Curio Cabinet / Daily Curio

What’s all this then? The official national dish of Great Britain may be chicken tikka masala, but fish and chips is certainly a close second. Brits love this hearty, battered meal, and they’ve been enjoying it since at least the mid-1800s, though two different cities claim to have invented it.
 
Fish and chips is a dish of battered fish and french fries (called “chips” in the UK). The fish is usually cod or haddock, coated in a batter made of flour, baking powder, milk, eggs, and seasonings. Sometimes, beer is added to the batter for extra flavor. The chips are usually cut thick, so some Americans might consider them “steak fries.” While both cod and haddock have been eaten in England since before the country’s founding, the practice of battering fish didn’t become popular until around the 16th century. That’s when Jewish immigrants from Spain and Portugal first brought the practice to England. It quickly caught on with the Brits, who served it alongside bread or mashed potatoes. As for chips, they were likely invented in the 1680s by Belgian housewives who fried potatoes in place of more-expensive fish. By 1830, chips had made their way to England, where they were popular with working people.
 
Some claim that the first recorded instance of a restaurant selling fish and chips side by side comes from London, in the 1860s. Joseph Malin, a Jewish immigrant who had fled persecution in Eastern Europe to work as a rug weaver in England, opened a small fish and chips shop, also known as a “chippy”, to supplement his income. The shop exploded in popularity…so it seems that London can claim fish and chips as their own, right? Not quite. Some people claim that the first fish and chips shop was actually a wooden hut opened in 1863 at the Mossley market, an outdoor market in Lancashire that still exists today. The hut’s owner was John Lees, a local businessman.
 
Though we’ll probably never know which man (or which city) first spawned fish and chips, there’s no doubt that the dish has staying power. It remains as popular as ever in Britain, where it’s also a point of national pride. Each year, the National Federation of Fish Fryers even awards one restaurant the title of Fish & Chip Takeaway of the Year, and the winners even get a free trip to Norway. Not too shabby for a chippy!

 
[Image description: Fish and chips with mashed peas and white dipping sauce on a blue plate.] Credit & copyright: Famifranquoi, Pixabay

You’re deathly ill, trapped in the pitch black dark and—worst of all—nearly a mile underground. What do you do? In the case of American caver Mark Dickey, who was recently rescued from Morca Cave in Turkey, all he could do was wait. Caving, also called cave exploration or spelunking, might not sound particularly dangerous to the uninitiated. After all, tons of tourists flock to massive caverns along well-lit walkways every day without incident, but that’s not really what caving is. What draws hardcore cavers are deep, unexplored underground passages that often have little wiggle room. Traversing a cave often means taking a deep breath out and squeezing through a hole or tunnel barely big enough for a person. It’s a dangerous activity that leaves little room for error or sheer bad luck. In the case of Mark Dickey, an experienced caver who’s been exploring underground spaces for over 20 years, he simply came down with a stomach illness that left him unable to make the passage out of one of Turkey’s deepest caves. He was reportedly throwing up blood and required emergency medical attention after weeks spent trapped in the cave.
 
Other cavers have met their end due to sudden flooding, while others have fallen from great heights or gotten stuck between a literal rock and a hard place. The problem is that, when cavers need rescuing, it usually takes another caver to get them out or even reach them. Dickey’s grueling ordeal could have been a lot worse—while he may have been 0.8 miles underground, the deepest cave system in the world is Veryovkina Cave in Georgia, at 1.3 miles. That distance might be easy to traverse aboveground, but getting through the rocky, winding passages of a deep cave takes a long time. In fact, it can take days to explore caves like Morca or Veryovkina. Despite these immense risks, caving remains a popular hobby among extremophiles who prefer slow and steady over the quick thrill of activities like base jumping. If you’re considering cave exploration for your next adventure, you might want to give it some deep thought.

 
[Image description: A cave with ferns growing around its sunlit entrance.] Credit & copyright: Tama66

It’s sweet, it’s sour, it’s scrumptious. It’s also associated with Russia even though it wasn’t invented there, and named after an ingredient that is rarely used to make it anymore. Suffice it to say that borscht has a long and complicated history. Luckily, the tangy soup itself is quite simple to make.
 
Borscht is a bright red soup made from meat stock, sautéed vegetables such as potatoes, cabbage, and carrots, and fermented beetroot juice, called beet sour. This final ingredient is what gives the soup its famous color. One ingredient you won’t find in most modern borscht is hogweed ( also called cow-parsnip), a common European weed related to fennel. Yet the original Slavic name for borscht refers to this plant. That’s because, before beets were widely cultivated, hogweed was the ingredient that gave borscht its sour kick. In fact, borscht dates back to around the fifth century C.E., when foraging for wild ingredients was common practice.
 
In what is now Ukraine, ancient Slavic peoples would pick and chop up hogweed in early summer, then place it in clay pots filled with water and leave it to ferment. The result was a sour ingredient that could be combined with meat, cream, and egg yolks to make tarts or used as a primary component in soup. Hogweed remained the main ingredient in borscht until around the 17th century, by which time it had spread throughout what we now think of as Eastern Europe. Despite the fact that many people, including famed Polish botanist Simon Syrenius, considered hogweed a great hangover cure at the time, borscht began to change alongside Slavic farming practices. No one knows when, exactly, beetroot replaced hogweed as the soup’s primary ingredient, but many historians believe that it happened east of the Dneiper River in the late 17th century. The change was likely made by Ukrainian farmers living under Russian rule who turned to their own crops for sustenance.
 
As Russia became a dominant force in 18th century Europe, borscht’s popularity grew further. Meatless versions were often eaten by Christians during religious fasts, and Russian churches would sometimes distribute bowls of borscht to the poor. Today, this flavorful soup is considered a Russian staple food, and is often served with a dollop of sour cream on top, alongside boiled potatoes and hard-boiled eggs. Still, its humble origins have never been forgotten. In Poland, the common phrase “tani jak barszcz” even means “cheap as borscht.” Hey, the most delicious things in life aren’t always the fanciest.

 
[Image description: A bown of borscht topped with sour cream and fennel against a white background. There is sliced, brown bread in the upper right.] Credit & copyright: Polina Tankilevitch, Pexels

Here's a troubling heatwave that has nothing to do with the weather. A Massachusetts teen recently passed away after eating an extremely spicy “One Chip Challenge” tortilla chip, leaving some people wondering about the dangers of spicy foods. The company that makes the chips pulled them from store shelves, but they’re not the only extremely spicy products on the market. In fact, spicy food challenges have been popular online for years. TikTokers routinely face off to see who can handle the spiciest peppers and the beloved YouTube series Hot Ones features celebrities eating spicy chicken wings while answering interview questions. So, is spicy food really dangerous? Thankfully, the answer is usually no.
 
Peppers are the powerhouses behind many spicy eating challenges. They’re hot due to a compound called capsaicin, which causes a burning sensation when it binds to a pain receptor in the mouth called TRPV1. Despite the pain, eating spicy foods can actually have some health benefits for the average person. They can improve stomach health, lower cholesterol, and have been linked to longer lifespans. Capsaicin also doesn’t cause ulcers; that’s just a myth. It’s actually a key ingredient in some pain management medications.
 
That’s not to say that capsaicin can’t be unsafe in rare circumstances. When a person eats too much capsaicin at once, it can cause an acute reaction. In 2018, a man participating in a chili-eating contest landed in the hospital with brain abnormalities after eating a Carolina Reaper. These chilis are bred to have an excessive amount of capsaicin. The man’s body had a rare but immediate reaction, causing blood vessels in his head to constrict dangerously. It's a good reminder for people with underlying medical conditions that affect their digestive or vascular systems to steer clear of “extreme” spicy challenges. The burning sensation might not be real, but the danger can be.

 
[Image description: Two green peppers on fire against a black background.] Credit & copyright: holdosi, Pixabay

This fanciful desert may have surprisingly bawdy origins…or not. Though theories abound, the exact circumstances of tiramisu’s invention are a mystery. What’s not so mysterious is its enduring popularity. This caffeine-laced dessert has been delighting diners around the world since at least the 1960s.
 
Tiramisu is a layered dish that looks similar to cake, though it requires no baking. It has six main ingredients, the most famous of which are ladyfingers, a type of long cookie or biscuit. These are soaked in coffee and layered with mascarpone, a type of cream cheese, which has been combined with eggs and sugar. The entire confection is topped with cocoa powder, making for a sweet treat with a bitter edge. Coffee is key to one popular, saucy legend about tiramisu’s origins. Supposedly, a 19th-century brothel owner in Treviso, Italy, created tiramisu to sell to her customers so that its caffeine and calories could reinvigorate them when they returned to their wives. Tirami su does translate to “pick me up” in the traditional Treviso dialect, which seems to indicate that the dish was invented there. But the world of Italian desserts is complicated. A fierce tiramisu-based rivalry has been raging for decades between two Italian regions, both of which claim to have invented it. On one side is Veneto, the region of which Treviso is a part, which officially claims that tiramisu was invented there by restaurateur Ado Campeol and his wife, Alba di Pillo, at Campeol’s Le Beccherie restaurant in 1969. On the other side is Friuli Venezia Giulia, which claims that a chef named Norma Pielli invented the dish there in 1959 at the Albergo Roma hotel in Tolmezzo. When the Italian government officially backed Friuli Venezia Giulia’s claims in 2017, outrage ensued in Veneto. The region’s local government spoke out against Friuli Venezia Giuli’s attempt to “steal” tiramisu and even threatened legal action. Still, the biggest tiramisu-cooking competition in the world is held each year in Veneto, and Italians are generally split on where, exactly, their famed dessert comes from.
 
What’s certain, though, is that tiramisu didn’t hit a sweet spot in the U.S. until the 1980s. Italian food was experiencing something of a stateside popularity boom, at the time, and tiramisu was different enough from traditional American desserts to stand out. At the same time, its flavors were familiar enough for it to fit right in. Tiramisu’s modern popularity proves that it’s a dish able to stand the test of time…even if we’ll never know exactly how long it's been around.

 
[Image description: A slice of tiramisu on a white plate in front of a brick wall. To the left is a container reading “Ti Bar”, to the right is a glass of wine.] Credit & copyright: Anestiev, Pixabay

This succulent dish is wrapped in puff pastry…and in secrets. Beef Wellington is synonymous with British cuisine today, but its origins are murky at best. One would think it was named after Arthur Wellesley, the real life 1st Duke of Wellington, who held office in the UK from 1828 to 1830 and was famous for defeating Napoleon Bonaparte at the Battle of Waterloo. Some legends certainly claim that the dish and the duke are related, but history seems to suggest otherwise.
 
Beef Wellington is a dish of fillet steak coated in duxelles (a minced mushroom and herb mixture), pâté (often foie gras, which is made from duck or goose liver) and baked inside puff pastry. It can be tricky to make, but a successful beef Wellington makes for a flaky, juicy, unique meal. It’s no wonder that many European chefs, including famous ones like Gordan Ramsey, feature beef Wellington prominently their menus. Yet, despite being known as a British dish, no one is quite sure whether beef Wellington actually originated in England. Some historians believe that it was invented in Ireland, since a dish known as “steak Wellington” was popular around the time that the duke himself rose to fame, and he did have some Irish ancestry. Others think that beef Wellington originated in France, since it's similar to a French dish called filet de boeuf en croûte, which predates the duke’s time in office. The first mention of beef Wellington, specifically, dates to an 1899 cruise ship menu, long after Duke Wellington was dead. Of course, it’s possible that the dish was named posthumously in his honor, but we’ll never know for sure.
 
What’s certain is that Julia Child, one of the U.S.’s first celebrity chefs, is responsible for popularizing the dish in America. After a recipe for beef Wellington was featured in her 1961 cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking, the dish became all the rage in fine dining circles. In fact, it was soon known to be a favorite of President John F. Kennedy. That’s a high honor, no matter how you slice it.

 
[Image description: Beef wellington on a white plate with carrots.] Credit & copyright: pzphone, Pixabay