Pears are a member of the rose family.
When barbecuing, wait until the final 5 to 15 minutes of cooking time to put on the BBQ sauce — this helps prevent scorching.
When blind cellarmaster Dom Perignon discovered Champagne in 1668, he said, "Oh, come quickly. I am drinking the stars."
The five favorite U.S. school lunches nationwide, according to the American School Food Service Association, are, in order, pizza, chicken nuggets, tacos, burritos, and hamburgers.
When England was a province of Rome, the city of Cheshire was noted for its fine cheese. The Romans built a wall around the town to protect it. Cheshire cheese was made in a mold shaped like a cat, later made famous as the smiling feline in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.
The flesh of the puffer fish (fugu) is considered a delicacy in Japan. It is prepared by chefs specially trained and certified by the government to prepare the flesh free of the toxic liver, gonads, and skin. Despite these precautions, many cases of tetrodotoxin poisoning are reported each year in patients ingesting fugu. Poisonings usually occur after eating fish caught and prepared by uncertified handlers. The end result, in most cases, is death.
When ordering coffee on U.S. flights, for the East Coast, "regular" is with milk and sugar; on the West Coast, "regular" coffee is black.
The Food and Drug Administration advises pregnant women to avoid soft cheeses, including queso blanco, feta, Brie, Camembert, and blue-veined cheeses, such as Roquefort. Certain soft cheeses can carry the bacterium Listeria, which poses a risk to an unborn child.
When potatoes first appeared in Europe in the 17th century, it was thought that they were disgusting and were blamed for starting outbreaks of leprosy and syphilis. As late as 1720 in America, eating potatoes was believed to shorten a person's life.
The fortune cookie was invented in 1916 by George Jung, a Los Angeles noodlemaker.
When tea was first introduced in the American colonies, many housewives, in their ignorance, served the tea leaves with sugar or syrup after throwing away the water in which they had been boiled.
The French are known connoisseurs of truffles, of which they are very proud. These wild black mushrooms usually grow under oak trees. They are grown in the rural areas of France and are a rare delicacy.
When thinking about food, not necessarily hospitality, New York is America's first choice, chosen in a Gallup Poll by more Americans than any other for having the best food in the nation. New Orleans comes in second, followed by San Francisco, Chicago, and Boston.
The Germans do not typically serve potato salad cold, but warm or at room temperature. This reportedly aids in digestion. According to cooking show TV host Ursula, one way to rid yourself of a houseguest who has overstayed his welcome is to serve him ice-cold potato salad straight from the refrigerator. She claims it will upset his stomach, prompting him to think something is wrong with your food, and he'll leave sooner than intended.
While there are hundreds of species of sharks, only about seven are marketed and eaten with any regularity in the United States. Europe has its own favorite species — most of which never make it to U.S. kitchens.
The government of Finland is in charge of manufacturing all of the nation's vodka, a role the government has performed for centuries, even though Finland is now a democracy.
White mustard seeds are used to make yellow mustard; the color comes from turmeric. Spicy mustards are concocted from brown mustard seeds.
The greater the skin to volume ratio of smaller grapes make for intensely flavorful Cabernets, Merlots, Chambourcins and other red wines.
Whole, unopened coconuts can be stored at room temperature for up to six months, depending on the age of the nut.
The groom's cake dates back to the mid-19th century. At that time, the traditional wedding cake had evolved from a popular single-layer fruitcake into a stacked pound-cake shaped like a church steeple. But guests still wanted fruitcake. To appease the masses, newlyweds would serve two cakes — the wedding cake and the fruitcake. The wedding cake was eaten at the reception; the fruitcake, or the groom's cake (as it soon became known), was sliced and boxed for guests to take home. Legend has it that an unmarried woman who placed her slice under her pillow would dream of her husband-to-be. Two cakes — especially in the southern U.S. — continued to be offered to wedding guests until after World War II.
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