believed, that Sloan mixed is own recipe for chocolate milk.
Although, there are reports of recipes mixing chocolate with spice, eggs, sugar and milk already being in circulation by the seventeenth-century hinting that Sloan may not be the first to have done so.
By the 1750s, a grocer named Nicholas Sanders in Soho claimed to be selling Sloane’s recipe as a medicinal elixir perhaps making “Sir Hans Sloane’s Milk Chocolate” the first branded milk chocolate drink.
By the nineteenth century, the Cadbury Brothers began selling tins of drinking chocolate whose trade cards also made mention of Sloane’s recipe.
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