Random Famous Foods Discovered by Accident (16 items)

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  (#1) Popsicle Ice Pops

  Like every other 11-year-old, Frank Epperson loved sodas. Unfortunately - or rather, fortunately - on a cold night in 1905, he left his soda-making equipment out on the porch. Morning came, and little Frank found that his mixture had frozen, capturing the stirring stick upright. When he tried to remove the ice pop using the stick, that’s when it hit him: this thing is awesome. He spent almost 20 years making the frozen treats for his friends (and later, his children) before he applied for a patent for “Pop’s sicles” in 1923. 
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  (#2) Potato chip

  Although as many as 1.2 billion pounds of potato chips are feasted on every year, apparently we were not meant to like this savory snack. In a restaurant in 1853, chef George Crum was frustrated after a customer sent back his fried potatoes over and over again, complaining that they were soggy and too thick. So, to get back at the customer, the chef sliced the next batch of potatoes as thinly as he could, fried them, and covered them in a great deal of salt. Surprisingly, the customer loved them and spread the word about these thin, crunchy potato slices. Faced with growing demand, Chef Crum opened his own restaurant, called the Crumbs House.
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  (#3) Chocolate Chip Cookies

  Ruth Wakefield, a lodge owner, ran out of baker's chocolate when she was supposed to bake chocolate cookies for her guests. So she went with her instinct and grabbed a bag of Nestle’s chocolate morsels, assuming that they would melt and blend with the cookie dough.

  Well, we can thank fate that she was wrong, and so the first batch of chocolate chip cookies was born. It wasn’t long before people started to come over to her Massachusetts lodge just for the cookies. Nestle embraced its involvement in the happy accident by featuring variations of Ruth’s original cookie recipe on the back of its products' bags for years.
  
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  (#4) Ice cream cone

  Ice cream was already a popular food long before the cone was used as a way to serve it. In fact, ice cream was so popular that one day, at the 1904 St. Louis World’s Fair, a vendor ran out of dishes to serve his ice cream. Hamwri, a Syrian who sold a waffle-like crispy pastry in the next stall, quickly rolled up his product and gave it to the ice cream vendor. The customers preferred the crunchy waffle to bowls, and in 1910, Hamwri founded his own cone company.
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  (#5) Nachos

  While not every experiment in the kitchen ends well, one experiment brought us precious nachos. Ignacio Nacho Araya, a manager at the Victory Club Restaurant in Mexico, was visited by 10 hungry military wives who had crossed the border. When his efforts to find the chef failed, Nacho improvised something on his own. He covered tostadas with grated cheese and broiled it. To his surprise, the women loved his creation, the “Nacho’s Special.” Eventually, after gaining much popularity over the years, Nacho opened his own place, Nacho’s Restaurant.
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  (#6) Cheese puffs

  In the 1930s, the Flakall Company in Wisconsin had a machine that crushed grains to make feed for livestock, and corn kernels were used to reduce clogging. Somehow, the machine’s heat made the corn kernels puffy as they fell from the machine as waste. Edward Wilson literally picked up these ribbons from the ground, added seasoning... and you know what they say, one machine’s trash is another man’s treasure. Now, more than 100 companies produce different variants of cheese puffs.
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  (#7) Slurpee

  Omar Knedlik, owner of a Dairy Queen franchise in Kentucky, never meant for his customers to drink partially-frozen sodas. It’s just, his fountain machine kept breaking down, so he had to store his sodas in the freezer, sometimes for too long. His customers didn’t mind, though. In fact, they kept on ordering “those pops that were in a little bit longer.”

  Realizing that his disaster had turned into an opportunity, Knedlik built a new machine to deliberately produce that strange, frozen drink. The ICEE dispenser was bought by more than 300 companies before 7-Eleven licensed it in 1965 and renamed the drink “Slurpees.”
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  (#8) Coffee

  A popular legend has it that the first to enjoy the magical effects of coffee was a goat. One day, hundreds of years ago, Kaldi, an Ethiopian goatherd, noticed a change in the behavior of his goats. Kaldi observed that the goats were being unusually cheerful and energetic, so he followed them around. Turns out, the goats had been devouring the beans and leaves of a particular tree. Curious, Kaldi consumed some of them, too, and also gave some to a monk that was having trouble staying awake throughout prayers. The monks loved the new drink because of its galvanizing effect and good taste.
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  (#9) Sandwich

  What’s an easier food to eat than a sandwich? You can eat them with one hand while walking, reading, working, gambling …. Oh wait, that’s how our cherished sandwiches came about.

  One day, in 1762, John Montagu, the 4th Earl of Sandwich, was in the middle of an intense gambling session and wouldn't leave the game for meals. He instructed his cook to prepare a food which he could easily eat without leaving the table. So the cook, whom we unfortunately can’t identify, tossed some beef in between two slices of toast, and sandwiches were invented.
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  (#10) Cheese

  Centuries ago, an Arabian merchant made his journey across the desert, taking with him a supply of milk stored in a pouch made from a sheep’s stomach. The heat of the desert sun and enzymes from the pouch curdled the milk, which he ate and loved. From there, cheese has traveled to virtually every part of the globe as demand continues to rise. Currently, more than two billion pounds of cheese are produced every year.
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  (#11) Worcestershire sauce

  Chemists John Wheeley Lea and William Perrins made an Indian sauce recipe ordered by an aristocrat who used to be Governor of Bengal in the colonial era of the 1800s. The pair made an extra jar for themselves, but when they tasted it, the two chemists didn’t like the mixture because it was too strong.

  The extra bottle of sauce was forgotten for about two years, until one day Lea and Perrins decided to re-taste it. To their surprise, the flavor had mellowed and gotten much better. The sauce became Worcester’s most famous product.
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  (#12) Beer

  If it wasn’t for the Mesopotamians’ misfortune more than 3,000 years ago, we wouldn’t be able to enjoy our favorite beers today. At first, the Mesopotamians hated it when their grains, which they had been storing to produce bread, became damp, causing the grains to ferment into a liquid. But hey, why settle for bread when you can have beer? As for now, beer is the world’s most widely consumed alcoholic beverage. 
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  (#13) Corn Flakes Weren't Supposed to Flake - but They Were Supposed to Stop Masturbation

  In 1894, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and his brother Will Keith Kellogg were searching for healthy wholesome foods that fit their strict vegetarian diet as Seventh Day Adventists. The forgotten, musty, boiled wheat left out for too long wasn’t a part of their plan, though. But they went for it anyway, and tried to make sheets of dough out of the old, dry wheat. When the wheat came out as flakes, the brothers toasted them.

  The toasted flakes became popular among Dr. Kellogg’s patients in the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan, so they experimented with other materials, including corn. In 2015, the company saw a revenue of $13.53 billion.

  Even stranger, Dr. Kellogg originally touted the cereal as a way to decrease sexual passion and curb masturbation.
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  (#14) Yogurt

  In Central Asia, more than 8,000 years ago, herdsmen used to carry their milk inside animal stomachs to keep it longer. The natural enzymes from the stomachs had a curdling effect and fermented the milk, giving it a sour taste. The herdsmen continued the practice because they liked the taste, although most people nowadays consume yogurt for its health benefits as much as its flavor.
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  (#15) Pink Lemonade Comes from Dirty Laundry

  Why are some lemonades pink? One day in 1857, legend has it that Pete Conklin, a salesman who had a stall at the circus, ran out of water for his lemonade. Determined to still serve his customers, Pete desperately searched the circus for any water he could use. That’s when he saw the circus' bareback rider, who had just washed her red tights in a tub. Looking at the pinkish liquid, Pete immediately dubbed it "strawberry lemonade" and sold it to customers.

  Don’t worry, though - nowadays pink lemonade is usually colored with berries or food dye.
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  (#16) Tofu

  We owe soft, tasty tofu to a clumsy chef back in ancient China. Legends says that a cook accidentally dropped a natural coagulant called nigari into a pot of soybean milk, solidifying it into the tofu that we enjoy now. Nigari is still used as one of many methods to produce tofu. It was not until the 20th century that the food made its journey to the west, along with many other popular staples of Asian cuisine. 

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