A loaf of bread made in the first century AD, which was discovered at Pompeii, preserved for centuries in the volcanic ashes of Mount Vesuvius. The markings visible on the top are made from a Roman bread stamp, which bakeries were required to use in order to mark the source of the loaves, and to prevent fraud. (via Ridiculously Interesting)
(sigh) I’ve seen these before, but this one’s particularly beautiful.
I feel like I’m supposed to be marveling over the fact that this is a loaf of bread that’s been preserved for thousands of years, and don’t get me wrong, that’s hella cool. But honestly, I’m mostly struck by the unexpected news that “bread fraud” was apparently once a serious concern.
Bread Fraud was a huge thing, Bread was provided to the Roman people by the government – bakers were given grain to make the free bread, but some of them stole the government grain to use in other baked goods and would add various substitutes, like sawdust or even worse things, to the bread instead. So if people complained that their free bread was not proper bread, the stamp told them exactly whose bakery they ought to burn down.
Bread stamps continued to be used at least until the Medieval period in Europe. Any commercially sold bread had to be stamped with an official seal to identify the baker to show that it complied with all rules and regulations about size, price, and quality. This way, rotten or undersized loaves could be traced back to the baker. Bakers could be pilloried, sent down the streets in a hurdle cart with the offending loaf tied around their neck, fined, or forbidden to engage in baking commercially ever again in that city. There are records of a baker in London being sent on a hurdle cart because he used an iron rod to increase the weight of his loaves, and another who wrapped rotten dough with fresh who was pilloried. Any baker hurdled three times had to move to a new city if they wanted to continue baking.
If you have made bread, you are probably familiar with a molding board. It’s a flat board used to shape the bread. Clever fraudsters came up with a molding board that had a little hole drilled into it that wasn’t easily noticed. A customer would buy his dough by weight, and then the baker would force some of that dough through the hole, so they could sell and underweight loaf and use the stolen dough to bake new loafs to sell. Molding boards ended up being banned in London after nine different bakers were caught doing this. There were also instances of grain sellers withholding grain to create an artificial scarcity drive up the price of that, and things like bread.
Bread, being one of the main things that literally everyone ate in many parts of the world, ended up with a plethora of rules and regulations. Bakers were probably no more likely to commit fraud than anyone else, but there were so many of them, that we ended up with lots and lots of rules and records of people being shifty.
Check out Fabulous Feasts: Medieval Cookery and Ceremony by Madeleine Pelner Cosman for a whole chapter on food laws as they existed in about 1400. Plus the color plates are fantastic.
ALL OF THIS IS SO COOL
I found something too awesome not share with you!
I’m completely fascinated by the history of food, could I choose a similar topic for my Third Year Dissertation? Who knows, but it is very interesting all the same!
Bread fraud us actually where the concept of a bakers dozen came from. Undersized rolls/loaves/whatever were added to the dozen purchased to ensure that the total weight evened out so the baker couldn’t be punished for shorting someone.
[wants to talk about bread fraud laws and punishments]
Random Headcanon: Ronald McDonald regenerates when killed, horror movie monster style, but the Burger King’s immortality is dependent on serial reincarnation. That’s why the latter tends to disappear from the public eye for a couple of decades every now and then; when Ronald loses a fight in their eternal struggle for dominion over all fast food, he’s fine in like a week, but when the King goes down, he needs to wait for his reincarnation to grow up.
(Though this would seem to give Ronald an insurmountable advantage, it’s less decisive than you’d think, because Ronald is actually kind of terrible in a fight. The knowledge that he only needs to win once makes him sloppy.)
Quite so. The Colonel is older than Ronald, and even the King, but his reach is bound by the fact that he can’t affect the material world on his own – he’s strictly limited by the capabilities of his current corporeal host. Like all elder ghosts, however, he can cast a mean curse, so it’s best to tread carefully in his court.
Wendy’s a tough one to pin down. Once a mere figurehead empress, she’s taken a more active hand in the politics of the Fast Food Wars since her father’s mysterious disappearance scarcely a decade past. Nobody’s quite sure what her deal is; to all appearances, she’s a perfectly ordinary fourteen-year-old girl – but she’s been fourteen for a long, long time.
Collecting a variety of requests:
The Taco Bell Chihuahua is gone. In her hubris, she challenged the Colonel to single combat, who unhinged his jaw like a snake and swallowed her whole. Nobody’s quite prepared to say she’s dead, since the powers of the Fast Food Wars have been known to come back from worse, but it’s been fifteen years now, and few expect her return.
The Five are a sinister cabal who eschew personal names and identities, being known only by their collective title. The secret to their power is that they’re actually a telepathic hive-mind; though their members are technically mortal, the collective itself can recover from individual losses as long as at least one of them survives.
Despite its icy clime, the Dairy Queen’s kingdom flows with milk and honey. Her subjects are well-fed and happy and want for nothing – but there’s always something brittle about their smiles. In truth, beneath her jolly facade, their glorious sorcerer-queen’s heart is as cold as her realm: all shall love her and despair.
The Caesar is an anomaly in the Fast Food Wars: a mortal who contends with gods. What he lacks in personal prowess, he makes up for with his vast armies and spy networks. The title is non-hereditary; the current Caesar ascended to the throne in the traditional fashion: by literally stabbing his predecessor in the back.
Jack be nimble, Jack be quick – though the Fast Food Wars’ fields are bestrode by giants, all know to fear the Giant-Slayer. Cursed by the Old Gods to the form of a child’s toy for some forgotten jape, Jack rules still from his castle in the clouds. A wildcard in the Wars, he’s as likely to decimate his own realm in a fit of pique as he is to march against others.
It has latterly been revealed that the previous Caesar survived his assassination, making his way in secret to the frozen lands, where he became vassal – and, some whisper, consort – to the Dairy Queen. The mark of his successor’s poisoned spear remains upon him, staining his skin a sickly ocher, and for this he’s known as Orange Julius.
If you can, stop what you’re doing and do a google image search for “how cashews grow” right now.
Like. What is this bullshit???
WHAT THE FUCK
fun fact about cashews actually!! they’re technically the seeds of the cashew apple you see above them there as opposed to being a nut and they’re incredibly poisonous (they’ve got the same sort of acid that is found in poison ivy) if you eat them raw which is why stores always carry them roasted and unshelled
for scale of how big these suckers actually are too here’s one in my adult hand
Are cashew apples edible?
yes! if you eat them at the right time they can be very sweet and juicy but for the most part they seem to be relatively bitter and acidic so it’s sort of an acquired taste but they have incredibly fragile skins so they don’t ship very well which is probably why you won’t see them outside of places like central america
this is wild because I knew cashew juice before i knew cashew nuts?
Cashew juice is pretty much a staple here in brazil, i didn’t even knew they came from the same plant/fruit for the longest time. Just… lol? They even sell concentrates, cashew juice concentrates are a dime a dozen, or at least were before the crisis, idek anymore
Fun additional fact: “raw” cashews aren’t raw. Nobody sells raw cashews because there’s a chance of killing someone. They’re steamed to destroy any accidentally left over toxins.
I like how this turned into a hilarious and informative post despite me knowing basically nothing about cashews except how weird they look when they’re growing.
Lmao this American girl walked up to a Hungry Jacks (Burger King) register with her drink and really, really loudly (I was at the other side of the place) proclaimed:
“I asked for Lemonade, you gave me Sprite” in a really bitchy, entitled voice.
The cashier (and everyone within earshot) just looked at her like “the fuck is wrong with you”
In Australia, Sprite IS lemonade as far as we’re concerned.
Yeah this is correct. Lemonade is sprite. Clear fizzy liquid type thing. Solo is closer to what American lemonade is but we don’t actually have what you guys consider lemonade anyway so she was never going to get what she wanted lmao.
Y’ALL AIN’T GOT LEMONADE?!?!??
madness…
“we don’t actually have what you guys consider lemonade“
That entire continent exists on a different realm of existence
IT IS THE SAME DAMN THING. You Yankees and your fifty brands of the same 😛
LEMONADE AND SPRITE ARE NOTHING ALIKE
Things heating up in the drink fandom
I’m pretty sure the same is true in the UK at least was in 2010 except Sprite didn’t seem to be a common brand so I’d ask for Sprite get blank looks eventually figured out to ask for lemonade
Sprite is a recognised brand here, but it’s not omnipresent, it is also considered a brand of lemonade.
This is fucked up.
Sprite: lemon-lime soda (pop/carbonated beverage).
Lemonade: lemons, water, and sugar. Still.
LEMONADE IS NOT CARBONATED WHATT HEFUCC CK ARE YOU ALL DOIGN
Living? Sensibly?
Also on what planet does Sprite have lime in it.
Sprite, the lemon-lime flavored
carbonated beverage, is made on Earth.
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, the densest planet in the Solar System, the largest of the Solar System’s four terrestrial planets, and the only astronomical object known to harbor Sprite.
The people of Earth are known as “Earthlings” or “Spriteloids” interchangeably (although not to each other).
At least in the UK, if you order lemonade you’ll sometimes get Sprite, but if it’s proper it’s a lemon soda akin to the Italian gassosa – less sweet than Sprite.
Oh shit, I’ve had gassosa, it’s AMAZING.
I just want to say that the whole ‘lemonade and Sprite are interchangeable’ is pretty common throughout Asia as well, in my experience
You guys have orange juice at least, right? Grapefruit juice? In the US, Lemonade is a juice, like orange juice, but made with lemons instead of oranges. You can buy “fresh squeezed lemonade” at many restaurants and fast food venues. Typically it’s diluted a bit with sugar water, so the sour flavor of the raw lemon juice isn’t so overpowering.
In the south, it’s very common for people buy whole lemons and make their own lemonade at home using a citrus juicer.
In Germany, you’d ask for “Limonade” and yeah, you may get a Sprite or a Fanta; it’ll always be a fizzy nonalcoholic drink and usually come in lemon, lime, orange flavor. Only in healthfood or hipster establishments would it ever be an actual juice drink.
As a fan of homemade rosewater lemonade, I am twitching at the thought of sickly sweet carbonated beverages that taste like they were invented by someone who may have been in the same room as a citrus fruit once but can’t remember what it actually tastes like being called lemonade.
Wtf did y’all think beyonce was talking about????
oh wow I hadn’t even considered that. Like millions of people worldwide hearing the album title but not understanding what lemonade means even on the most superficial level.
This is so epically disturbing. Lemonade is such an integral part of spring and summertime. I just … this breaks my brain and my heart. The cultural references too. Just, all the American shows that reference lemonade and people in other countries are thinking Sprite? There’s a reason kids do freshly squeezed lemonade stands. You can’t buy it like that from a store. And there’s nothing quite like screwing it up and getting the sugar ratio wrong. And parents grinning through the too sour or too sweet mess and praising your efforts. Lemonade Is a Thing.
Wait does that mean Aussies make Shandies with sprite?????
Does this mean a significant portion of the global population don’t know what to do when life hands you lemons?
omg u sad australians, sorry that you don’t have a
this whole thread is giving me flashbacks to a conversation in high school when my friend (who was an exchange student from Germany) and i realized we had a very different understanding of the word lemonade.
The fuck America? Homemade/fresh lemonade is different to the softdrink, obviously.
People do make lemonade with lemons either at home or to sell at festivals and stuff in Aus, but it’s not very common. And you can sometimes buy ‘traditional lemonade’ in bottles.
You wouldn’t buy freshly squeezed orange juice at hungry jack’s, why tf would you expect fresh lemonade? @maramcgregor said you can’t buy it from a shop, so wtf did the person in Hungry Jack’s think they were buying?? Do americans have fresh lemonade at macca’s too or what?? For that matter do you have orange juice that comes out of the dispenser thing?
What do you call other brands of sprite-like lemonade? What about lemon squash (lift/solo)?
Well, you can’t always buy fresh lemonade at a shop (although with the health juicing trend, it’s becoming way more prevalent) but a lot of places in the US have ready-made lemonade (still non-carbonated and juice-like, but made from a powder or frozen concentrate). You can get it almost everywhere:
So yeah, if a fast food restaurant offered lemonade, we would expect traditional (albeit not fresh) lemonade. In North America, that is a totally normal, reasonable thing to expect. And yes, MacDonald’s has Lemonade, too:
We refer to the clear soft-drink either by a brand name (Sprite, 7up, Sierra Mist) or generically as “lemon-lime soda.” These are never interchangeable with lemonade.
Now, you can get also get Limonata in the US, but that’s less readily available than regular lemonade (usually, it’s more of a “high-end” thing, though again, I think it’s becoming more common). It can also be called a “Sparkling Lemonade.” There is always a distinction between this and plain lemonade.
Finally, there’s also something called a Lemon Shakeup, which you mostly get at fairs and street festivals, that is similar to fresh lemonade, but instead of squeezing out fresh lemon juice, you take half a lemon, squeeze it a smidge, then put it in sugar water, shake it up like a martini, and pour it all over ice. Lemon Shakeups are the fucking best.
We don’t do squash/cordial, really. You can get italian sodas at coffee houses, but those are flavoured syrups vs. real fruit syrups. Our bad on that one.
Also, for the record, this is not just a US/Canada thing—India has what other nations call “cloudy” lemonade as the standard, too (and probably invented it).
What in the WORLD.
Yeeeah. This is lemonade in Australia:
I mean, I occasionally make homemade lemonade. But you sure as shit wouldn’t expect to get it at fast food restaurants.
“You wouldn’t buy freshly squeezed orange juice at hungry jack’s”
You actually can get OJ from McDonalds though! Or at least at mine. I have no clue about HJs and there’s no way ours is freshly made but. Yeah as an aussie cashier, if people say ‘lemonade’ I assume sprite
When I worked in fast food for minimum wage, they would yell at us and lecture us about “stealing” fries and burgers (while we had to throw out TONS of food every day) as though the giant billion-dollar corporations of McDonald’s and Sonic couldn’t afford to give their employees something to eat (while not even paying us a living wage).
Now I work at an upscale restaurant (it’s fancy, like celebrities eat there fairly often) and not only do I make WAY better money but they give us 2 free meals a day (eaten on the clock) and they’re GOOD. Today I got baked cod, spring rolls, rice pilaf, stir fry, and mashed potatoes and eggplant. Oh, and free espresso and juice. From this restaurant owned by a local man who is in no way a billionaire.
Obviously money is not the issue, valuing your employees as people is.
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