Things We Never Knew About Our Favorite Comfort Foods

Before fried chicken became a racist trope - thanks, in part, to the film Birth of a Nation - it became a source of economic empowerment for formerly enslaved Black Americans. 

The Jim Crow era - which lasted from the late 19th century to the Civil Rights era - upheld segregation and limited what jobs Black Americans could take, especially in the South. But, embodying the American spirit of entrepreneurship, many Black chefs - especially women - found ways to leverage their skills to earn a living. They often made and sold fried chicken to train passengers.

Segregation in the Jim Crow era also limited where travelers could stop to get a bite to eat on long road trips. But Black Americans did not let that stop them from traveling. Instead, they carried shoe box lunches - which often included fried chicken, since it kept well - with them so they could exercise their freedom to travel. 

Chocolate products have existed for millennia. Beginning around 1500 BCE with the Olmecs in present-day Mexico, ancient Mesoamericans consumed a beverage derived from cacao. 

Bars of chocolate as we know it have a considerably more recent history. Englishman Joseph Fry - whose father owned a cocoa business - debuted the first chocolate bar in 1847. 

Fry's chocolate bar came about thanks to the 1828 development of powdered cocoa by Coenraad van Houten, a chemist from the Netherlands. Only by mixing Dutch-processed cocoa with sugar and butter could Fry mold it into a bar shape. 

Cheap, filling, and tasty, instant ramen noodles almost single-handedly fuel many students' college years. Like all good things, instant ramen noodles came from somewhere - and that somewhere was Momofuku Ando, a Japanese inventor. 

Ando invented instant ramen in 1958. His culinary invention could be easily, cheaply prepared with boiling water, which made the noodles accessible to more people. 

Though it's a beloved side dish, there's nothing marginal about mashed potatoes, which can accommodate a variety of toppings. 

By the 18th century, Europeans were discovering different ways to consume potatoes. Potatoes were not native to Europe. In fact, they came from the Americas and crossed the Atlantic when colonizers brought them home. 

In 1747, Englishwoman Hannah Glasse published The Art of Cookery, a popular and indispensable cookbook for 18th century cooks. Among the included recipes was a set of instructions for making mashed potatoes. 

Colonel Sanders, the white suit-sporting mascot of KFC, is not only the face of the popular fast-food chain: He was a real person. Born in 1890, Harland Sanders first entered the dining business in 1930, when he ran a service-station cafe in Kentucky. By the end of the decade, he had settled on the recipe that would make his fried chicken famous the world over.

Sanders opened the first KFC in 1952, when he was in his 60s.

Butter-fried bread and bubbly melted cheese - there's something magical and comforting about a simple grilled cheese sandwich. But even though it's a simple comfort staple, the grilled cheese as most Americans know it today has a relatively recent history.

American-style grilled cheese sandwiches didn't really exist before the widespread distribution of processed “American” cheese in the 20th century. Early grilled cheese sandwiches were open-faced sandwiches made from a single slice of bread. 

It wasn't until the 1960s, when American cheese slices wrapped in plastic became widely available, that grilled cheese gained its second piece of bread to make it a proper sandwich.