1.
Pudding
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Pudding is a kind of food that can be either a dessert or a savory dish. The word pudding is believed to come from the French boudin, originally from the Latin botellus, meaning small sausage, in the United Kingdom and some of the Commonwealth countries, the word pudding can be used to describe both sweet and savory dishes. Unless qualified, however, the term in everyday usage typically denotes a dessert, in the UK, savory dishes include Yorkshire pudding, black pudding, suet pudding and steak and kidney pudding. In Commonwealth countries these puddings are known as custards if they are egg-thickened, blancmange if starch-thickened, Pudding may also refer to other dishes such as bread pudding and rice pudding, although typically these names derive from the origin as British dishes. The most famous examples still surviving are black pudding, which was a favourite of King Henry VIII, Yorkshire pudding and haggis. The original pudding was formed by mixing various ingredients with a product or other binder such as butter, flour, cereal, eggs, and/or suet. These puddings are baked, steamed or boiled, depending on its ingredients, such a pudding may be served as a part of the main course or as a dessert. Boiled or steamed pudding was a main course aboard ships in the Royal Navy during the 18th and 19th centuries. Pudding was used as the dish in which daily rations of flour. Steamed pies consisting of a completely enclosed by suet pastry are also known as puddings. These may be sweet or savory and include such dishes as steak, the second and newer type of pudding consists of sugar, milk, and a thickening agent such as cornstarch, gelatin, eggs, rice or tapioca to create a sweet, creamy dessert. These puddings are made either by simmering on top of the stove in a saucepan or double boiler or by baking in an oven, often in a bain-marie. These puddings are easily scorched on the fire, which is why a double boiler is used, microwave ovens are also now often used to avoid this problem. Creamy puddings are typically served chilled, but a few, such as zabaglione and rice pudding, instant puddings do not require boiling and can therefore be prepared more quickly. Rice pudding The proverb The proof of the pudding is in the dates back to at least the 14th century. The phrase is attributed to the Spanish author Cervantes in his novel The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote. The phrase is often stated as the proof is in the pudding. Pink Floyds Another Brick In The Wall, Part 2 ends with the voice of a Scottish-accented schoolmaster shouting, If you dont eat your meat, how can you have any pudding if you dont eat your meat
2.
Bread
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Bread is a staple food prepared from a dough of flour and water, usually by baking. Throughout recorded history it has been popular around the world and is one of the oldest artificial foods, proportions of types of flour and other ingredients vary widely, as do modes of preparation. As a result, types, shapes, sizes, and textures of breads differ around the world, Bread may be leavened by processes such as reliance on naturally occurring sourdough microbes, chemicals, industrially produced yeast, or high-pressure aeration. Some bread is cooked before it can leaven, including for traditional or religious reasons, non-cereal ingredients such as fruits, nuts and fats may be included. Commercial bread commonly contains additives to improve flavor, texture, color, shelf life, Bread is served in various forms with any meal of the day. It is eaten as a snack, and used as an ingredient in other preparations, such as sandwiches. It forms the main component of bread pudding, as well as of stuffings designed to fill cavities or retain juices that otherwise might drip out. Bread has a social and emotional significance beyond its importance as nourishment and it plays essential roles in religious rituals and secular culture. Its prominence in daily life is reflected in language, where it appears in proverbs, colloquial expressions, in prayer and in the etymology of words, the Old English word for bread was hlaf, which appears to be the oldest Teutonic name. Old High German hleib and modern German Laib derive from this Proto-Germanic word, Bread is one of the oldest prepared foods. Evidence from 30,000 years ago in Europe revealed starch residue on rocks used for pounding plants. It is possible that during this time, starch extract from the roots of plants, such as cattails and ferns, was spread on a rock, placed over a fire. Around 10,000 BC, with the dawn of the Neolithic age, yeast spores are ubiquitous, including on the surface of cereal grains, so any dough left to rest leavens naturally. There were multiple sources of leavening available for early bread, airborne yeasts could be harnessed by leaving uncooked dough exposed to air for some time before cooking. Pliny the Elder reported that the Gauls and Iberians used the foam skimmed from beer to produce a kind of bread than other peoples. Parts of the ancient world that drank wine instead of used a paste composed of grape juice and flour that was allowed to begin fermenting, or wheat bran steeped in wine. The most common source of leavening was to retain a piece of dough from the day to use as a form of sourdough starter. In 1961 the Chorleywood bread process was developed, which used the intense mechanical working of dough to dramatically reduce the fermentation period, the process, whose high-energy mixing allows for the use of lower protein grain, is now widely used around the world in large factories
3.
Milk
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Milk is a pale liquid produced by the mammary glands of mammals. It is the source of nutrition for infant mammals before they are able to digest other types of food. Early-lactation milk contains colostrum, which carries the mothers antibodies to its young and it contains many other nutrients including protein and lactose. As an agricultural product, milk is extracted from non-human mammals during or soon after pregnancy, Dairy farms produced about 730 million tonnes of milk in 2011, from 260 million dairy cows. India is the worlds largest producer of milk, and is the leading exporter of skimmed milk powder, the ever increasing rise in domestic demand for dairy products and a large demand-supply gap could lead to India being a net importer of dairy products in the future. The United States, India, China and Brazil are the worlds largest exporters of milk and milk products, China and Russia were the worlds largest importers of milk and milk products until 2016 when both countries became self-sufficient, contributing to a worldwide glut of milk. Throughout the world, there are more than six billion consumers of milk and milk products, over 750 million people live in dairy farming households. The term milk comes from Old English meoluc, milc, from Proto-Germanic *meluks milk, there are two distinct types of milk consumption, a natural source of nutrition for all infant mammals and a food product for humans of all ages that is derived from other animals. In almost all mammals, milk is fed to infants through breastfeeding, the early milk from mammals is called colostrum. Colostrum contains antibodies that provide protection to the baby as well as nutrients. The makeup of the colostrum and the period of secretion varies from species to species, for humans, the World Health Organization recommends exclusive breastfeeding for six months and breastfeeding in addition to other food for at least two years. In some cultures it is common to breastfeed children for three to five years, and the period may be longer, fresh goats milk is sometimes substituted for breast milk. This introduces the risk of the child developing electrolyte imbalances, metabolic acidosis, megaloblastic anemia, in many cultures of the world, especially the West, humans continue to consume milk beyond infancy, using the milk of other animals as a food product. Initially, the ability to digest milk was limited to children as adults did not produce lactase, Milk was therefore converted to curd, cheese and other products to reduce the levels of lactose. Thousands of years ago, a chance mutation spread in human populations in Europe that enabled the production of lactase in adulthood and this allowed milk to be used as a new source of nutrition which could sustain populations when other food sources failed. Milk is processed into a variety of products such as cream, butter, yogurt, kefir, ice cream. Modern industrial processes use milk to produce casein, whey protein, lactose, condensed milk, powdered milk, whole milk, butter and cream have high levels of saturated fat. The sugar lactose is found only in milk, forsythia flowers, the enzyme needed to digest lactose, lactase, reaches its highest levels in the small intestine after birth and then begins a slow decline unless milk is consumed regularly
4.
Egg as food
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Eggs are laid by female animals of many different species, including birds, reptiles, amphibians, mammals, and fish, and have been eaten by humans for thousands of years. Bird and reptile eggs consist of an eggshell, albumen. The most popular choice for egg consumption are chicken eggs, other popular choices for egg consumption are duck, quail, roe, and caviar. Egg yolks and whole eggs store significant amounts of protein and choline, due to their protein content, the United States Department of Agriculture categorizes eggs as Meats within the Food Guide Pyramid. Despite the nutritional value of eggs, there are potential health issues arising from egg quality, storage. Chickens and other egg-laying creatures are widely kept throughout the world, in 2009, an estimated 62.1 million metric tons of eggs were produced worldwide from a total laying flock of approximately 6.4 billion hens. There are issues of variation in demand and expectation, as well as current debates concerning methods of mass production. In 2012, the European Union banned battery husbandry of chickens, bird eggs have been valuable foodstuffs since prehistory, in both hunting societies and more recent cultures where birds were domesticated. The chicken was probably domesticated for its eggs before 7500 BCE, chickens were brought to Sumer and Egypt by 1500 BCE, and arrived in Greece around 800 BCE, where the quail had been the primary source of eggs. In Thebes, Egypt, the tomb of Haremhab, built about 1420 BCE, shows a depiction of a man carrying bowls of ostrich eggs and other large eggs, presumably those of the pelican, as offerings. In ancient Rome, eggs were preserved using a number of methods, the Romans crushed the shells in their plates to prevent evil spirits from hiding there. In the Middle Ages, eggs were forbidden during Lent because of their richness, the word mayonnaise possibly was derived from moyeu, the medieval French word for the yolk, meaning center or hub. Egg scrambled with acidic fruit juices were popular in France in the 17th century, the dried egg industry developed in the 19th century, before the rise of the frozen egg industry. In 1878, a company in St. Louis, Missouri started to transform egg yolk and white into a light-brown, the production of dried eggs significantly expanded during World War II, for use by the United States Armed Forces and its allies. In 1911, the egg carton was invented by Joseph Coyle in Smithers, British Columbia, early egg cartons were made of paper. Bird eggs are a food and one of the most versatile ingredients used in cooking. They are important in many branches of the food industry. The most commonly used bird eggs are those from the chicken, duck and goose eggs, and smaller eggs, such as quail eggs, are occasionally used as a gourmet ingredient in western countries
5.
Sugar
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Sugar is the generic name for sweet, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. There are various types of derived from different sources. Simple sugars are called monosaccharides and include glucose, fructose, the table sugar or granulated sugar most customarily used as food is sucrose, a disaccharide of glucose and fructose. Sugar is used in prepared foods and it is added to some foods, in the body, sucrose is hydrolysed into the simple sugars fructose and glucose. Other disaccharides include maltose from malted grain, and lactose from milk, longer chains of sugars are called oligosaccharides or polysaccharides. Some other chemical substances, such as glycerol may also have a sweet taste, low-calorie food substitutes for sugar, described as artificial sweeteners, include aspartame and sucralose, a chlorinated derivative of sucrose. Sugars are found in the tissues of most plants and are present in sufficient concentrations for efficient commercial extraction in sugarcane, the world production of sugar in 2011 was about 168 million tonnes. The average person consumes about 24 kilograms of sugar each year, equivalent to over 260 food calories per person, since the latter part of the twentieth century, it has been questioned whether a diet high in sugars, especially refined sugars, is good for human health. Sugar has been linked to obesity, and suspected of, or fully implicated as a cause in the occurrence of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, dementia, macular degeneration, the etymology reflects the spread of the commodity. The English word sugar ultimately originates from the Sanskrit शर्करा, via Arabic سكر as granular or candied sugar, the contemporary Italian word is zucchero, whereas the Spanish and Portuguese words, azúcar and açúcar, respectively, have kept a trace of the Arabic definite article. The Old French word is zuchre and the contemporary French, sucre, the earliest Greek word attested is σάκχαρις. The English word jaggery, a brown sugar made from date palm sap or sugarcane juice, has a similar etymological origin – Portuguese jagara from the Sanskrit शर्करा. Sugar has been produced in the Indian subcontinent since ancient times and it was not plentiful or cheap in early times and honey was more often used for sweetening in most parts of the world. Originally, people chewed raw sugarcane to extract its sweetness, sugarcane was a native of tropical South Asia and Southeast Asia. Different species seem to have originated from different locations with Saccharum barberi originating in India and S. edule, one of the earliest historical references to sugarcane is in Chinese manuscripts dating back to 8th century BC that state that the use of sugarcane originated in India. Sugar was found in Europe by the 1st century AD, but only as an imported medicine and it is a kind of honey found in cane, white as gum, and it crunches between the teeth. It comes in lumps the size of a hazelnut, sugar is used only for medical purposes. Sugar remained relatively unimportant until the Indians discovered methods of turning sugarcane juice into granulated crystals that were easier to store, crystallized sugar was discovered by the time of the Imperial Guptas, around the 5th century AD
6.
Dried fruit
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Dried fruit is fruit from which the majority of the original water content has been removed either naturally, through sun drying, or through the use of specialized dryers or dehydrators. Dried fruit has a tradition of use dating back to the fourth millennium BC in Mesopotamia, and is prized because of its sweet taste, nutritive value. It is also part of a mixture of distilled spirits and spices, today, dried fruit consumption is widespread. Nearly half of the dried fruits sold are raisins, followed by dates, prunes, figs, apricots, peaches, apples and these are referred to as conventional or traditional dried fruits, fruits that have been dried in the sun or in heated wind tunnel dryers. Many fruits such as cranberries, blueberries, cherries, strawberries, some products sold as dried fruit, like papaya, kiwi fruit and pineapple are most often candied fruit. Dried fruits retain most of the value of fresh fruits. The specific nutrient content of the different dried fruits reflects their fresh counterpart, traditional dried fruit such as raisins, figs, dates, apricots and apples have been a staple of Mediterranean diets for millennia. Drying or dehydration also happened to be the earliest form of preservation, grapes, dates. Early hunter-gatherers observed that these fallen fruit took on an edible form, the latest recorded mention of dried fruits can be found in Mesopotamian tablets dating to about 1700 BC, which contain what are probably the oldest known written recipes. These early civilizations used dates, date juice evaporated into syrup and they included dried fruits in their breads for which they had more than 300 recipes, from simple barley bread for the workers to very elaborate, spiced cakes with honey for the palaces and temples. Because cuneiform was very complex and only scribes who had studied for years could read it, it is unlikely that the tablets were meant for everyday cooks or chefs, instead they were written to document the culinary art of the times. Many recipes are quite elaborate and have rare ingredients so we may assume that they represent Mediterranean haute cuisine, the date palm was one of the first cultivated trees. It was domesticated in Mesopotamia more than 5,000 years ago and it grew abundantly in the Fertile Crescent and it was so productive that dates were the cheapest of staple foods. Because they were so valuable they were recorded in Assyrian and Babylonian monuments. The villagers in Mesopotamia dried them and ate them as sweets, whether fresh, soft-dried or hard-dried, they helped to give character to meat dishes and grain pies. They were valued by travelers for their energy and were recommended as stimulants against fatigue, Figs were also prized in early Mesopotamia, Israel and Egypt where their daily use was probably greater than or equal to that of dates. As well as appearing in paintings, many specimens have been found in Egyptian tombs as funerary offerings. In Greece and Crete, figs grew very readily and they were the staple of poor and rich alike, grape cultivation first began in Armenia and the eastern regions of the Mediterranean in the 4th century BC
