How the Hot Dog Found Its Bun (23 page)

Their plan was to place a guinea pig in a bell jar and pump in the gas to see how it reacted to the chemical. They picked one of the five vials of the fluorocarbon substance at random and did the experiment. They were thrilled when the little animal was unscathed by the gas. Just to double check, they took another bottle of the chemical and tried again. Much to their astonishment (and the guinea pig’s horrible luck), the small animal died. It turned out that four of the five bottles contained water, which led to the production of a deadly gas called phosgene. By chance, the first bottle didn’t have any water. If they’d picked one of the water-tainted bottles to start, Midgely and Henne might have deemed fluorocarbons unsafe and moved on.

Instead, Plunkett had the chemical he needed for his experiments. On April 6, 1938, Plunkett was running tests with a fluorocarbon compound called tetrafluoroethylene when something strange happened. He opened a tank in which he was doing his work and no gas came out. The tank’s weight suggested that something should be in the container. “Instead of discarding this tank and getting another to continue his refrigerant research, Plunkett decided to satisfy his curiosity about the ‘empty’ tank,” wrote Royston M. Roberts in his book
Serendipity: Accidental Discoveries in Science
. First he ran a wire through the valve to make sure it wasn’t faulty. Then he cut to the chase and sawed the tank open. Inside was a white waxy powder. This polymer (a combo of gases that turn into a solid) wasn’t going to help cool refrigerators, but Plunkett decided he should check whether it might have other uses. The polymer’s properties proved pretty amazing. It was smooth, but wasn’t dissolvable and couldn’t be damaged by acids, bases, or heat.

It was also very expensive to produce, which brings us to another lucky element to this story: World War II. American military personnel involved in developing the first atomic bomb (aka The Manhattan Project) needed a substance with Teflon’s exact qualities to create a gasket that could withstand an ultratoxic uranium gas used in the bomb. The army said that cost was no issue, so development of Teflon —which otherwise might have been cost-prohibitive—continued through the war.

Long after the hostilities ceased, Teflon found a home in our kitchens. In 1954, a French engineer named Marc Gregoire was the first to patent a Teflon coating for frying pans, but that wasn’t his original plan. He just wanted to use a bit of Teflon to coat fishing gear. He thought it would help avoid tangling. Luckily, his wife Colette suggested that the material might be good for coating her cooking pan. He heeded his wife’s wishes and the result was kitchen magic.

Indestructible when it came to a nuclear bomb, this initial Teflon-coated kitchenware did have a foe it couldn’t beat: the scouring pad, which would scrape the Teflon off in the early days. Today, these pots and pans are far more durable, but they would have never gotten this far if not for the Depression, World War II, a curious scientist, an insightful housewife, and, let us not forget, a doomed guinea pig.

Acknowledgments

As is the case with most endeavors, this book could not have been completed without the help of numerous people. Thanks must begin with my fantastic friend Dan Snierson and my editors at Globe Pequot Press, Katie Benoit and Julie Marsh, for offering expert advice on what I’ve written. Their help was vital in this process. I’m equally grateful for the illustrations provided by David Cole Wheeler, which added so much to this effort. In terms of research, there were two websites that proved particularly valuable in the beginning when I was forming my list of accidental discoveries and unexpected inspirations: Lynne Olver’s
www.foodtimeline.org
and Linda Stradley’s
www.whatscookingamerica.net
. To the many culinary authors who have come before me and touched on this topic, I hope that I’ve adequately built on your work. Finally, I must offer my greatest appreciation to my wife, Jennifer, and my kids, Miller and Becca, for being constant sources of inspiration for everything that I do.

Notes

In the main body of this book, I tried to keep references to a minimum in order to maintain some brevity. The sources for the quotes I used can be found here.

Introduction

“Luck affects … will be a fish.” J. K. Hoyt,
The Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations
(London: Funk & Wagnalls Co., 1896), 702.

“were always making . . . not in quest of.” Royston M. Roberts,
Serendipity: Accidental Discoveries in Science
(New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1989), IX.

“The really valuable . . . behind the appearance.” Morton A. Meyers,
Serendipity in Modern Medical Breakthroughs
(New York: Arcade Publishing, 2007), 14.

Starters and Small Plates

Brown ’n Serve Rolls

“nationally famous.” “Rolls You Buy, Then Bake,”
Popular Science
, September 1950, 119.

Buffalo Wings

“What are these? . . . quiet and use your fingers!” Jay Rey, “The Lore of the Wings / Long Before the Fest, a Night of Discovery,”
Buffalo News
, September 4, 2004, D1.

Caesar Salad

“the greatest recipe . . . in 50 years.” Associated Press, “Creator of Caesar Salad Dressing Dies,”
USA Today
, September 15, 2003, www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2003-09-15-salad_x.htm.

“One of my early remembrances . . . lunch at Caesar’s Restaurant.” Marc Lacey, “Wary Tourists Toss Aside a Chance to Taste History,”
New York Times
, October 22, 2008, A-10.

“One day, my brother . . . me for mine.” Rosemary Speirs, “Hail Caesar; Czar of All the Salads,”
Canadian Magazine
(insert in the
Montreal Gazette
), April 6, 1973, 30.

Cobb Salad

“their watering hole” and “the most . . . in the world.” Sally Wright Cobb and Mark Willems,
The Brown Derby Restaurant: A Hollywood Legend
(New York: Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 1996), 140 and 111.

Kellogg’s Corn Flakes

“I feel kind of blue . . . things look now.” Paul Lukas and Maggie Overfelt, “Kellogg: Feeling Boxed In by His Brother, W. K. Kellogg Invented Corn Flakes, Only to Get Ripped Off by His Competitors. But With a Clever Ad Blitz, He Became the Champion of Breakfast,”
Fortune Small Business
, April 1, 2003, http: //money.cnn.com/magazines/fsb/fsb_archive/2003/04/01/341013/index.htm.

Nachos

“consisted of . . . jalapeno peppers,” Andrew F. Smith (ed.),
The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 210.

Tapas

“The art of
tapeo
. . . juicy gossip.” Alan Davidson, Tom Jaine (eds.),
The Oxford Companion to Food
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 783.

“It became customary . . . outdo the competition.” Martha Stewart, “Ask Martha: Proper display, storage of snapshots is in order; Preserve memories for future generation,”
Charleston Daily Mail
(West Virginia), October 14, 1998, P2D.

Main Courses

Chicken Marengo

“This battle is . . . to win another”; “three small eggs . . . some oil”; “plausible . . . sheer legend”; “You must feed . . . every battle”; and “abundance of . . . and wine.” Patricia Bunning Stevens,
Rare Bits: Unusual Origins of Popular Recipes
(Athens: Ohio University Press, 1998), 92–93.

Chicken Tikka Masala

“[O]ne day . . . cream and spices.” and “Chicken tikka masala . . . chicken with spices.” and “It’s basically . . . periodical improvisation,” Dean Nelson and Jalees Andrabi, “Chicken tikka masala row grows as Indian chefs reprimand Scottish MPs over culinary origins,”
Daily Telegraph
(UK), August 4, 2009, www.telegraph.co.uk/foodanddrink/5972643/Chicken-tikka -masala-row-grows-as-Indian-chefs-reprimand-Scottish-MPs-over -culinary-origins.html.

“the culinary masterpiece . . . Britain’s most popular curry . . . EU Protected Designation of Origin.” Early Day Motion 1911 (British Parliament), July 16, 2009.

Fettuccine Alfredo

“It was a hell of . . . had to do something.” Bob Lape, “Alfredo’s to toast birthday, eatery,”
Crain’s New York Business
, October 17, 1988, 22.

“Alfredo doesn’t make . . . He achieves it.” Todd Coleman, “The Real Alfredo,”
Saveur
, April 13, 2009, www.saveur.com/article/Kitchen/The-Real-Alfredo.

“‘Look here . . . won the war?’’ Paul Hoffman, “Fettuccine—A Dish Fit For A Duchess,”
New York Times
, November 1, 1981, Sec. 10, p. 9.

Filet-O-Fish

“Ray said . . . his sandwich did.” and “My fish sandwich . . . saved my franchise.” Paul Clark (
Cincinnati Enquirer
), “No fish story: Sandwich saved his McDonald’s,”
USA Today
, February 20, 2007, www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/2007-02-20-fish2-usat_x.htm.

French Dip Sandwich

“one day . . . wanted the same.” Robert Rector, “Philippe’s an institution steeped in history,”
San Gabriel Valley Tribune
(California), October 9, 2008.

“Mathieu inadvertently . . . more dipped sandwiches.” www.philippes.com/history/.

“We don’t . . . dip department.” and “Who knows . . . still be around.” Steve Harvey, “L.A. Then and Now; Century-old Cole’s serves a slice of history; New owners added upscale touches but maintained the deliciously seedy ambience and French dip rivalry,”
Los Angeles Times
, March 8, 2009, A-34.

Philly Cheesesteak

“the man who . . . playing the piccolo.” Bryce Crawford, “Brotherly grub: City of Philly Cheese Steak out plenty,”
Colorado Springs Independent
, October 14, 2010, www.csindy.com/colorado/brotherly-grub/Content?oid=1877563.

Sandwiches

“There may have . . . was the result.” C. R. L. Fletcher,
Historical Portraits: 1700-1850 Part I (Vol. III of the Series)
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1919), 229.

“He was . . . abandoned character.” J. Heneage Jesse,
Memoirs: Celebrated Etonians
(London: Richard Bentley and Son, 1875), 62.