50 Fun Facts About Home Economics

Which famous name on American cake mixes was invented by a Minneapolis flour company and was never a real person?

Betty Crocker was created in 1921 by the Washburn-Crosby Company, later General Mills, to sign replies to customers' questions. The surname honored a company director, William Crocker.

Which kitchen appliance grew out of an engineer noticing that radar equipment had melted the candy bar in his pocket?

The microwave oven began with Raytheon engineer Percy Spencer in 1945. The first food he cooked on purpose was popcorn; the second was an egg, which exploded.

Which fastener was inspired by burrs that clung to a Swiss engineer's clothes and his dog's fur after a hunting trip?

Velcro takes its name from the French words for velvet and hook, velours and crochet. George de Mestral conceived it in 1941 after studying burdock burs up close.

Heating milk to kill harmful germs is a process named after which French scientist?

Louis Pasteur was not working on milk at all: his research in the 1860s showed that heating would deactivate the unwanted microbes that spoiled wine.

Which American inventor pioneered quick-frozen food after watching Inuit freeze freshly caught fish in Labrador?

Clarence Birdseye worked in Labrador's fur trade in the 1910s, where he saw that fish frozen fast in Arctic air kept its texture. He founded General Seafood in 1924.

Which US kitchen measure is equal to three teaspoons?

A tablespoon equals three teaspoons in most places, but in Australia it equals four, so a recipe can change when it crosses borders.

Which American magazine has put its own seal on consumer products tested by its institute since 1909?

Good Housekeeping backs products that carry its seal with a two-year limited warranty. In 1939 the Federal Trade Commission filed a complaint calling the magazine's guarantees misleading.

Which screw-top glass jar, the standard for home canning, is named after the American tinsmith who patented it?

The Mason jar is named for John Landis Mason, a New Jersey tinsmith. His name became so generic that it appears on many jars made by the rival Ball and Kerr brands.

Which American author's 1922 guide 'Etiquette' made her name a byword for good manners?

Emily Post wrote her first etiquette book after years as a novelist. An institute that carries her name still publishes advice on modern manners.

Which food-poisoning bacteria can contaminate an egg through its porous shell or from an infected hen?

Salmonella infection usually spreads through contaminated meat, eggs, water or milk, and the tainted food often has no unusual look or smell.

Which technique, often used before freezing vegetables, scalds them briefly and then plunges them into iced water?

Blanching deactivates the enzymes that would otherwise brown vegetables and dull their flavor in storage. The cold plunge that halts the cooking is known as shocking.

Which cooked paste of flour and butter or oil thickens gumbo and three of the five French mother sauces?

Roux is typically made with equal weights of its two ingredients. Cajun and Creole cooks brown it dark, using vegetable oil because it tolerates more heat than butter.

Which French phrase do restaurant kitchens use for organizing and arranging every ingredient before cooking begins?

Mise en place means "putting into place", and the idea has traveled well beyond cooking: the term is now applied to classrooms, hospitals and IT departments.

Which leavening ingredient needs an added acid, such as vinegar or cream of tartar, to make a batter rise?

Baking soda releases carbon dioxide when it meets an acid. Used with no acid at all, it leaves food with a bitter, soapy taste and a yellow color.

Which bread-making step, done by hand or with a dough hook, stretches dough until it turns springy and elastic?

Kneading warms and stretches the protein strands in the dough so they can hold pockets of gas. Dough that never develops that structure collapses into a heavy, dense loaf.

Which piece of cookware melts chocolate gently by resting one pan above another that holds hot water?

A double boiler is also known as a bain-marie. Cheesecake is often cooked in a water bath of the same kind, which stops the top from cracking in the centre.

Which French knife cut turns carrots, celery or potatoes into long thin strips the shape of matchsticks?

Julienne works best once the vegetable has been trimmed to four straight sides. Strips of one size cook evenly and at the same rate.

Which cooking method browns meat at high heat, then simmers it in a covered pot with a little liquid?

Braising is similar to stewing but uses less liquid and usually larger cuts of meat, which is why a pot roast counts as one.

Mayonnaise holds oil and water together with the help of egg yolk, making it which type of mixture?

An emulsion blends liquids that normally refuse to mix. In mayonnaise the lecithin in the yolk is the go-between, and hollandaise sauce is held together the same way.

Which chemical process between amino acids and sugars gives seared steaks and bread crusts their browned flavor?

The Maillard reaction is named for the French chemist who first described it in 1912. Caramelization, the browning of sugars alone, is a separate process.

What do food-safety agencies call the temperature range, roughly 40°F to 140°F, in which bacteria readily grow?

The danger zone is where food should spend as little time as possible. The USDA's food-safety service says anything left in it for more than two hours should not be eaten.

Which of these foods should reach the highest safe internal temperature, 165°F, before it is served?

Chicken breast, like all poultry, needs 165°F, while steaks, chops and fish are safe at lower readings. The probe belongs in the thickest part, clear of bone, which makes it read too high.

Which rare illness is most often linked in the US to home-canned low-acid foods such as green beans and corn?

Botulism rarely comes from commercially canned goods, which are required to undergo a "botulinum cook" in a pressure cooker at 121°C for three minutes.

What does the US Fire Administration tell cooks to keep nearby in case a skillet of oil catches fire?

A pan lid smothers the flames by shutting out the air. Water is the worst choice, because it throws the flaming oil violently out of the container.

Under the US system, which rating marks fire extinguishers made for fires in cooking oils and greases?

Class K is the American label for a hazard that Europe and Australia call Class F. Commercial kitchens may have a fire suppression system built into their exhaust hoods.

Which USDA nutrition guide replaced the food pyramid in 2011, ending 19 years of pyramid diagrams?

MyPlate showed a place setting divided into five food groups. First Lady Michelle Obama unveiled it, saying parents had no time to weigh out exact servings.

Partially hydrogenated oils, banned from US foods beginning in 2018, were the main source of which artificial substance?

Trans fats entered the food supply in the early 1900s, when hydrogenation was adopted to make margarine and shortening. In 2015 the FDA ruled they were not generally recognized as safe.

Which nutrient, discovered during research into childhood rickets, can human skin make when exposed to sunlight?

Vitamin D made in the skin outweighs what most people get from food. Cow's milk has been fortified with it since the early 1930s.

Which mineral, supplied by red meat and poultry, does the body need to build the hemoglobin that carries oxygen?

Iron that runs short leads to a common type of anemia. A mild deficiency can be prevented or corrected by eating iron-rich foods, and even by cooking in an iron skillet.

Which elastic protein network in wheat flour helps bread dough rise, hold its shape and turn out chewy?

Gluten makes up 75 to 85 percent of the total protein in bread wheat, and it is also found in barley and rye.

Which small spool in a lockstitch sewing machine supplies the second thread that interlocks with the needle thread?

The bobbin thread never crosses to the other face of the cloth: each of the two threads stays on its own side, and they interlace at every needle hole.

Which fabric edge, formed as the crosswise thread loops back on the loom, keeps woven cloth from fraying?

Selvage is a corruption of "self-edge": the edge finishes itself, so it needs no hem to stop it unraveling.

Which sewing term names the stretchy diagonal at 45 degrees to a woven fabric's lengthwise and crosswise threads?

Bias-cut clothes use that extra stretch to follow the body's lines and drape softly. Every piece of woven fabric has two biases, at right angles to each other.

Which sewing term names the strip, often 5/8 inch wide, between the stitching line and the fabric's cut edge?

Seam allowance runs from a quarter inch on curves such as necklines to an inch or more in places where extra cloth is kept for the final fitting.

Which American inventor won royalties from Isaac Singer after patenting a lockstitch sewing machine in 1846?

Elias Howe spent 1849 to 1854 in court defending his patent against Singer's copy of his machine. He won, and both men ended up multi-millionaires.

Which fabric, woven from the fibers of the flax plant, feels cool to the touch but wrinkles very easily?

Linen may be among the oldest textiles in the world: dyed flax fibers found in a cave in the Caucasus suggest it was woven over 30,000 years ago.

Which synthetic fiber was first sold as toothbrush bristles in 1938 before causing a sensation as women's stockings?

Nylon stockings reached stores nationwide in May 1940, and 64 million pairs were sold in their first year. Then wartime production was diverted to parachutes, and stockings all but vanished from shops.

Which sewing scissors have saw-toothed blades that cut a zigzag edge to limit fraying on woven cloth?

Pinking shears do not stop cloth fraying altogether: the sawtooth edge only limits how long each loose thread can get. Some have arched or asymmetric teeth for decorative cuts.

Which sewing technique uses long temporary stitches to hold fabric in place until the permanent stitching is done?

Basting, also called tacking, is often done with a special thread that snaps easily, so the stitches can be pulled out once the real sewing is finished.

On a clothing care label, what kind of treatment does a plain circle with no square around it stand for?

Professional cleaning is the circle's meaning, and the letters P or F inside it tell a dry cleaner which solvent to use. A circle inside a square stands for a clothes dryer.

Which chemist, the first woman admitted to MIT, is regarded as the founder of the home economics movement?

Ellen Swallow Richards tested water, air and food in her laboratory and checked wallpapers and fabrics for arsenic. She went on to become the first president of the American Home Economics Association.

Which educator, a sister of the author of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', published 'A Treatise on Domestic Economy' in 1841?

Catharine Beecher co-founded the Hartford Female Seminary in 1823 and later wrote a home advice manual with her famous sister. For all her work on women's schooling, she opposed women's suffrage.

Which 1917 federal law funded vocational classes in agriculture, industry and home economics in American schools?

The Smith–Hughes Act recognized home economics as its only vocational subject for girls. It is also the basis for the separation of vocational classes from the rest of the school curriculum.

Which American tailor and his wife began selling the first graded tissue-paper sewing patterns in 1863?

Ebenezer Butterick's patterns came in a series of standard sizes, sparing home sewers the work of resizing one stock pattern. Tissue paper let dozens of layers be cut at once and shipped folded.

Which Ivy League university became home to the New York State College of Home Economics, chartered in 1925?

Cornell's college grew out of a department started in 1907 and led by Martha Van Rensselaer and Flora Rose. In 1929 Eleanor Roosevelt lent her political influence to win public funds for its building.

Which US president set out four basic consumer rights, including the right to safety, in a 1962 speech to Congress?

John F. Kennedy also named the rights to be informed, to choose and to be heard. The date of his speech, March 15, came to be recognized as World Consumer Rights Day.

Which Swiss psychologist, who tested ideas by observing his own children, proposed that thinking develops in stages?

Jean Piaget argued that the stages are tied to age and come in strict order: each one has to be accomplished before the next can occur.

Which term describes a savings account paying a return on both the principal and the earnings already added to it?

Compound interest is also known as anatocism. Simple interest is the contrast: under it, earnings from earlier periods are never added to the principal.

The kitchen 'work triangle' layout model links the cooktop, the refrigerator and which third work center?

The sink is the triangle's preparation corner. The model was designed to make a one-cook kitchen as efficient as possible, an idea that grew out of time-and-motion studies.

Which efficiency engineer, the mother in 'Cheaper by the Dozen', is credited with inventing the foot-pedal trash can?

Lillian Gilbreth is also credited with the shelves inside refrigerator doors, butter tray and egg keeper included, and she helped create the kitchen work triangle.