10 Unbelievable Facts About Food

By siliconindia   |   Saturday, 10 December 2011, 01:40 IST
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3) Soup: FACT: Hippopotamus was the Ingredient of the first soup ever made.

The earliest evidence of our ancestors having soup dated back to about 6000 BC and evidence suggests that it was made from Hippopotamus. Another noted incident involving a hippo soup is as follows - Sir Samuel Baker and his wife, Lady Florence, were making their way through the Sudd, the papyrus swamps of what is Southern Sudan today, to discover the Albert N’yanza.  Along the way, they heard many stories involving an animal favoured by the locals, both for its meat and fat, which happened to be a hippopotamus. The enthusiastic cook that he was, Sir Baker made a soup of hippo head and spices, which he and his crew found to be quite tasty. As an old Spanish proverb goes, “Of soup and love, the first is the best.”

 

4) Refried Beans: FACT: Refried beans are only fried once.

Refried beans is a dish of cooked and mashed beans and is a traditional staple of Mexican and Tex-Mex cuisine. The name is based on a mistranslation. In Mexican Spanish, the prefix ‘re’ is an informal form of emphasis, meaning "very" or "well" and should not be confused with the English ‘re.’ The most common use of the Spanish prefix ‘re’ outside Mexico indicates repetition. Thus, frijoles refritos, the Mexican name of this dish, when translated to English should be "well-fried beans" and not "refried beans." Also, in this dish, the beans are often fried but may also be baked, thus, making the term "refried" a misnomer on two counts.