X is an oil which is derived from a special variety of rapeseed, modified to have lesser erucic acid, and hence be healthier. The name of the oil is a portmanteau which includes the country of its origin, which is Canada. Can you guess the name of the oil?
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Canola oil - which comes from 'Can' for Canada & 'ola' for oil. Canola was originally a trademark name of the Rapeseed Association of Canada, but has not become a generic name for oils coming from North America. Read More.
"Ghee" and "Christ" have the same linguistic origins.
The word "ghee" is derived from Sanskrit "घृत" (ghrt), meaning "clarified butter", from Sanskrit घृ (ghr-, "to sprinkle"). घृ shares a common Proto-Indo-European origin with Ancient Greek χριστός (khrīstós, "rubbed" or "ceremonially anointed"), which became the English word "Christ".
-a particular cut of meat, usually veal, used in Italian and French cooking, usually cooked in wine or other sauces, or
-a type of bivalve mollusc that is prized both for its meat that is sold as seafood and for its symmetric, fluted, fan-shaped shells?
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Scallop.
The cut of meat is known as scallopine in Italy and escalopes or médaillons in France.
Scallop meat is highly sought after by seafood aficionados, and some are farmed in aquaculture. The shells with their radiating, fluted ornamentation have been used since ancient times as motifs in art, architecture, and design.
The origin of term X dates back to 16th century England, when spirits were taxed at different rates depending on their alcohol content. Spirits were tested by soaking a pellet of gunpowder in them and then setting the pellet on fire. Id X, a term commonly seen on alcohol bottles.
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Proof - as a measurement of alcohol strength. Higher alcoholic beverages would catch fire, which would serve as "proof" & invite higher tax from the authorities. Read More.
In the 1860s, Corsican chemist Angelo Mariani formulated Vin Tonique Mariani, a wine containing a little special ingredient that was said to give it medicinal properties. Mariani claimed it would “restore health, strength, energy and vitality” to those that drank it – and to be fair, it did receive glowing endorsements from many notables of the time, including Thomas Edison, Ulysses Grant, and even Popes Leo XIII and Pius X (Pope Leo actually awarded Mariani a Vatican gold medal for inventing it.)
Naturally, this being the late 19th century, Mariani’s recipe was swiftly duplicated and recreated by others to sell copycat products – including enterprising American pharmacist X, who added yet another special something to the formula. He named the resulting concoction after himself and marketed it as a panacea, accompanied with fantastic claims of it being “a most wonderful invigorator of the sexual organs”, among other things.
Late 19th-century prohibition laws forced X to come up with a non-alcoholic version of the drink, though, and eventually Mariani’s special addition was also removed, resulting in an early version of something that is still popular today.
Who is X, and what did he invent?
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X is John Pemberton, inventor of Coca-Cola, originally known as "Pemberton's French Wine Coca" - which was identical to Vin Mariani (made from Bordeaux wine and coca leaves, and therefore containing cocaine) save for the addition of kola nuts as a source of caffeine.
According to a myth, Bheema (of Pandava fame) was in exile & working in the kitchen of the king Virata. Since he didn’t know how to cook, he simply chopped all the vegetables in the kitchen, boiled them & added grated coconut. The dish turned out to be delicicous & is eaten till date. Name the dish.
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Avial. The dish is comprising of 13 vegetables & grated coconut. Avial is considered an essential part of the main meal in Kerala (Oonu in Malayalam) and is also served as a delicacy in South India. Read About the history of the dish.
In the early to mid 19th century, multiple advances in the field of agricultural machinery were made more or less in parallel by inventors in Scotland, the US, and Australia, all working (mostly) independently of each other. These developments coalesced into a single large, complex, and massively convenient piece of farming equipment that went through several stages of evolution, first horse-drawn, then steam-powered, then tractor-drawn, and eventually fully self-propelled and self-contained, complete with cameras and sophisticated yield monitoring and field mapping systems.
At its core, this machine merges the farming tasks of reaping, threshing, gathering, and winnowing grain into a single activity, and is commonly known by a deceptively simple name.
This biscuit was created by the London bakery Peek Freans in 1874 to commemorate the marriage of the Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia to the Duke of Edinburgh. It is popular today world over as a tea biscuit.
Can you identify it?
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Marie biscuit, named after Duchess Maria herself. Read About all the different ways people use the biscuit world over.
In Hawaiian, the word X means “to bake in the ground” – it can also be used to refer to the Hawaiian food (usually containing pork or turkey) cooked in this manner that is often served at feasts and has since become a major tourist attraction.
X is not to be confused with the very similar-sounding but completely unrelated Y, which is a coffee liqueur made from rum, Arabica coffee, and sugar. Y serves as a key ingredient in several cocktails, some more prominent than others.
What are X and Y?
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X: Kālua, in which the food is cooked in an underground oven called an imu
Y: Kahlúa, which means "House of the Acolhua People" in Nahuatl, spoken in Veracruz, Mexico, where the drink originated
During Marco Polo’s visit to India, he came across a plant that looked like dates, also known as ‘tamar‘ in Arabic. It was also referred to as ‘Tamar-ul-Hind’, or Date from India. What do we call it today?
The restaurant chains Moti Mahal recently filed a lawsuit against Daryaganj for the use of their tagline. What does the tagline say, which has become contentious?
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The inventors of Butter Chicken & Dal Makhani. Both parties claims that it was their predecessor who had invented the dish. Read More.
1879 turned out to be a damn good year for chocolate, when chocolatier Rodolphe Lindt supposedly (possibly accidentally) left a chocolate mixer running over a weekend and came back to realize he’d created a chocolate that tasted far smoother and richer than ever before, owing to the cocoa butter mixing evenly over granules of cocoa.
What is this process called (and why’s it called that)?
As a way to make their product stand out from the competition, one of the founders of this company would sign each finished product package to imply that it had been personally inspected and was the real deal. With increasing demand, they designed a stylized, enhanced version of the signature in bright red, multiple iterations of which have served as the iconic logo for the company — up until very recently, when it was split into two entities, one of which now bears the full name of the founder and an expanded version of the logo. What (former) company?
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Kellogg's, which was rebranded to Kellanova in October 2023 after the North American cereal division was spun off into a separate company called WK Kellogg Co.
X is a fish which is mostly found in Maharashtra but is considered a delicacy in West Bengal. When the railways began their journey in India, this fish was transported from Bombay to Calcutta. The fish got its name due to the fact that it got transported as mail. Identify the fish.
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Bombay duck. The fish gets its name from mail or 'daak' (in Bengali) which was later bastardized to duck. Read More
While the origins of the dish are very hard to pin point, one of them goes as follows: On a typical dark, wet Glasgow night, a bus driver coming off shift came in and ordered _____. He sent it back to the waiter saying it’s dry. At the time, the cook had an ulcer and was enjoying a plate of tomato soup. So he said why not put some tomato soup. They sent it back to the table and the bus driver absolutely loved it. He and his friends came back again and again and the dish was put on the menu. Which dish am I talking about?
The coining of the name of X is credited to an actor, who ordered it at an eatery in Macau during his appearance on a TV show. He remarked that X tasted like a particular candy from his native country, and well the rest is history. What is X?
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Dalgona coffee The coining of the name is credited to the South Korean actor Jung Il-woo, who ordered a whipped coffee at an eatery in Macau during his appearance on a TV show called Stars' Top Recipe at Fun-Staurant (신상출시 편스토랑). He likened the taste to that of dalgona, a type of Korean honeycomb toffee.
This drink was first introduced in 2003 and became an instant hit. In the first 10 years it sold 200 million cups. In 2022, the namesake ingredient was added in Merriam-Webster dictionary. Name the company & the drink they created.
