The Museum of Food Failures: From Crystal Pepsi and Life Savers Holes to Gerber Adult Singles
Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street Radio
Milk Street Radio
4.2 • 3K Ratings
🗓️ 7 April 2023
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Dr. Samuel West is back to teach us about history’s greatest food failures, from Colgate’s frozen meals to the time Gerber made food for grown-ups. Plus, Massimo Montanari helps us uncover the true history of spaghetti; J. Kenji López-Alt tells us how to make the most perfect scrambled eggs; and we bake Chocolate Olive Oil Cake. (Originally aired on April 22nd, 2022.)
Get the recipe for Chocolate Olive Oil Cake here.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, Mil Street listeners, we're taking our show on the road. Please join us for a special live taping of Melk Street Radio at the Art of Cheese Festival in Madison, Wisconsin. |
| 0:09.6 | We'll be at the landmark Orphium Theater on Saturday, September 27th. I'll be hosting cheese trivia, taking your cooking questions with chef Tori Miller, handing out samples of some of the best cheese in the state, |
| 0:21.3 | and my favorite part, even get my fortune read with a block of cheese. |
| 0:25.5 | You will not want to miss that. |
| 0:27.3 | Tickets are on sale now at artofcheasefestival.com one more time, |
| 0:31.6 | art of cheesefestival.com, and we'll see you there. |
| 0:36.4 | This is Mill Street Radio from PRX. I'm your host, Christopher |
| 0:39.3 | Kimball. Where does spaghetti come from? Well, in 1957, the BBC news program, Panorama, |
| 0:47.5 | visited the Swiss countryside to find out. Many people are often puzzled by the fact that spaghetti |
| 0:53.5 | is produced at such uniform length, |
| 0:56.0 | but this is the result of many years of patient endeavor by plant breeders |
| 1:00.2 | who've succeeded in producing the perfect spaghetti. |
| 1:03.9 | After picking, the spaghetti is laid out to dry in the warm alpine sun. |
| 1:12.9 | This broadcast was, of course, an April Fool's prank, |
| 1:15.6 | but hundreds of people called in the next day |
| 1:17.6 | to ask how they could grow their own spaghetti trees. |
| 1:21.4 | This isn't the only myth about the origins of pasta, |
| 1:24.7 | so to help us uncover the actual true story of spaghetti, |
| 1:28.5 | I'm now joined by food historian Massimo Montanari. He's the author of a short history of spaghetti with tomato |
| 1:34.1 | sauce. Massimo, welcome to Milk Street. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. |
| 1:39.9 | You wrote a book called A Short History of Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce, which turns out to be kind |
| 1:46.4 | of a longer story and a much more interesting story than I would have thought. |
... |
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