What do you think?
Rate this book
What the Great Ate: A Curious History of Food and Fame
What was eating them? And vice versa.
In What the Great Ate , Matthew and Mark Jacob have cooked up a bountiful sampling of the peculiar culinary likes, dislikes, habits, and attitudes of famous—and often notorious—figures throughout history. Here is food
• As Benito Mussolini used the phrase “we’re making spaghetti” to inform his wife if he’d be (illegally) dueling later that day.
• As Baseball star Wade Boggs credited his on-field success to eating chicken before nearly every game.
• In service to President Thomas Jefferson, America’s original foodie, introduced eggplant to the United States and wrote down the nation’s first recipe for ice cream.
From Emperor Nero to Bette Davis, Babe Ruth to Barack Obama, the bite-size tidbits in What the Great Ate will whet your appetite for tantalizing trivia.
In What the Great Ate , Matthew and Mark Jacob have cooked up a bountiful sampling of the peculiar culinary likes, dislikes, habits, and attitudes of famous—and often notorious—figures throughout history. Here is food
• As Benito Mussolini used the phrase “we’re making spaghetti” to inform his wife if he’d be (illegally) dueling later that day.
• As Baseball star Wade Boggs credited his on-field success to eating chicken before nearly every game.
• In service to President Thomas Jefferson, America’s original foodie, introduced eggplant to the United States and wrote down the nation’s first recipe for ice cream.
From Emperor Nero to Bette Davis, Babe Ruth to Barack Obama, the bite-size tidbits in What the Great Ate will whet your appetite for tantalizing trivia.
288 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2010
9 people are currently reading
108 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
July 16, 2022
In the first years after the Cuban revolution of the late 1950s,
the premier Fidel Castro bragged that the fifty-four flavors
served by Havana’s Coppelia ice-cream parlor well
surpassed the choices offered by the capitalist ice-cream
chain of Howard Johnson. Many years later, as Cuba’s
economy struggled, customers of Coppelia were lucky to find
two flavors availabl
June 30, 2022
10
Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin craved bananas but insisted on
quality. According to one biographer, he “got very
cantankerous” when served a substandard banana.
June 30, 2022
10
If Montezuma were alive today, the Aztec emperor would
probably prefer to dine in libraries, not restaurants. No one
was permitted to speak loudly or make any other noise
during his meals. Although the emperor ate in the presence of
many people, a gilt wooden screen was placed in front of
Montezuma to provide privacy. Only a few elderly nobles
who stood near him at attention were allowed to watch the
emperor eat
June 30, 2022
11
During the 1970s, North Korea’s dictatorial heir, Kim Jong-il
, established a health institute named for his ruling father,
Kim Il-sung . Researchers were instructed to find ways to
help the elder Kim live a long and pleasant life. One of the
institute’s major recommendations was particularly bizarre:
North Korea’s aging leader was advised to eat dog penises
that were at least seven centimeters long.
June 30, 2022
12
Adolf Hitler ’s meals generally consisted of side dishes. Meat
was virtually unheard of at the German leader’s dinner table.
But his Austrian cook—an enthusiastic carnivore—tried to
sneak a bit of meat broth or fat into Hitler’s meals. The
Führer discovered the attempted deception and limited his
cook’s fare to only two items: clear soup and mashed potato.
June 30, 2022
12
In 1969, when Benazir Bhutto moved to the United States to
attend college at Harvard-Radcliffe, certain foods emerged
as her favorites. Pakistan’s future prime minister drank
gallons of apple cider during her brief years in New England.
And she recalled devouring “unconscionable numbers” of
peppermint-stick ice-cream cones, sprinkled with
chocolate-flavored jimmies.
June 30, 2022
12
As a young man, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk —Turkey’s future
leader—told a poetry-writing friend that life “is but a dry
chestnut.” He ate a lot of dry chestnuts, sometimes while
drinking an anise-flavored spirit called raki. It was a
13
beverage, he said, that “makes one want to be a poet.” Once
Atatürk became president of Turkey, drinking and dining
were no longer a topic for starry-eyed stanzas. In a 1925
June 30, 2022
speech, he declared that one of the nation’s critical needs was
to train waiters to provide good table service. He also noted
that restaurant menus offered too many dishes, which he
argued was bad for health and bad for the econom
June 30, 2022
13
Khrushchev declared that the Moscow version of Pepsi
obviously tasted better and instructed others around him to
try this version of the cola. It isn’t clear whether Nixon
suggested the soda tasting to
June 30, 2022
15
hrushchev as a favor to a Pepsi executive who, the night
before, had told the vice president he was desperate “to get a
Pepsi in Khrushchev’s ha
June 30, 2022
15
Catherine de Medicis , the Italian-born wife of France’s King
Henri II, had a legendary appetite. At one point, Catherine
nearly died from a gluttonous binge that included a classic
Florentine dish called cibrèo . Think of it as an Italian version
15
of soul food: Cibrèo is made with the gizzard, liver, testicles,
and
June 30, 2022
cockscomb of a young rooster, which is mixed with beans and
egg yolks, and then served on toast
June 30, 2022
15
Many years before he became president of the Czech
Republic, Václav Havel endured the same fate as many other
political dissidents: imprisonment. Writing from his cell in
1980, Havel asked his wife, Olga, to send him personal items,
including a toothbrush, toothpaste, skin lotion, and a razor
for shaving. Because the communist authorities set strict
19
limits on a parcel’s weight, he suspected that Olga might not
be able to fit all of the requested items into the parcel. “But
[send] nothing at the expense of cigarettes, tea and
chocolate,” Havel stressed. Tea and chocolate, he wrote, were
two examples of “the whims that give me inner comfor
June 30, 2022
Her fragile health lends credence to the story that
marmalade originated from the French phrase: Marie est
malade —“Mary is sick.” According to this account, orange
preserves were the only thing Mary could eat when she was
ailing. Yet the credibility of this charming tale is shattered by
the fact that the word marmalade appeared in the English
language eighteen years before Mary’s birth.
June 30, 2022
20
host of slaves and domestic staff labored hard to ensure that
Egyptian kings ate well—even after these rulers died. Within
the ornate tomb that was built for King Den , who died
around 3000 BCE, attendants placed several amphorae filled
with foods. After all, the king would need nourishment in the
next world. Each amphora was sealed with fat, a method of
preserving food that survives today in the French bistro dish
called duck confit
June 30, 2022
22
June 30, 2022
23
Chapter 4 - What Edvard Munched: Visual Artists Mixed Palettes
and Palates
July 5, 2022
82
Chapter 5 - Hail to the Beef: Dining was Drama from
Washington to Obama
July 5, 2022
90
homas Jefferson may have been America’s original foodie.
Here’s why: He introduced eggplant to the United States. The
first American recipe for ice cream was written by Jefferson
and is housed in a collection at the Library of Congress. He
was planting and eating tomatoes at a time when many
Americans feared they were poisonous. Jefferson’s
presidential dinners set new standards for culinary
excellence. More than 180 years after his death, Gourmet
magazine named him one of the twenty-five people “who
changed food in America.”
July 6, 2022
90
If the creators of the “Got Milk?” advertising campaign had
been recruiting spokespersons in the 1830s, Andrew Jackson
would have been perfect. He was a war hero who loved fresh
milk, so much so that he kept a cow on the White House
grounds.
July 6, 2022
98
Abraham Lincoln ’s eating habits were as unpretentious as
his public image. A woman who knew the Lincolns in Illinois
called Abe “a hearty eater” who told her he “could eat corn
cakes as
July 6, 2022
101
fast as two women could make them.” He enjoyed vegetables,
and he appreciated a cup of coffee first thing in the morning.
July 6, 2022
102
fond of bacon. Yet his favorite food was probably the apple,
and lunch was often just an apple with a glass of milk. His
law partner, William Herndon, found it strange that Lincoln
would “begin eating [an apple] at the blossom end. When he
was done he had eaten his way over and through rather than
around and into it.... I never saw an apple thus disposed of
by any one else.” The s
July 6, 2022
102
food. John Hay, one of Lincoln’s secretaries, said, “He ate less
than anyone I know.”
July 6, 2022
102
Thomas Jefferson ’s day, the American diet was less
meat-heavy than it is today. Yet even for his era, Jefferson
ate a small amount of meat, which he called “a condiment to
the vegetables which constitute my principal diet.” Of all of
the vegetables grown in Jefferson’s garden, English peas
were among his favorites—he grew thirty-nine varieties of
peas.
105
Ronald Reagan ’s best-known indulgence was jelly beans. He
started eating them soon after he became the governor of
California in 1967, supposedly to help him break a
pipe-smoking habit. His favorite jelly bean flavor was licori
July 6, 2022
106
Abraham Lincoln once tasted a hot beverage that a waiter
had brought to his table and then told the waiter, “If this is
coffee, then please bring me some tea. But if this is tea, please
110
bring me some coffee.”
July 6, 2022
Chapter 6 - Dinner Theater: Stage and Screen Stars were Showy
Eaters
July 6, 2022
111
Chapter 7 - General Foods: For History’s Warriors, Rations were
Sometimes Irrational
Alexander the Great banned his soldiers from chewing on
mint leaves, fearing that they would become sexually excited
and unable to fight effectively.
July 6, 2022
131
July 6, 2022
131
In the warrior state of Sparta, bad food was a point of pride.
A Spartan king named Agesilaus II boasted of the “contempt
132
for luxury.” Whether a Spartan was a king or a follower, the
meal was the same: black porridge and barley bread. A guest
who sampled the grim fare remarked, “Now I understand
why the Spartans do not fear death.”
July 7, 2022
Frederick the Great , the Prussian king and military leader,
thought coffee made women barren and men effeminate.
Beer, on the other hand, was the beverage of victory.
July 7, 2022
132
Many battles have been fought and won by soldiers
nourished on beer,” the proclamation read, “and the king
does not believe that coffee-drinking soldiers can be
depended upon to endure hardship or beat his enemies in the
case of the occurrence of another war.”
July 7, 2022
133
But even the king’s decree could not curb the growing evil.
Four years later, Frederick imposed a royal monopoly on
coffee beans. If he couldn’t stop his subjects from drinking the
stuff, at least he could make a fortune from it
July 7, 2022
133
callousness
138
July 7, 2022
If not for the Turkish leader Suleiman II , would we have the
croissant? Suleiman and his Ottoman army marched on the
Austrian capital of Vienna in 1529, laying siege to the city.
Austrian bakers, working in the wee hours, detected the
army tunneling under the city walls and raised the alarm,
thwarting the attack. When Suleiman’s army was forced to
retreat, Vienna’s
July 7, 2022
142
celebrated by creating a pastry in the shape of a
crescent—the symbol on the Ottomans’ flag.
July 7, 2022
142
A few years earlier, after Middle Eastern suicide hijackers
killed nearly three thousand Americans in the September 11,
2001, attacks, one of the terrorists’ Florida neighbors
recalled, “From their trash, you could see that they shopped
at Wal-Mart and ate a lot of pizza.”
July 9, 2022
147
of sixty Domino’s pizza franchises in the Washington area.
Meeks told the news media that key government offices were
placing large orders at odd hours, including more than fifty
to the White House between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. as the U.S.
prepared its atta
148
July 9, 2022
Chapter 8 - Experiments in Dining: Food was a Stimulus to the
Scientific Method
July 9, 2022
149
P YTHAGORAS, THE FAMED Greek mathematician, limited
his diet to bread, honey, greens, and occasionally fish. Wine
was permitted, but only after dark. Pythagoras and his
followers looked down upon meat eating, and they also had
an aversion to fava beans.
July 9, 2022
149
Still others think Pythagoras’s opposition was more
practical—that he believed the beans increased male
sexuality, inspired bad dreams, or simply led to flatulence.
July 9, 2022
149
Orville’s main desire was milk, and plenty of it. He drank so
much of it that a housekeeper began watering it down,
thinking he wouldn’t notice. He did, accusing her of “dairying
the milk
151
July 9, 2022
Physicist Richard Feynman found inspiration in a Cornell
University cafeteria when a fellow diner tossed a plate. “As
the plate went up in the air I saw it wobble, and I noticed the
red medallion of Cornell on the plate going around,” he later
wrote. “It was pretty obvious to me that the medallion went
around faster than the wobbling.” Feynman set out to explain
why, and his observations led to new theories in quantum
electrodynamics—and ultimately a Nobel Prize.
July 9, 2022
157
he often dined alone at one of New York’s finest
restaurants—either Delmonico’s or the Waldorf-Astoria. He
ordered thick steaks, and sometimes more than one per meal,
though he migrated toward vegetarianism as the years
passed. He welcomed whiskey and wine in moderate
amounts, but banished coffee and tea.
July 9, 2022
159
don’t see why we may not eat you.’ So I dined upon cod very
heartily and have since continued to eat as other people,
returning only now and then occasionally to a vegetable
diet.”
July 9, 2022
160
Maria Goeppert-Mayer , a 1963 winner in physics,
celebrated her good news with champagne, bacon, and eg
July 9, 2022
163
In his later days, the cash-strapped and eccentric Nikola
Tesla
July 9, 2022
164
survived on warm milk and Nabisco crackers. He would
meticulously number the empty cracker tins and stack them
on his shelves to store various objects.
July 9, 2022
164
Constantin Fahlberg , a chemist at a Johns Hopkins
University lab working on derivatives of coal tar, was eating
dinner after work one evening in the late 1870s and noticed
that his bread tasted sweet. Not only that, but his hands and
arms had a sweet taste as well. He went back to his lab and
tested everything he had worked on that day. His accidental
discovery: an artificial sweetener that he later called
saccharine.
July 9, 2022
165
Chapter 9 - Singing for Their Supper: Musicians Kept their
Cooking in Concert
July 9, 2022
166
being just one prominent example. And here’s a news flash:
Little Richard ’s “Tutti Frutti” is not a tribute to a flavor of ice
cream. In fact, the original lyrics—changed before the song
hit the charts—include raunchy sexual references and use the
phrase “Tutti Frutti, good booty” instead of the more familiar
“Tutti Fruity, all rooty
July 11, 2022
178
Lee’s “I Didn’t Like It the First Time,” subtitled “The Spinach
Song,” which may have referred to sex or marijuana. The
double-ente
July 11, 2022
178
Chapter 10 - Business Lunch: Entrepreneurs were Eccentric
Eaters
Ford soon decided that soybeans were it—the common
196
ingredient for a practical, wholesome human diet. At Ford’s
direction, a team of cooks prepared an all-soybean dinner
and served it at the 1933–34 Chicago Century of Progress
exposition. The menu included celery stuffed with soybean
“cheese,” soybean croquettes, and apple pie with a soybean
crust. Ford hoped to make these soybean-based foods the
staple of executive lunches at his company. But the reception
was less than enthusiastic, which infuriated Ford. One day,
he picked up a piece of white bread from a table in the
executive lunchroom, rolled it into a ball, and then threw it at
a window, which broke from the impact. “That’s what you’re
putting into y
July 12, 2022
Chapter 11 - Playing with Their Food: Sports Stars Feasted on
More than Peanuts and Cracker Jacks
After Phelps made history at the 2008 Olympics, a British
newspaper reported that the “secret” to the swimmer’s
success
July 12, 2022
204
was his twelve-thousand-calorie-a-day diet. But Phelps
called that calorie count an exaggeration, saying that he
consumed between eight thousand and ten thousand calories
each day—a range that’s still about four times the caloric
intake recommended for a typical adult male
July 12, 2022
204
July 12, 2022
210
Chapter 12 - Delicious Discoveries: Explorers Plunged into
Uncharted Meals
July 14, 2022
223
the premier Fidel Castro bragged that the fifty-four flavors
served by Havana’s Coppelia ice-cream parlor well
surpassed the choices offered by the capitalist ice-cream
chain of Howard Johnson. Many years later, as Cuba’s
economy struggled, customers of Coppelia were lucky to find
two flavors availabl
June 30, 2022
10
Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin craved bananas but insisted on
quality. According to one biographer, he “got very
cantankerous” when served a substandard banana.
June 30, 2022
10
If Montezuma were alive today, the Aztec emperor would
probably prefer to dine in libraries, not restaurants. No one
was permitted to speak loudly or make any other noise
during his meals. Although the emperor ate in the presence of
many people, a gilt wooden screen was placed in front of
Montezuma to provide privacy. Only a few elderly nobles
who stood near him at attention were allowed to watch the
emperor eat
June 30, 2022
11
During the 1970s, North Korea’s dictatorial heir, Kim Jong-il
, established a health institute named for his ruling father,
Kim Il-sung . Researchers were instructed to find ways to
help the elder Kim live a long and pleasant life. One of the
institute’s major recommendations was particularly bizarre:
North Korea’s aging leader was advised to eat dog penises
that were at least seven centimeters long.
June 30, 2022
12
Adolf Hitler ’s meals generally consisted of side dishes. Meat
was virtually unheard of at the German leader’s dinner table.
But his Austrian cook—an enthusiastic carnivore—tried to
sneak a bit of meat broth or fat into Hitler’s meals. The
Führer discovered the attempted deception and limited his
cook’s fare to only two items: clear soup and mashed potato.
June 30, 2022
12
In 1969, when Benazir Bhutto moved to the United States to
attend college at Harvard-Radcliffe, certain foods emerged
as her favorites. Pakistan’s future prime minister drank
gallons of apple cider during her brief years in New England.
And she recalled devouring “unconscionable numbers” of
peppermint-stick ice-cream cones, sprinkled with
chocolate-flavored jimmies.
June 30, 2022
12
As a young man, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk —Turkey’s future
leader—told a poetry-writing friend that life “is but a dry
chestnut.” He ate a lot of dry chestnuts, sometimes while
drinking an anise-flavored spirit called raki. It was a
13
beverage, he said, that “makes one want to be a poet.” Once
Atatürk became president of Turkey, drinking and dining
were no longer a topic for starry-eyed stanzas. In a 1925
June 30, 2022
speech, he declared that one of the nation’s critical needs was
to train waiters to provide good table service. He also noted
that restaurant menus offered too many dishes, which he
argued was bad for health and bad for the econom
June 30, 2022
13
Khrushchev declared that the Moscow version of Pepsi
obviously tasted better and instructed others around him to
try this version of the cola. It isn’t clear whether Nixon
suggested the soda tasting to
June 30, 2022
15
hrushchev as a favor to a Pepsi executive who, the night
before, had told the vice president he was desperate “to get a
Pepsi in Khrushchev’s ha
June 30, 2022
15
Catherine de Medicis , the Italian-born wife of France’s King
Henri II, had a legendary appetite. At one point, Catherine
nearly died from a gluttonous binge that included a classic
Florentine dish called cibrèo . Think of it as an Italian version
15
of soul food: Cibrèo is made with the gizzard, liver, testicles,
and
June 30, 2022
cockscomb of a young rooster, which is mixed with beans and
egg yolks, and then served on toast
June 30, 2022
15
Many years before he became president of the Czech
Republic, Václav Havel endured the same fate as many other
political dissidents: imprisonment. Writing from his cell in
1980, Havel asked his wife, Olga, to send him personal items,
including a toothbrush, toothpaste, skin lotion, and a razor
for shaving. Because the communist authorities set strict
19
limits on a parcel’s weight, he suspected that Olga might not
be able to fit all of the requested items into the parcel. “But
[send] nothing at the expense of cigarettes, tea and
chocolate,” Havel stressed. Tea and chocolate, he wrote, were
two examples of “the whims that give me inner comfor
June 30, 2022
Her fragile health lends credence to the story that
marmalade originated from the French phrase: Marie est
malade —“Mary is sick.” According to this account, orange
preserves were the only thing Mary could eat when she was
ailing. Yet the credibility of this charming tale is shattered by
the fact that the word marmalade appeared in the English
language eighteen years before Mary’s birth.
June 30, 2022
20
host of slaves and domestic staff labored hard to ensure that
Egyptian kings ate well—even after these rulers died. Within
the ornate tomb that was built for King Den , who died
around 3000 BCE, attendants placed several amphorae filled
with foods. After all, the king would need nourishment in the
next world. Each amphora was sealed with fat, a method of
preserving food that survives today in the French bistro dish
called duck confit
June 30, 2022
22
June 30, 2022
23
Chapter 4 - What Edvard Munched: Visual Artists Mixed Palettes
and Palates
July 5, 2022
82
Chapter 5 - Hail to the Beef: Dining was Drama from
Washington to Obama
July 5, 2022
90
homas Jefferson may have been America’s original foodie.
Here’s why: He introduced eggplant to the United States. The
first American recipe for ice cream was written by Jefferson
and is housed in a collection at the Library of Congress. He
was planting and eating tomatoes at a time when many
Americans feared they were poisonous. Jefferson’s
presidential dinners set new standards for culinary
excellence. More than 180 years after his death, Gourmet
magazine named him one of the twenty-five people “who
changed food in America.”
July 6, 2022
90
If the creators of the “Got Milk?” advertising campaign had
been recruiting spokespersons in the 1830s, Andrew Jackson
would have been perfect. He was a war hero who loved fresh
milk, so much so that he kept a cow on the White House
grounds.
July 6, 2022
98
Abraham Lincoln ’s eating habits were as unpretentious as
his public image. A woman who knew the Lincolns in Illinois
called Abe “a hearty eater” who told her he “could eat corn
cakes as
July 6, 2022
101
fast as two women could make them.” He enjoyed vegetables,
and he appreciated a cup of coffee first thing in the morning.
July 6, 2022
102
fond of bacon. Yet his favorite food was probably the apple,
and lunch was often just an apple with a glass of milk. His
law partner, William Herndon, found it strange that Lincoln
would “begin eating [an apple] at the blossom end. When he
was done he had eaten his way over and through rather than
around and into it.... I never saw an apple thus disposed of
by any one else.” The s
July 6, 2022
102
food. John Hay, one of Lincoln’s secretaries, said, “He ate less
than anyone I know.”
July 6, 2022
102
Thomas Jefferson ’s day, the American diet was less
meat-heavy than it is today. Yet even for his era, Jefferson
ate a small amount of meat, which he called “a condiment to
the vegetables which constitute my principal diet.” Of all of
the vegetables grown in Jefferson’s garden, English peas
were among his favorites—he grew thirty-nine varieties of
peas.
105
Ronald Reagan ’s best-known indulgence was jelly beans. He
started eating them soon after he became the governor of
California in 1967, supposedly to help him break a
pipe-smoking habit. His favorite jelly bean flavor was licori
July 6, 2022
106
Abraham Lincoln once tasted a hot beverage that a waiter
had brought to his table and then told the waiter, “If this is
coffee, then please bring me some tea. But if this is tea, please
110
bring me some coffee.”
July 6, 2022
Chapter 6 - Dinner Theater: Stage and Screen Stars were Showy
Eaters
July 6, 2022
111
Chapter 7 - General Foods: For History’s Warriors, Rations were
Sometimes Irrational
Alexander the Great banned his soldiers from chewing on
mint leaves, fearing that they would become sexually excited
and unable to fight effectively.
July 6, 2022
131
July 6, 2022
131
In the warrior state of Sparta, bad food was a point of pride.
A Spartan king named Agesilaus II boasted of the “contempt
132
for luxury.” Whether a Spartan was a king or a follower, the
meal was the same: black porridge and barley bread. A guest
who sampled the grim fare remarked, “Now I understand
why the Spartans do not fear death.”
July 7, 2022
Frederick the Great , the Prussian king and military leader,
thought coffee made women barren and men effeminate.
Beer, on the other hand, was the beverage of victory.
July 7, 2022
132
Many battles have been fought and won by soldiers
nourished on beer,” the proclamation read, “and the king
does not believe that coffee-drinking soldiers can be
depended upon to endure hardship or beat his enemies in the
case of the occurrence of another war.”
July 7, 2022
133
But even the king’s decree could not curb the growing evil.
Four years later, Frederick imposed a royal monopoly on
coffee beans. If he couldn’t stop his subjects from drinking the
stuff, at least he could make a fortune from it
July 7, 2022
133
callousness
138
July 7, 2022
If not for the Turkish leader Suleiman II , would we have the
croissant? Suleiman and his Ottoman army marched on the
Austrian capital of Vienna in 1529, laying siege to the city.
Austrian bakers, working in the wee hours, detected the
army tunneling under the city walls and raised the alarm,
thwarting the attack. When Suleiman’s army was forced to
retreat, Vienna’s
July 7, 2022
142
celebrated by creating a pastry in the shape of a
crescent—the symbol on the Ottomans’ flag.
July 7, 2022
142
A few years earlier, after Middle Eastern suicide hijackers
killed nearly three thousand Americans in the September 11,
2001, attacks, one of the terrorists’ Florida neighbors
recalled, “From their trash, you could see that they shopped
at Wal-Mart and ate a lot of pizza.”
July 9, 2022
147
of sixty Domino’s pizza franchises in the Washington area.
Meeks told the news media that key government offices were
placing large orders at odd hours, including more than fifty
to the White House between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. as the U.S.
prepared its atta
148
July 9, 2022
Chapter 8 - Experiments in Dining: Food was a Stimulus to the
Scientific Method
July 9, 2022
149
P YTHAGORAS, THE FAMED Greek mathematician, limited
his diet to bread, honey, greens, and occasionally fish. Wine
was permitted, but only after dark. Pythagoras and his
followers looked down upon meat eating, and they also had
an aversion to fava beans.
July 9, 2022
149
Still others think Pythagoras’s opposition was more
practical—that he believed the beans increased male
sexuality, inspired bad dreams, or simply led to flatulence.
July 9, 2022
149
Orville’s main desire was milk, and plenty of it. He drank so
much of it that a housekeeper began watering it down,
thinking he wouldn’t notice. He did, accusing her of “dairying
the milk
151
July 9, 2022
Physicist Richard Feynman found inspiration in a Cornell
University cafeteria when a fellow diner tossed a plate. “As
the plate went up in the air I saw it wobble, and I noticed the
red medallion of Cornell on the plate going around,” he later
wrote. “It was pretty obvious to me that the medallion went
around faster than the wobbling.” Feynman set out to explain
why, and his observations led to new theories in quantum
electrodynamics—and ultimately a Nobel Prize.
July 9, 2022
157
he often dined alone at one of New York’s finest
restaurants—either Delmonico’s or the Waldorf-Astoria. He
ordered thick steaks, and sometimes more than one per meal,
though he migrated toward vegetarianism as the years
passed. He welcomed whiskey and wine in moderate
amounts, but banished coffee and tea.
July 9, 2022
159
don’t see why we may not eat you.’ So I dined upon cod very
heartily and have since continued to eat as other people,
returning only now and then occasionally to a vegetable
diet.”
July 9, 2022
160
Maria Goeppert-Mayer , a 1963 winner in physics,
celebrated her good news with champagne, bacon, and eg
July 9, 2022
163
In his later days, the cash-strapped and eccentric Nikola
Tesla
July 9, 2022
164
survived on warm milk and Nabisco crackers. He would
meticulously number the empty cracker tins and stack them
on his shelves to store various objects.
July 9, 2022
164
Constantin Fahlberg , a chemist at a Johns Hopkins
University lab working on derivatives of coal tar, was eating
dinner after work one evening in the late 1870s and noticed
that his bread tasted sweet. Not only that, but his hands and
arms had a sweet taste as well. He went back to his lab and
tested everything he had worked on that day. His accidental
discovery: an artificial sweetener that he later called
saccharine.
July 9, 2022
165
Chapter 9 - Singing for Their Supper: Musicians Kept their
Cooking in Concert
July 9, 2022
166
being just one prominent example. And here’s a news flash:
Little Richard ’s “Tutti Frutti” is not a tribute to a flavor of ice
cream. In fact, the original lyrics—changed before the song
hit the charts—include raunchy sexual references and use the
phrase “Tutti Frutti, good booty” instead of the more familiar
“Tutti Fruity, all rooty
July 11, 2022
178
Lee’s “I Didn’t Like It the First Time,” subtitled “The Spinach
Song,” which may have referred to sex or marijuana. The
double-ente
July 11, 2022
178
Chapter 10 - Business Lunch: Entrepreneurs were Eccentric
Eaters
Ford soon decided that soybeans were it—the common
196
ingredient for a practical, wholesome human diet. At Ford’s
direction, a team of cooks prepared an all-soybean dinner
and served it at the 1933–34 Chicago Century of Progress
exposition. The menu included celery stuffed with soybean
“cheese,” soybean croquettes, and apple pie with a soybean
crust. Ford hoped to make these soybean-based foods the
staple of executive lunches at his company. But the reception
was less than enthusiastic, which infuriated Ford. One day,
he picked up a piece of white bread from a table in the
executive lunchroom, rolled it into a ball, and then threw it at
a window, which broke from the impact. “That’s what you’re
putting into y
July 12, 2022
Chapter 11 - Playing with Their Food: Sports Stars Feasted on
More than Peanuts and Cracker Jacks
After Phelps made history at the 2008 Olympics, a British
newspaper reported that the “secret” to the swimmer’s
success
July 12, 2022
204
was his twelve-thousand-calorie-a-day diet. But Phelps
called that calorie count an exaggeration, saying that he
consumed between eight thousand and ten thousand calories
each day—a range that’s still about four times the caloric
intake recommended for a typical adult male
July 12, 2022
204
July 12, 2022
210
Chapter 12 - Delicious Discoveries: Explorers Plunged into
Uncharted Meals
July 14, 2022
223
August 5, 2011
This isn't a book to just sit down and read - it's the type of book you read when you only have 5 - 15 minutes of reading time. It's a trivia book of answers of what famous people ate and how.
October 26, 2018
A fun and lighthearted read
May 24, 2020
The "Great" are the usual mostly White, Western people. The Food tidbits are food related but not actually about what they actually ate. Disappointing.
April 28, 2016
http://www.bookcrossing.com/journal/1...
This is an interesting book. Here are a few things I learned:
*Hitler was a vegetarian.
*Salvador Dali painted a picture of his wife Gala with a lamb chop on each shoulder. Reporters asked him why, Dali answered: "I liked my wife and I liked chops, and I saw no reason why I should not paint them together."
*Einstein was a late talker. One night at supper he said his first words: "The soup is too hot." His parents were relieved but curious. They asked him why he hadn't talked before. His answer: "Because up to now everything was in order."
*Elvis Presley's died at 42 years old and his last meal was 6 chocolate chip cookies and 4 scoops of ice cream (2 scoops of peach and the other 2 scoops an unknown flavor)
This is an interesting book. Here are a few things I learned:
*Hitler was a vegetarian.
*Salvador Dali painted a picture of his wife Gala with a lamb chop on each shoulder. Reporters asked him why, Dali answered: "I liked my wife and I liked chops, and I saw no reason why I should not paint them together."
*Einstein was a late talker. One night at supper he said his first words: "The soup is too hot." His parents were relieved but curious. They asked him why he hadn't talked before. His answer: "Because up to now everything was in order."
*Elvis Presley's died at 42 years old and his last meal was 6 chocolate chip cookies and 4 scoops of ice cream (2 scoops of peach and the other 2 scoops an unknown flavor)
September 18, 2010
A collection of vignettes and anecdotes about celebrities, historical figures and others and their relationship to food.
I found this a fun book to read in short doses, but I really couldn't commit to reading more than one chapter at a time. The chapters consist of short little anecdotes and facts that bounce around in time period and theme randomly. It felt a little ADD, especially when one person would be mentioned multiple times at multiple points in one chapter. Overall though, there were some very interesting facts.
I found this a fun book to read in short doses, but I really couldn't commit to reading more than one chapter at a time. The chapters consist of short little anecdotes and facts that bounce around in time period and theme randomly. It felt a little ADD, especially when one person would be mentioned multiple times at multiple points in one chapter. Overall though, there were some very interesting facts.
May 31, 2011
Written sloppily. It read like Readers Digest excerpts
April 17, 2011
Some interesting and amusing anecdotes about food.
July 1, 2013
If you have to take a dump or you really really need to keep yourself occupied for about 10-15 minutes, by all means, be my guest. Otherwise, skip it.
November 14, 2016
Slightly schizophrenic-feeling to read, because the same people are mentioned various times per "chapter". Plenty of interesting tidbits and gossipy stories.
Read
June 25, 2018I'm sure this book is fun and full of facts, but the short anecdote structure does not make for enjoyable reading.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews