Procure What The Great Ate: A Curious History Of Food And Fame Penned By Matthew Jacob Represented In Print

"Great" are the usual mostly White, Western people, The Food tidbits are food related but not actually about what they actually ate, Disappointing. In the first years after the Cuban revolution of the lates,
the premier Fidel Castro bragged that the fiftyfour flavors
served by Havanas Coppelia icecream parlor well
surpassed the choices offered by the capitalist icecream
chain of Howard Johnson.
Many years later, as Cubas
economy struggled, customers of Coppelia were lucky to find
two flavors availabl
June,

Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin craved bananas but insisted on
quality.
According to one biographer, he “got very
cantankerous” when served a substandard banana,
June,

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,

During thes, North Koreas dictatorial heir, Kim Jongil
, established a health institute named for his ruling father,
Kim Ilsung.
Researchers were instructed to find ways to
help the elder Kim live a long and pleasant life, One of the
institutes major recommendations was particularly bizarre:
North Koreas aging leader was advised to eat dog penises
that were at least seven centimeters long.

June,

Adolf Hitler s meals generally consisted of side dishes, Meat
was virtually unheard of at the German leaders dinner table,
But his Austrian cookan enthusiastic carnivoretried to
sneak a bit of meat broth or fat into Hitlers meals, The
Führer discovered the attempted deception and limited his
cooks fare to only two items: clear soup and mashed potato,
June,

In, when Benazir Bhutto moved to the United States to
attend college at HarvardRadcliffe, certain foods emerged
as her favorites.
Pakistans future prime minister drank
gallons of apple cider during her brief years in New England,
And she recalled devouring “unconscionable numbers” of
peppermintstick icecream cones, sprinkled with
chocolateflavored jimmies,
June,

As a young man, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk Turkeys future
leadertold a poetrywriting friend that life “is but a dry
chestnut.
” He ate a lot of dry chestnuts, sometimes while
drinking an aniseflavored spirit called raki, It was a

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 starryeyed stanzas, In a
June,
speech, he declared that one of the nations 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,

Khrushchev declared that the Moscow version of Pepsi
obviously tasted better and instructed others around him to
try this version of the cola.
It isnt clear whether Nixon
suggested the soda tasting to
June,

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 Khrushchevs ha
June,

Catherine de Medicis , the Italianborn wife of Frances 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

of soul food: Cibrèo is made with the gizzard, liver, testicles,
and
June,
cockscomb of a young rooster, which is mixed with beans and
egg yolks, and then served on toast
June,

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
, 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

limits on a parcels 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,
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 Marys birth.

June,

host of slaves and domestic staff labored hard to ensure that
Egyptian kings ate welleven after these rulers died.
Within
the ornate tomb that was built for King Den , who died
aroundBCE, 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,

June,

ChapterWhat Edvard Munched: Visual Artists Mixed Palettes
and Palates
July,

ChapterHail to the Beef: Dining was Drama from
Washington to Obama
July,

homas Jefferson may have been Americas original foodie.

Heres 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, Jeffersons
presidential dinners set new standards for culinary
excellence, More thanyears after his death, Gourmet
magazine named him one of the twentyfive people “who
changed food in America, ”
July,


If the creators of the “Got Milk” advertising campaign had
been recruiting spokespersons in thes, 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,

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,

fast as two women could make them.
” He enjoyed vegetables,
and he appreciated a cup of coffee first thing in the morning,
July,

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,

food, John Hay, one of Lincolns secretaries, said, “He ate less
than anyone I know, ”
July,

Thomas Jefferson s day, the American diet was less
meatheavy 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 Jeffersons garden, English peas
were among his favoriteshe grew thirtynine varieties of
peas,


Ronald Reagan s bestknown indulgence was jelly beans, He
started eating them soon after he became the governor of
California in, supposedly to help him break a
pipesmoking habit.
His favorite jelly bean flavor was licori
July,

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

bring me some coffee, ”
July,
ChapterDinner Theater: Stage and Screen Stars were Showy
Eaters
July,

ChapterGeneral Foods: For Historys 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,

July,

In the warrior state of Sparta, bad food was a point of pride,
A Spartan king named Agesilaus II boasted of the “contempt

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,
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,

Many battles have been fought and won by soldiers
nourished on beer,” the proclamation read, “and the king
does not believe that coffeedrinking soldiers can be
depended upon to endure hardship or beat his enemies in the
case of the occurrence of another war.
”
July,

But even the kings decree could not curb the growing evil,
Four years later, Frederick imposed a royal monopoly on
coffee beans, If he couldnt stop his subjects from drinking the
stuff, at least he could make a fortune from it
July,

callousness

July,
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, 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 Suleimans army was forced to
retreat, Viennas
July,

celebrated by creating a pastry in the shape of a
crescentthe symbol on the Ottomans flag.

July,

A few years earlier, after Middle Eastern suicide hijackers
killed nearly three thousand Americans in the September,
, attacks, one of the terrorists Florida neighbors
recalled, “From their trash, you could see that they shopped
at WalMart and ate a lot of pizza.
”
July,

of sixty Dominos 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 betweenp.
m. anda. m. as the U. S.
prepared its atta

July,
ChapterExperiments in Dining: Food was a Stimulus to the
Scientific Method
July,

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,

Still others think Pythagorass opposition was more
practicalthat he believed the beans increased male
sexuality, inspired bad dreams, or simply led to flatulence.

July,

Orvilles main desire was milk, and plenty of it, He drank so
much of it that a housekeeper began watering it down,
thinking he wouldnt notice, He did, accusing her of “dairying
the milk

July,
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
electrodynamicsand ultimately a Nobel Prize,
July,

he often dined alone at one of New Yorks finest
restaurantseither Delmonicos or the WaldorfAstoria, 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,

dont 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,

Maria GoeppertMayer , awinner in physics,
celebrated her good news with champagne, bacon, and eg
July,

In his later days, the cashstrapped and eccentric Nikola
Tesla
July,

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,

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 lates 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,

ChapterSinging for Their Supper: Musicians Kept their
Cooking in Concert
July,

being just one prominent example.
And heres a news flash:
Little Richard s “Tutti Frutti” is not a tribute to a flavor of ice
cream, In fact, the original lyricschanged before the song
hit the chartsinclude raunchy sexual references and use the
phrase “Tutti Frutti, good booty” instead of the more familiar
“Tutti Fruity, all rooty
July,

Lees “I Didnt Like It the First Time,” subtitled “The Spinach
Song,” which may have referred to sex or marijuana.
The
doubleente
July,

ChapterBusiness Lunch: Entrepreneurs were Eccentric
Eaters

Ford soon decided that soybeans were itthe common

ingredient for a practical, wholesome human diet.
At Fords
direction, a team of cooks prepared an allsoybean dinner
and served it at theChicago 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 soybeanbased 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.
“Thats what youre
putting into y
July,
ChapterPlaying with Their Food: Sports Stars Feasted on
More than Peanuts and Cracker Jacks
After Phelps made history at theOlympics, a British
newspaper reported that the “secret” to the swimmers
success
July,

was his twelvethousandcalorieaday diet.
But Phelps
called that calorie count an exaggeration, saying that he
consumed between eight thousand and ten thousand calories
each daya range thats still about four times the caloric
intake recommended for a typical adult male
July,

July,

ChapterDelicious Discoveries: Explorers Plunged into
Uncharted Meals
July,



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