Whaddya Think, Doctor Fink?

Courtesy of Spiga Bakery My husband surprised me with a Lemon Meringue Pie from Spiga – one of the best bakeries in Long Island, New York. What’s lemon meringue pie? It’s the marriage of golden crust, tangy lemon filling, and a generous topping of sweet meringue. When was this sweet-and-tart classic invented? There are three parts to lemon meringue pie along with stories that span centuries, continents, and cultures. Let’s start bottoms up. The Crust Crusts have a long and

  Courtesy of RAF Everyone loves fajitas. They’re yummy, fun-to-eat, and come with sizzling stories. Most people know that fajitas are an authentic Mexican dish. Wrong. Step back to the 1930s and Texas ranchlands. During cattle roundups, wrote Virginia Wood in the Austin Chronicle, “beef was butchered regularly to feed the hands.” Vaqueros – Mexican cowboys – were often partially paid with “throwaway” parts that didn’t sell, like meat trimmings, entrails, and skirt steak. Skirt steak? Yes – in those

  Bake or no-bake. Vanilla, cherry, or chocolate. Classic, modern, or DIY (Do It Yourself). Cheesecake has so many versions that it’s impossible to keep track. Maybe it’s called cheesecake, torte, tart, or pie? How about New York-Style, Japanese Ube, French Tarte au Fromage, or Israeli (made with gevina levana cheese)? Try vegan, savory, or air-fryer. Top with whipped cream, syrup, fruit . . . just about anything that sounds good. Cheesecake is iconic, complete with countless stories, versions, and

Stuart Spivak, Wikimedia Commons I can’t fight it. Whenever there’s a family holiday dinner I head straight for the kugel. Thank Stacey for my obsession. Although a Gen Xer, she makes sweet buttery kugel with a crunchy top – like they did hundreds of years ago. What’s kugel? Joel Haber in The Taste of Jewish Culture describes it as a “simple food that’s not so simple.” There are four basic ingredients: starch (like noodles or potatoes), eggs, fat, and seasonings.

  The goal is the Tootsie Roll center buried in a hard-shell lollipop. There’s one rule – only licks, not bites. Tootsie Roll Pops were introduced in 1931. During the Great Depression the popular candy was cheap, colorful, and delicious. It all began when employees at the Sweets Company of America (later known as Tootsie Roll Industries) were asked to pitch ideas for a new candy. Luke Weisgram had a habit of chewing on a Tootsie Roll while licking his

  Call it what you want. Cottage or Shepherd’s Pie, Páté Chinois or Pub-style Irish. It’s all basically the same. “The key element of the dish [is] consistent: a meat and vegetable filling topped with mashed potatoes and baked until golden and delicious,” Morris H. Lary wrote in Food/World History. Who could argue with that? Why and when was this humble dish created? The “why” is clear – there’s always a need to use leftovers. Think of the endless post-thanksgiving

  How does a humble penny candy end up in The White House, The Space Shuttle, and eaten enough each year to circle Earth six times? Meet the Jelly Bean. No one knows where it began. Food experts believe it was the love child of Turkish Delight – a jelly candy covered with powdered sugar that’s been around for thousands of years – and seventeenth century hard-shelled Jordan Almonds served to French Royalty.   The “parents” came to America. One

  It doesn’t have anything to do with weed (pot) and everything to do with what’s inside. Basically, a pot pie is meat and vegetables baked inside crusts. It’s been around for thousands of years. How about singing a song of sixpence with a bit of truth? Four and twenty blackbirds Baked in a pie. When the pie was opened The birds began to sing – Wasn’t that a dainty dish To set before the king? According to Wikipedia, “a

  An Amazon tee shirt proclaims, “I’d go through hella for some Nutella.” Would you? Nutella’s founding company, Ferrero, is the third largest chocolate confectionary on Earth, selling in 170 countries, with 37 production plants on 5 continents, and 7 specialized hazelnut processing locations. Ferrero earns over $17 billion a year. According to Facts.net, a jar of Nutella is sold every 2.5 seconds. If you line them up they would circle the planet twice. Head back to the 1800s when

Omelets are awesome. They’re ancient. No one is sure who invented them – maybe a French chef, a Roman, or a Persian? Most will guess it was the French chef. That makes sense – after all the word comes from the French. The recipe appeared in a 1769 cookbook by Edward James Rimmel, who, according to Michelle Stanley in Food, described it as “a pancake made of three or four eggs well beat and put into a frying pan with