Remembering the depression glass that came in oatmeal boxes

Europe’s oldest tea, retro ice-cream cocktail recipes, and more.
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Gastro Obscura

Oatmeal Full of Bowl

During the 1920s and 1930s, ubiquitous household goods, such as bags of flour and canisters of tea, included unusual trinkets. “Depression glass” was so cheap to produce that heavy-hitting companies of the time gave them away in their products. The practice wasn’t relegated to home goods, either.

Wordless Recipes

The ancient Egyptians left writing everywhere, but one category is largely missing from the record: recipes. Without any textual directions or menus, historians have looked elsewhere. As it turns out, paintings on tomb walls can provide a rare glimpse into one of the oldest cuisines in the world.

Layers of Complication

According to legend, a sister at a cloistered convent on Amalfi Coast accidentally invented one of Italy’s most iconic pastries some 400 years ago. Spoiler alert: the story ends with the birth of the sfogliatella—a pastry with a sweet ricotta filling, scented with citrus peel and cinnamon, housed inside finely-layered dough.

The 17th-Century Seafarer’s Menu

Grace Tsa and her fellow researchers at Texas A&M University have spent over three years on what they dubbed the “Ship Biscuit & Salted Beef Research Project.” They’re now analyzing beef as gnarly as what sailors ate, and are planning to give the rest of us a taste of a sailor’s life.

Sikhism, which dates to the 15th century, is a monotheistic faith guided by the teachings of 10 spiritual leaders, or gurus. Gurdwara literally means “home of the guru,” and the temples are regularly opened to those in need. As wildfires and other disasters ravage Northern California, gurdwaras mobilize to provide meals and aid.

The World’s Priciest Melon

Yūbari, a town on Japan’s Hokkaido Island, has a famous export: the Yūbari King melon. If you’re a zillionaire lover of fruit, try a wedge of this cantaloupe. In 2018, a pair of Yūbari Kings went for ¥3.2 million ($29,000) at an auction in Sapporo, making it the world’s most expensive melon.

Neither tea nor hot chocolate, this Caribbean cocoa drink is in a league of its own. Made by grating cocoa balls or sticks into a mixture of milk and water, then boiling, chocolate tea is spiked with spices and sweetened with condensed milk. Once prepared, it’s perfect for dunking (or soaking) bread and biscuits.

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