I didn’t know a cheesecake had cheese in it!

[CormoranStrike]

Okay, not these days, cos I’m a sophisticated and cultured woman now, but I can clearly remember being utterly astonished as a teenager to find out a cheesecake had cheese in it.

In my defence, the only cheese in my house till then had been blocks of cheddar, or cheese slices. I had no idea that cheese could be anything other than orange!

What were your WTF discoveries, which seem even more bizarre through the lens of time?

I didn't know that mules were half horse and half donkey. I thought mule was just another word for donkey. Even after someone explained it to me I still didn't believe it so went off to Google. This sent me down a rabbit hole of ligers, zebroids and Camas that still blows my mind.

Rememberallball ye ayou are right it was QI

I had read before that fruit was often used to help preserve meat or mast the smell and taste of rotting meat 🤢

Gotham is a real place

The things I am learning from this thread

@sadpapercourtesan

One of the girls on my teacher training course thought wolves were mythical creatures.

She also asked what happened to the stars during the day. We told her God collected them up and put them in a little box.

That's really funny. It's made my day

@Wide

I was never also sure if mince pies had mest in them, also iced buns is the bread underneath the sane as a hot dog roll??

Iced buns would be made with a yeasted dough, same as hot dog rolls and all other kinds of bread. The difference when it's going to be used for a sweet dish is that you'd add more sugar/honey/other sweetener to the dough, and possibly milk and/or butter as well. This makes it an enriched dough, as used to make brioche, croissants and so on - also hot cross buns. Plain bread only needs flour, water, salt, yeast and possibly a little fat to improve the crumb. You can add a little sugar/honey to help the yeast get started, but with modern yeast it's not essential.

I never understand the revulsion about eating tongue and offal. If you're willing to eat meat otherwise, you're eating the animal's muscle and skin. What's so different about eating its other organs? Having said that, I'd have to brace myself to try brains, so maybe I'm being hypocritical.

[quote niceandsimple]@terrywynne
The Jewish and cheesecake connection is that during the Jewish festival of Shavuot there is a custom to eat milky foods including cheesecakes. This is to remember the fact that before receiving the tablets the Jewish people became essentially vegetarians for 3 days.[/quote]
Thank you! Always good to learn something new

@sadpapercourtesan

One of the girls on my teacher training course thought wolves were mythical creatures.

She also asked what happened to the stars during the day. We told her God collected them up and put them in a little box.

Now that is scary

Shocked that people really think that the Chanel tunnel is a tube going through the sea too.

I've never heard of the London cheesecake though so that's interesting . And yes Centre Parcs advertising definitely made it look as though it was all under a dome.

Don't get people who eat animals being willing to eat it's leg or it's chest but not it's tongue or kidneys, unless it's around the taste or texture.

@terrywynne previous poster is correct it’s eaten for Shavuot but is also just common to have. To me it’s as Jewish as having a salt beef bagel or chicken soup.

Also it’s a specific kind of cheesecake, baked with usually no flavouring except tiny bit of lemon, now often called New York cheesecake. Although weirdly to your point about tray bakes, my Gran and her mum would make theirs in a big tray! Would then be cut into slabs and delivered to each of her children every week. So rich we only ate a square inch at a time and so would last us until the next Friday.

When people were talking about euthanasia I thought they were saying youth in Asia, always used to wonder what they’d done so wrong that people were so against them

@ReggieKrait I think an awful lot of us hadn't heard of furlough until last year .

@longwayoff you need to put the philly and the jam on top of a digestive biscuit then you've made a proper mini cheesecake !

I don’t eat sweetcorn. I can’t bear the smell, and have never even tried it.

I’m 49 and THIS YEAR, my daughter showed me a video of how cornflakes are made. I love Cornflakes and had honestly never made the connection. I feel like I’ve been duped.

It's not true that spices were used to disguise the taste of rotton meat in medieval times. Spices cost a fortune, a pound of cloves was a weeks wages for a skilled worker.
Rich people had fresh meat, slaughtered shortly before consumption. They had no reason to waste expensive spices on rotten meat. Poor people didn't eat a lot of meat, they mainly ate grains, field beans and peas as protein. They couldn't afford spices.

Nothing compares with the perfection of a proper Yiddish baked cheesecake. This was the only cheesecake I knew until the cream cheese with fruit on top affairs appeared in the 1980s and, no matter how good the latter, the original is the best. Oh, for the days when I lived near a kosher patisserie.

When people were talking about euthanasia I thought they were saying youth in Asia, always used to wonder what they’d done so wrong that people were so against them

Not only that, but grease and turkey. Turkey is usually pretty dry, so why are people always so concerned about grease?

Baffling.

That for years I'd been struggling in and out of a soaking wet swim suit when I needed a wazz when all I had to do was pull the gusset to the side. This really was a eureka moment for me and I was 48 when I realised!

Furlough has a long history in military use, and I had come across it in books and films enough times that I don't remember ever having looked it up, but I must have done at some point in my childhood.

I remember Mum boiling a tongue, then when it cooled enough, we had to peel off the outer skin before it got pushed into an old biscuit tin with a weight on top to press it to shape for a few days. I was never that keen on it, but it was a favourite with Dad - and I agree, if you're going to eat meat, why not tongue? It's just a big muscle, same as other cuts of meat are (excepting offal.)

I think Leberkäse in some parts of Germany does contain some liver. I assume it certainly did originally, hence the name, similar to mincemeat. It's odd how some recipes change but don't change their names once they have entirely lost their original ingredient for which they are named.

I knew cheesecake had cheese in, because it's something I'd seen being made from childhood. I'd not heard of London cheesecake, though, and I'm not rushing out to find one. I assume I did see it at some point when I lived there, but probably just ignored it. Although I had not a penny to spare in those days, so didn't hang around pastry shops or spend any money that wasn't entirely necessary.

I’m 49 and THIS YEAR, my daughter showed me a video of how cornflakes are made. I love Cornflakes and had honestly never made the connection. I feel like I’ve been duped.

What are you saying @UnitedRoad? I love cornflakes, hate sweetcorn with a passion. I don't want to research this now lest it ruins all my future breakfasts!

I thought it was trickle treat too!

On an iPhone the way to access the Ctrl+F equivalent is to pull down at the top to bring up the address or search bar and type in the word. The drop-down menu will say how often the word appears on the page and you can jump to each instance of it.

Does anyone know if there's an Android equivalent? I've often wanted to do Ctrl+F on my phone (though not quite enough that I've googled...)

^We were banned from saying, "user friendly" because what is friendly to one isn't to another.&

"Unix is user-friendly. It's just picky about its friends."

I wish some colleagues would realise that just because they do things one way doesn't mean everyone else does.

^Does anyone know if there's an Android equivalent&

I googled. If you click the three dots/lines on the page menu, there's a find on page option. This will make my life better.

Proper red velvet cake was red because it is made with cocoa, buttermilk and a bit of vinegar. There is a chemical reaction that turns it the red colour.

Now they add red colouring to enhance it, but it's why red velvet should taste chocolatey.

For all the dandelion peeps. :)

DH didn't believe me that every road has its own postcode.

All the more satisfying as I grew up in Ireland where until recently there were no postcodes and he grew up here.

What are you saying @UnitedRoad? I love cornflakes, hate sweetcorn with a passion. I don't want to research this now lest it ruins all my future breakfasts!

Basically put a sweetcorn kernel on your work top and flatten it with a rolling pin.

Then bake in the oven.

You do know rice krispies are rice don't you?

And why these are called 'breakfast cereal'?

It does amaze people from countries with postcodes/zipcodes that cover a large area that a UK postcode can take you close enough to just a few houses.

The good news is I can now try red velvet cake.

The bad news is I've missed out on it for years because some bastard who thought they were being funny told me it was made with beetroot. And I believed them.