More Facts

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How some household foods got their name:

Spam Luncheon Meat: Combines the SP from spice and the AM from ham.

Baby Ruth candy bar: Originally called Kandy Kake, it was renamed in the 1920s to honor a contemporary celebrity - ex-President Grover Cleveland's daughter, Ruth, the first child born in the White House. She was known to the public as "Baby Ruth" despite the fact she was in her late twenties.

Tootsie Roll: Leo Hirschfield, an Austrian immigrant, originally hand-rolled the candies for his daughter, Tootsie.

Crackerjacks: This unnamed combination of peanuts, popcorn and sugar had been around since the 1870s, but was bulk-shipped in wooden crates; when it arrived in stores, it would be stuck together in massive lumps. In 1890, the company finally licked the problem with a new sugar-coating process. A salesman tasted it and exclaimed "That's cracker jack!" The phrase was slang at the time for something great or excellent.

Chef Boyardee: Boy-ar-dee is a phonetic spelling of the inventor's name - Hector Boiardi. An Italian immigrant and restaurateur, Boiardi devised the recipe in a small room above his Cleveland restaurant in 1929.

Oreo Cookies: Oreo means hill in Greek. The original version of the cookie was mound-shaped, not flat.

Fig Newtons: In 1895, a new machine was installed at a Massachusetts cookie company called the Kennedy Biscuit Works. Among the machine's capabilities: it could wrap cookie dough around jam. The first jam the company tried it with just happened to be "made from figs." And since their policy was to name their products after neighboring towns, Newton, Mass. was honored in the title.

Budweiser Beer: In the 1870s, German-born Adolphus Busch and his partner produced a light-colored beer, inspired by a beer they'd seen brewed in Budweis, Czechoslovakia.

Thanks to Melissa from The Mouthpiece