1 . Have you ever been really hungry, but there wasn’t much to eat in your kitchen? Did you throw together a bunch of stuff you had on hand and were pleasantly surprised when it tasted good? You aren’t alone. Some of our favorite foods were created by accident. Here’s a sample menu of some familiar foods that never would have happened if someone hadn’t created them by mistake.

POTATO CHIPS

One of the world’s favorite snacks is the result of a complaint. In 1853, a man was eating dinner at Moon’s Lake House in Saratoga Springs, New York. He ordered fried potatoes, a popular side dish. But when they came out of the kitchen, he didn’t think they were crispy enough. He sent them back to the kitchen, where Chef George Crum was so angry at having his cooking criticized that he sliced the potatoes really thin, put lots of salt on them, and fried them. Not only did the diner love them, but everyone else did, too. They soon became a specialty of the restaurant.

TOFU

Tofu, or bean curd, is made by curdling (使凝结) fresh soya milk, pressing it into a solid block, and then cooling it. Tofu was accidentally invented in China more than 2,000 years ago, when a cook added seaweed to soya milk, which made it curdle. This is the same process that is used for making cheese. Like cheese, tofu is a great example of how really messing up a recipe can create something unexpectedly good.

CHEESE PUFFS

Did you ever wonder who thought up cheese puffs? The company that invented them wasn’t even trying to make food for people. It was trying to make animal feed. In the 1930s, the Flakall Company of Wisconsin made animal food from small, flaked piece of grain. One day, an employee, Edward Wilson, watched workers pouring cornmeal (谷粉) into the flaking machine, wetting it to keep it from clogging (堵塞). Because the machine was very hot, the wet cornmeal came out of it in puffy ribbons that hardened when they hit the air. Wilson took some of the ribbons home, added oil and flavoring to them, and voila! Cheese puffs!