THINKER'S ALMANAC - July 7

Innovation - Chocolate and Sliced Bread

Event:  Chocolate introduced to Europe, 1550, and sliced bread first sold, 1928

My wife can't cook at all. She made chocolate mousse. An antler got stuck in my throat. -Rodney Dangerfield

On this day, nearly 400 years apart, two well-known menu items first appeared.  

First, July 7 is World Chocolate Day, celebrating the summer day in 1550 when chocolate was introduced to Europe.  Both Christopher Columbus and Herman Cortes, the Spanish conqueror of Mexico, brought cacao beans from the new world to the old.  Long before energy drinks became a thing, Cortes praised it as a “divine drink which builds up resistance and fights fatigue. A cup of this precious drink permits a man to walk for a whole day without food.”  Once it arrived in Spain, peripatetic Dominican friars spread the word about this gift from the gods (1).

                                                             Image by LensPulse from Pixabay

Another miracle occurred 378 years ago on this date, perhaps even better than chocolate since today it has become the standard for “the best thing,” as in “the best thing since sliced bread.”

It was a jeweler named Otto Frederick Rohwedder who came up with this quintessential innovation.  He, along with many others, had worked for years to create a slicing machine that could both slice the bread correctly and package it so that it didn’t go stale.  Finally, Rohwedder perfected the process with a machine that both sliced the bread and automatically packaged it.  He then persuaded his friend, a baker named Frank Bench, to buy the invention.  On July 7, 1928, Bench began selling sliced bread from his bakery in Chillicothe, Missouri (2).

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What were the origins of both chocolate and sliced bread?

Challenge:  Research another menu item that you are curious about.  What is its history, and how did it become the popular menu item it is today?

Sources:

1-Hart, Hugh. “July 7, 1550: Europeans Discover Chocolate.” Wired.com 7 July 2010. 

2-Ridley, Matt.  How Innovation Works and Why It Flourishes in Freedom.  New York:  HarperCollins Publishers, 2020:  5-6.