"Panorama cameraman Charles de Jaeger dreamed up the story after remembering how teachers at his school in Austria teased his classmates for being so stupid that if they were told that spaghetti grew on trees, they would believe it."
Turns out, his teachers might have been on to something.
Something to recall about the UK of the time: it was so parochial that James Bond was having his exotic international adventures all the way on the other side of the Channel, in the Dept. of the Somme (80).
There used to be a man at a farmers' market in Southern California that played this trick. He decorated a small tree with draped spaghetti and set it on the table. People would ask and he'd explain that it was a spaghetti tree. Every week there'd be a new gullible person that would take the bait. He saw it as community service to get people to think more critically about where their food came from.
My uncle pulled this one on me when I was a kid. There was a willow tree out in the yard and he'd have me go to the "spaghetti tree" and "harvest some spaghetti" for dinner, which I went and did... and lo and behold, we had spaghetti for dinner. It's pretty hard to argue with that kind of delicious cause and effect when you're a little kid!
I had the privilege of seeing this documentary as a kid, when it first aired in the US on the Jack Paar show around 1960.
Of course, growing up in an Italian family in Oregon, I knew perfectly well what spaghetti was made of, which made the documentary even more hilarious.
When we visited my grandmother near Portland, there would always be two big platters of spaghetti, one with the usual red sauce, and one with pesto!
We called that "spaghetti with green stuff" and always dug into it first. My aunt made her pesto with a mortar and pestle the old fashioned way.
One of my projects for this year is to get a marble mortar and olivewood pestle, and make pesto like that. Here's the recipe I'm starting with:
PSA: pesto is incredibly simple to make at home, and way way way better than store-bought pesto.
At minima you need olive oil, garlic, some green leafy things (basil, spinach, parsley... I've done some with only parsly stems), some sort of hard cheese, salt and some sort of mixer. Adding nuts, using good EVOO, multiple cheeses and a pestle&mortar gives even better results, but even without that it'll be delicious!
Just to play unfold-that-acronym, here "EVOO" is simply extra virgin olive oil, i.e. the good stuff. Pretty obvious if you're into cookery I guess, but it did pause me for a few seconds anyway. :)
Home pesto maker here. It's not for the faint of heart. Each year I grow four basil plants - it takes close to an hour to completely de-leaf and de-stem just one plant. I end up with a stock pot full of leaves. Those are then ground with pine nuts (close to $7 for a small jar - I need 4-5 jars), close to a gallon of olive oil (the brand I use comes in gallons, so about $30), and lots of cheese (I honestly don't remember how much I spend on cheese). The result is great, but it's definitely a day's work plus close to $100.
To balance your comment: I just use whatever basil I happen to have bought from the shop, whatever nuts or seeds I have lying aroung (almond, pumpkin seeds...), I always have extra-virgin olive oil and parmesan. It takes me maybe 5min start-to-finish to make enough pesto for a couple people, or I can buy more basil to make a bigger batch to freeze.
It's not super-cheap (I use good olive oil), but I'd definitely call that "for the faint of heart": pesto is one of the easiest sauces you can make for pasta and is very forgiving (you can vary ingredients, texture, it's ). You don't need to make pesto by the kilogram :)
Try LeGrand pesto. It can be a bit difficult to find, but Whole Foods usually has it. Seriously, it's head and shoulders above any other pesto I've had (store bought, restaurant or homemade). We've been using it for like 15 years now.
All store bought things with intensive tastes suffer from the same phenomena, the flavours leak into one another, creating a uniform flavour distribution, which lacks the variety a fresh mixed set of ingredients still posses.
This is the most wholesome thing I've ever seen a company make. I can't tell whether they're bluffing or double bluffing, but I appreciate a good self deprecating joke. The play with other brands also fits in very well.
It's one of my favorite videos. I watch it whenever I feel like I need to cheer up. Be sure to check out the two followup videos that Semaphor linked in a sibling comment.
In an odd coincidence, I had dinner last week with the brand protection attorney for Clorox!
From the VELCRO® Brand video:
If you need something to clean up your socks,
Do it with bleach, and not with [censored]
And here's an article with some other clever and compassionate "cease and desist" trademark notices:
Thank you, this was great. There’s also a feedback response video [0] (of course they are making fun of German, Klettverschluss is so easy to say!), and a behind-the-scene video [1] where they show you their two actual lawyers that somehow were roped into participating ;)
Do they really want everything to be called "hook and fastner"?
(I've heard that Heinz was prevented from using the name "Ketchup" in some country, as "ketchup" was considered generic for tomato paste, and Heinz didn't meet the legal definition - too much sugar or too few tomatoes.)
> Pasta was not an everyday food in 1950s Britain, and it was known mainly from tinned spaghetti in tomato sauce and considered by many to be an exotic delicacy.
Spaghetti as an exotic delicacy, rare enough that people could believe this story. The past truly is a far off and alien land.
I found some 1950's womens' magazines in the cellar of my rented house a few years ago, one recounted the story by a woman who's husband returned from the Indian subcontinent with a taste for "curry and rice", so she prepared the same by adding curry powder to rice pudding ...
Looks like war time rationing is the reason it took a while to be established in the UK and it sounds like by the end of the 1950s pasta restaurants were a thing in Britain or at least London.
It's so ubiquitous now, that it's hard to believe it didn't achieve proliferation hundreds of years ago. I suppose tacos are heading in that direction, too.
I wonder, though, if the 1950s Brits were mostly thrown off by the specific Italian word, "spaghetti", or if the entire concept of pasta/noodles would have been lost on them.
> Over the course of a century, the pasta and cheese casserole traveled from Italy to France. By the 14th Century it is a French dish of parmesan and pasta that was brought to England. A cheese and pasta casserole known as “makerouns” was recorded in a the famous medieval French cookbook “The Forme of Cury”, which was written in the 14th century. It was made with fresh, hand-cut pasta which was sandwiched between a mixture of melted butter and cheese.
Its also very dull, i guess somebody falling out of a time-machine would be incredibbly overstimulated in our environment. Then again, this is quite the show of force, when it comes to adaption to circumstances..
I heard a variation of this once, but I never knew where it originated. An older fellow in a rural part of Spain made the obligatory pass at my girlfriend while we were standing for drinks and tapas at the village bar. He told her he was a farmer and he'd grown up growing spaghetti. Big, waving fields of spaghetti that reached over your head; they would cut bushels of it with a scythe. A few minutes later, tears welled up in his eyes and he burst into song. I love Andalucía.
I don't think it originated with this broadcast, however, as the individual who did it was inspired by a comment from their own school teacher. It seems people have been making similar jokes about spaghetti for a very long time.
> At the time spaghetti was relatively unknown in the UK, so many British people were unaware that it is made from wheat flour and water
It seems absolutely wild that as recently as 1957, something as mundane as spaghetti was "relatively unknown in the UK". (Unless we are being meta-pranked...)
There is often a meta-hoax which vastly overstates how many people believed a hoax in the first place. For example the myth about the War of the Worlds radio show causing mass panic.
The article mention "hundreds phoned in the following day to question the authenticity of the story or ask for more information about spaghetti cultivation and how they could grow their own spaghetti trees". Of course it is unclear how many of these "hundreds" called to call bullshit, and how many called to get spaghetti-growing tips. Given Aprils Fools was a well known tradition at the time, it is possible some of the callers was in on the joke.
We have no idea how many people actually believed the hoax.
"We have no idea how many people actually believed the hoax. "
This is true, but I regulary read a satire magazin - and the readers letter are quite funny and scary, because I could not believe how many people do take BS seriously.
Now of course, they could all be satire, too (but elaborate one, because from seemingly real FB accounts), but maybe keep in mind, how many people did (and still do) believe Covid was a hoax. And that there is an actual flat earth society.
We are not. I grew up in Denmark in the sixties. We really weren't lacking for anything, but spaghetti strictly came out of a tin together with some strange orange tomatoish sauce.
I graduated highschool in 1977. Everybody went to Copenhagen for a night on the town. That's were I saw the first pizza of my life.
Given how powerful association is it isn't surprising it took a long time for it to catch on. Pouring a treatment for excessive earwax on your food just sounds disgusting.
It was actually in culinary use in the UK in the 19th century, but seemed to fall out of favour in the 20th (at least until the revival credited to Elisabeth David). https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29220046
> By September 1949 The Seattle Times was touting the joint and its palpable history: "For a sentimental journey to an almost-vanished Seattle, and some fine Italian food, try ... Daverso's Palace Grill ... The huge old mahogany back bar, the tiled floors and walls, and the checkered tablecloths will make you nostalgic, and the king-size menu will make you hungry. A couple of specialties: Pizza, the hot pastry that looks like a phonograph record, covered with mushrooms, cheese and tomatoes ..." (Lund, "A La Carte").
> The fact that a writer for The Seattle Times in 1949 felt obligated to describe what a pizza looks like was simply because few in the area had ever seen or tried one. As Frank Daverso would later recall:
"We had to give it away for the first four years. Nobody had ever heard of it. Customers liked our spaghetti and ravioli, so we'd give 'em a sample of pizza with each order. They seemed to like pizza but just wouldn't order it. Finally, we tried advertising. Sailors and other servicemen, who had eaten pizza in the East, began coming in and soon it caught on -- but it took four long years"
Amazing how modern genetic engineering has let us take the simple spaghetti tree and create other trees such as: rotini, penne, bucatini, ravioli, lasagna noodle, small shell, bow tie, macaroni ;)
Spaghetti drying racks can sometimes be called spaghetti trees so it's not like there isn't a reasonable way a person reading about pasta production could get confused.
> Soon after 9:47 on that morning, the BBC began to receive hundreds of telephone calls from people reporting they had observed the decrease in gravity.[5] One woman who called in even stated that she and eleven friends had been sitting and had been "wafted from their chairs and orbited gently around the room".[7]
I have to wonder what her mind conjured up once it came out as a hoax, as she'd surely told everyone close to her by then.
The idea by Douglas Adams in Hitchikers guide to the galaxy that in an infinitely large universe most things are grown might well have been inspired by this.
The description of the life cycle of ratchet screwdriver fruits remains a masterpiece.
The closest thing I can think of is spaghetti squash (do a web search and look at photos), which when you cut it in half, you create "spaghetti" by scraping out the insides with a fork. A viable pasta alternative if you're trying to reduce carbs.
98 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 163 ms ] threadTurns out, his teachers might have been on to something.
Edit: rom-antics: Duly noted, thanks for the advice.
Of course, growing up in an Italian family in Oregon, I knew perfectly well what spaghetti was made of, which made the documentary even more hilarious.
When we visited my grandmother near Portland, there would always be two big platters of spaghetti, one with the usual red sauce, and one with pesto!
We called that "spaghetti with green stuff" and always dug into it first. My aunt made her pesto with a mortar and pestle the old fashioned way.
One of my projects for this year is to get a marble mortar and olivewood pestle, and make pesto like that. Here's the recipe I'm starting with:
https://www.seriouseats.com/best-pesto-recipe
It's not super-cheap (I use good olive oil), but I'd definitely call that "for the faint of heart": pesto is one of the easiest sauces you can make for pasta and is very forgiving (you can vary ingredients, texture, it's ). You don't need to make pesto by the kilogram :)
Try LeGrand pesto. It can be a bit difficult to find, but Whole Foods usually has it. Seriously, it's head and shoulders above any other pesto I've had (store bought, restaurant or homemade). We've been using it for like 15 years now.
I wonder if he was influenced by this hoax.
https://misc.rural.narkive.com/cEsySUGR/california-s-velcro-...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRi8LptvFZY
In an odd coincidence, I had dinner last week with the brand protection attorney for Clorox!
From the VELCRO® Brand video:
And here's an article with some other clever and compassionate "cease and desist" trademark notices:https://www.cll.com/OnMyMindBlog/creativity-can-make-tradema...
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLWMQLMiTPk
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP-fZdFfOGE
But I don't get it.
How is being the default brand not good for them?
Do they really want everything to be called "hook and fastner"?
(I've heard that Heinz was prevented from using the name "Ketchup" in some country, as "ketchup" was considered generic for tomato paste, and Heinz didn't meet the legal definition - too much sugar or too few tomatoes.)
Like how in a lot of countries every brand of vacuum cleaner is a "hoover", or any brand of permanent marker is a "sharpie", etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_trademark
Spaghetti as an exotic delicacy, rare enough that people could believe this story. The past truly is a far off and alien land.
https://www.theguardian.com/g2/story/0,3604,371547,00.html
It really seems that English cuisine improved a lot since then.
Spaghetti in tins (and I won't even dare to think about the quality of the "tomato sauce") is a crime against nature.
I wonder, though, if the 1950s Brits were mostly thrown off by the specific Italian word, "spaghetti", or if the entire concept of pasta/noodles would have been lost on them.
-- https://qnholifield.com/culinary-history/the-hidden-history-...
Wew, that’s a false claim if I’ve ever seen one.
It seems absolutely wild that as recently as 1957, something as mundane as spaghetti was "relatively unknown in the UK". (Unless we are being meta-pranked...)
The article mention "hundreds phoned in the following day to question the authenticity of the story or ask for more information about spaghetti cultivation and how they could grow their own spaghetti trees". Of course it is unclear how many of these "hundreds" called to call bullshit, and how many called to get spaghetti-growing tips. Given Aprils Fools was a well known tradition at the time, it is possible some of the callers was in on the joke.
We have no idea how many people actually believed the hoax.
This is true, but I regulary read a satire magazin - and the readers letter are quite funny and scary, because I could not believe how many people do take BS seriously. Now of course, they could all be satire, too (but elaborate one, because from seemingly real FB accounts), but maybe keep in mind, how many people did (and still do) believe Covid was a hoax. And that there is an actual flat earth society.
We are not. I grew up in Denmark in the sixties. We really weren't lacking for anything, but spaghetti strictly came out of a tin together with some strange orange tomatoish sauce.
I graduated highschool in 1977. Everybody went to Copenhagen for a night on the town. That's were I saw the first pizza of my life.
Nothing late night, of course. Everybody was soundly in bed by 22:30.
https://www.historylink.org/file/20557
> By September 1949 The Seattle Times was touting the joint and its palpable history: "For a sentimental journey to an almost-vanished Seattle, and some fine Italian food, try ... Daverso's Palace Grill ... The huge old mahogany back bar, the tiled floors and walls, and the checkered tablecloths will make you nostalgic, and the king-size menu will make you hungry. A couple of specialties: Pizza, the hot pastry that looks like a phonograph record, covered with mushrooms, cheese and tomatoes ..." (Lund, "A La Carte").
> The fact that a writer for The Seattle Times in 1949 felt obligated to describe what a pizza looks like was simply because few in the area had ever seen or tried one. As Frank Daverso would later recall: "We had to give it away for the first four years. Nobody had ever heard of it. Customers liked our spaghetti and ravioli, so we'd give 'em a sample of pizza with each order. They seemed to like pizza but just wouldn't order it. Finally, we tried advertising. Sailors and other servicemen, who had eaten pizza in the East, began coming in and soon it caught on -- but it took four long years"
Anyway, despite the amused look on my parents' faces I think I was probaly fooled, but I was only 5.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVo_wkxH9dU
It’s a family affair in Switzerland, unlike “large spaghetti plantations” in Italy.
I have to wonder what her mind conjured up once it came out as a hoax, as she'd surely told everyone close to her by then.
The description of the life cycle of ratchet screwdriver fruits remains a masterpiece.