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Here are today’s five food things to know about biscuits and gravy:

Biscuits and gravy is a popular breakfast dish in the South. It consists of a doughy biscuit covered in sausage or sawmill gravy, made for the drippings of cooked pork sausage and flavored with black pepper.

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The meal emerged after the American Revolutionary War, when food stock was in short supply. 

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It became a popular dish for Southern plantation workers because the ingredients were cheap and in abundance. 

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The word “biscuit” comes from a Latin word “bis” which means to cook. 

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It’s also known as a “gravy biscuit.” 

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Today’s Food History

on this day in…

  • 1554 Hieronymus Bock died. A German botanist whose work contributed to the transition from medieval beliefs to modern science.
  • 1741 Jethro Tull died. He was an English agriculturalist and inventor whose ideas were instrumental in the development of modern English agriculture. One of his inventions was a horse drawn seed planting drill that sowed 3 even rows of seeds at once. (1701). The music group ‘Jethro Tull’ was named for him.
  • 1858 Edwin T. Holmes sells the first electric burglar alarm in the U.S., in Boston, Massachusetts. His workshop was later used by Alexander Graham Bell.
  • 1895 Carl Peter Henrik Dam was born. Dam was a Danish biochemist who discovered vitamin K in 1939.
  • 1927 Erma Bombeck was born. Writer, humorist, you will find some of her quotes about family and food.
  • 1931 Alka Seltzer was introduced.
  • 1985 Nathan Pritikin died. A nutritionist who believed that exercise and a low fat, high unrefined carbohydrate diet helped reverse his own heart disease. He founded the Pritikin Longevity Center in 1976.
  • 1989 The USDA approved ‘Simplesse,’ a low calorie fat substitute.
  • 1994 Whirlpool began manufacturing a refrigerator that was significantly more efficient, and did not use freon.