In 1411, Charles VI of France gave sole rights to the aging of Roquefort cheese to the village of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon. To this day, all Roquefort must be aged in the caves there in order to be called Roquefort. Photo courtesy of Bonneterre.

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February 2005

Food Fun / More Food Fun / Food Facts

Important Moments In Food History

For Foodie Trivia Buffs

The Food Reference Website is a resource you should know, painstakingly maintained by food historian James Ehler. There is much to learn there; today, our educational path veers to culinary history. Did the café, that most Parisian of concepts, originate in...Constantinople? Was Nostradamus a better cookbook writer than prognosticator?

Check out Chef Ehler’s fantastic compendium of facts, and prepare to stump your friends at your next café gathering.

You can move to the era of your choice by clicking on the dates below; or by continuing at the bottom of each page.

• 6000 B.C. - 1799 A.D.
• 1800-1899
• 1900-1950
• 1951-2000

The reporting stops three years before the launching of THE NIBBLE™ newsletter and five years before TheNibble.com online magazine...but the next installment from Chef Ehler is due soon.

6000 B.C. - 1799 A.D.

While food trends and new creations happen today with alacrity, in an almost 7000-year span, a lot of feasting and inventing took place: we just don’t have written records. During this period the Chinese invented pasta and sorbet, great wines and cheeses were perfected, and pâté de foie gras was created in Strasbourg!

• 6000 B.C. Lima beans were being cultivated in Peru.
• 776 B.C. The first Olympic champion listed in the records was a cook, Coroebus of Elis, who won the sprint race in 776 BC.
• 372 B.C. Theophrastus was born. He was an important Greek naturalist philosopher who had studied with Aristotle. He wrote many treatises on plants, only two of which survive.
• 350 B.C. Archestratus writes “Hedypatheia” (Pleasant Living). One of the earliest cookbooks, mentioned by Athenaeus.
• 287 B.C. Theophrastus died.
• 255 B.C. The term. “Don’t upset the apple cart” was first used by Roman playwright Plautus in his play, “Epiducus.”
• 2nd Century B.C. Athenaeus, a Greek gourmet, writes “Deipnosophistai” (The Learned Banquet). A dialogue between two banqueters who discuss food and recipes over a period of several days.
• 23 A.D. Pliny The Elder was born, Roman author of the 37 volume “Natural History.” It was a digest and compilation of over 2,000 ancient books from nearly 500 authors. He included material whether it was accurate or not, thus leaving an invaluable record of ancient theories on subjects ranging from astronomy to zoology.

100 A.D. The world's oldest surviving cookbook, De Re Coquinaria (“On Cookery”), is attributed to the 1st century Roman, Apicius. 100. The first mechanical dough mixer was supposedly invented in the 1st century A.D. by Marcus Virgilius Euryasaces, a freed slave. It “consisted of a large stone basin in which wooden paddles, powered by a horse or donkey walking in circles, kneaded the dough mixture of flour, leaven, and water.” (Encyclopedia Britannica) 408. The Visigoths attacked Rome and demanded 3,000 pounds of pepper as part of the city's ransom. 900. Fish are being farm-raised in China. 1135. King Henry I of England (1068-1135) died, supposedly from indigestion caused by eating moray eel.

There were three Roman gastronomes named Apicius—but the famed cookbook was composed by none of them. It was the work of a later writer, one Coelius or Caelius, who linked his own name with that of Apicius in order to promote his work. Photo courtesy of Kansas State University. Click here for more information.

• 1200. Okra is native to tropical areas of Africa, and was being cultivated in Egypt in the 12th century.
• 1272. King Edward I of England (1239-1307, ruled 1272-1307) coronation feast included 278 bacon hogs, 450 pigs, 440 oxen, 430 sheep and 22,600 hens and capons.
• 1300. Huou, chef at the court of Kublai Khan (1215-1294) writes “The Important Things to Know About Eating and Drinking.” This is a collection of recipes (mainly soups) and household advice.
• 1375. “Le Viander” is written by Guillaume Tirel.
• 1390. The oldest surviving cookbook in English is “The Forme of Cury” (circa 1390).
• 1411. Charles VI of France gave sole rights to the aging of Roquefort cheese to the village of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon, and all Roquefort still must be aged in the caves there today.
• 1444. Any merchant caught selling adulterated saffron in Bavaria was burned alive.
• 1498. Hieronymus Bock died. A German botanist who helped the transition from medieval beliefs to modern science.
• 1508. William Turner, English naturalist, botanist, known as the “father of English Botany.” His best known work was “A New Herball.”

• 1516. Duke Wilhelm IV of Bavaria decreed in 1516 that beer could only be brewed from barley malt, hops and water. This Rheinheitsgebot (purity law) was the world’s first consumer protection law.
• 1550. Supposedly, the first café in the world opened in 1550 in Constantinople.
• 1555. Nostradamus (1503-1566) is best known for his book of prophecies, “Centuries Astrologiques,” published in 1555. However, in this same year he also published “Excellent er Moult Utile Opuscule a tous necessaire qui desirent avoir connaissance de plusieurs exquises recettes” (“An excellent and most useful little work essential to all who wish to become acquainted with some exquisite recipes”).
• 1600. The blood orange is believed to have developed by natural mutation in Sicily.
• 1607. The Carthusian monks in the French Alps are supposedly given the secret formula for Chartreuse liqueur by the Marechal d’Estrees.
• 1610. The 1610 Community Regulations of Kracow, Poland stated that bagels were to be given as a gift to women in childbirth.
• 1616. Nicholas Culpeper was born. Herbalist, who wrote the pseudoscientific “A Physicall Directory” in 1649. It listed plants and their supposed healing properties based on the plants resemblance to the human body parts.
• 1627. The ancestor of all modern domestic cattle is the aurochs, the last of which was killed by a poacher in 1627 on a reserve near Warsaw, Poland.
• 1652. “Le Cuisinier François” by La Varenne is published.
• 1654. Nicholas Culpeper died (see 1616).
• 1659 - 1681. The celebration of Christmas was banned in Boston. The pilgrims believed it to be a decadent celebration.

1670. At Cologne Cathedral, the choirmaster makes sugar sticks to give to the young singers in the choir, to keep them occupied during the Living Crèche ceremony: the first candy canes. 1673. The White Horse Tavern in Rhode Island was built. It is the oldest operating tavern in the United States. 1674. Jethro Tull was born. He was an English agriculturalist and inventor whose ideas were instrumental in the development of modern English agriculture. One of his inventions was a horse drawn seed planting drill that sowed 3 even rows of seeds at once (1701). 1676. The Compagnie de Limonadiers was formed in Paris. The vendors sold lemonade from tanks they carried on their backs. The first soft drinks. 1679. Denis Papin, a French physicist invented the pressure cooker, which he called “Papin’s Digester.” 1690. The first shipment of bananas arrived in the colonies at Salem, Massachusetts.

Photo by M. Connors, courtesy of MorgueFile.com.

• 1712. Denis Papin died. (see 1679).
• 1716. James Lind was born. Lind was a Scottish physician who recommended that fresh citrus fruit and lemon juice be included in the seamen’s diet to eliminate scurvy. The Dutch had been doing this for almost two hundred years.
• 1719. The first potato planted in the United States was planted in Londonderry Common Field, New Hampshire.
• 1720. Invention of meringue is attributed to a Swiss pastry chef named Gasparini.
• 1742. “The Compleat Housewife, or Accomplish’d Gentlewoman's Companion” is the first cookbook published in America, in Williamsburg, Virginia.
• 1745. The secret formula for Drambuie liqueur is given to the Mackinnon family by Prince Charles Edward.
• 1747. “Art of Cookery” by Hanna Glasse is published.
• 1747. The oldest cattle ranch in the U.S. was started at Montauk on Long Island, New York.
• 1754. Antoine Beauvilliers was born. He was a French chef who founded the first luxury restaurant, La Grande Taverne de Londres.
• 1755. Josiah Spode was born; the inventor of fine bone China.
• 1765. The very first pâté de foie gras (goose liver paste) is said to have been created in Strasbourg in 1765 by a Norman chef named Jean-Joseph Close (although the technique for producing foie gras goes back as far as the ancient Egyptians).
• 1765. M. Boulanger opens the first restaurant, by that name, in Paris.
• 1766. Louis, Marquis de Cussy was born, a French gastronome and friend of Grimod de la Reyniere, who stated that Cussy had invented 366 different ways to prepare chicken. Cussy wrote “Les Classiques de la Table.”
• 1773. Benjamin Delessert was born, a French industrialist who developed the first successful process to extract sugar from sugar beets.
• 1785. Oliver Evans of Newport, Delaware invented the automatic flour-milling machinery that revolutionized the industry.

1789. Thomas Jefferson brought a pasta making machine back with him when he returned to America after serving as ambassador to France. 1790. Marie, Vicomte de Botherel, born. He installed kitchens on buses in Paris suburbs in 1839, the first restaurant cars. 1790. Marie Harel is said to have developed Camembert cheese in Normandy. 1799. Eliza Acton Born. She wrote the first cookbook for the housewife, rather than for the professional chef. 1799. Joseph-Louis Proust, a French chemist, extracted sugar from grapes, and proved it identical to sugar extracted from honey.

Camembert. Photo courtesy of Old Chatham Sheepherding Company.