Episode 252: Five Surprising Food Origins [2]
Indeed, the “tikka” part suggests that its origins are significantly older, and that the
story goes back 5,000 years to a Mughal emperor who was tired of choking on chicken bones.
But while we will never know the true origin of this dish, it is a British favourite and has
this peculiar status of being a supposedly “Indian” dish that you are unlikely to find in any
Indian restaurants in India, and indeed was perhaps created by a Pakistani cook in Scotland.
Now, our final unusual food origin is related to tea.
We aren't talking about tea itself – and again if you are a dedicated listener you
will remember that we covered that in episode 238 – but today we are talking about
the tea bag, the small bag with tea leaves that you dip into hot water to make tea.
Like chicken tikka masala, the tea bag was invented completely by accident.
But even more so, its inventor wasn't even trying to invent it.
Before the invention of the tea bag, tea drinkers had to make a whole
pot of tea, pouring boiling water over the tea leaves in a strainer.
If you make your tea like this, you will know that it can get a bit messy,
and having a tea bag is, well, it's a lot easier and more convenient.
So, it won't surprise you to find out that this was a
problem tea drinkers were thinking about from early on.
In 1903, there was a patent filed by two women from Milwaukee, in the United States,
for something called a “tea leaf holder”, which was a small bag to hold tea leaves.
But it wasn't until four years later that the tea bag as we
know it really started to be used, and it was all by accident.
A New York tea merchant named Thomas Sullivan sent some tea
samples to customers which were packaged in small silk bags.
He thought that the customers would open the silk bags and put the tea leaves into a pot.
But when the customers started complaining about the fine texture of the bags, Sullivan
realised what had happened; the customers had placed the entire bag directly into the hot water.
It was then that Sullivan intentionally made tea bags from
gauze to make it easier for the tea to infuse, for it to brew.
Tea bags allowed customers to brew a single cup of tea without brewing a whole pot.
Because the tea bags were so easy to use, they became a huge hit, and much of the tea-drinking
world, with the exception of much of Asia, switched to using pre-packaged tea in tea bags.
So there you have it, five unusual origin stories of foods.
So next time you munch on a sandwich, reach for the ketchup bottle, make a cup of tea in the
morning, or even visit the UK and have some fish and chips or chicken tikka masala, well,
you'll know a little bit more about the history of where all these wonderful foods came from.
OK then, that's it for today's episode.
I hope it was an interesting one, and that you learned something new.
As always, I'd love to know what you thought of this episode.
We have of course only just scratched the surface of interesting origin
stories about food, and there are so many more we could have talked about.
So, my questions for you are:
What other fun stories are there that you know about?
How do we even think about who “invented” something which
has been enjoyed in different formats all over the world?
And have you ever claimed to have invented your own dish?
I would love to know.
You can head right into our community forum, which is at
community.leonardoenglish.com and get chatting away to other curious minds.
You've been listening to English Learning for Curious Minds, by Leonardo English.
I'm Alastair Budge, you stay safe, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
