I was sitting in the movie theatre eating popcorn and Milk Duds while watching the previews of upcoming attractions when my wife asked how I could combine two seemingly opposite food items. I told her that Milk Duds, when eaten simultaneously with popcorn, are very tasty. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.
While waiting for the feature presentation I began to think of other strange food combinations that I have eaten through the years. Since childhood, I have dipped my potato chips into applesauce. Like Milk Duds and popcorn, the combination of the salt in the chips and sugar in the applesauce play well off of each other. I have always put ketchup on butter beans and now my children have now acquired a taste for their father’s strange legume-meets-tomato-condiment pairing.
I began to wonder what other people might eat in the way of strange food pairings, so I logged on to my Facebook page and posed the question: “What are the strange food combinations that you like to eat?” (Facebook, by the way, is a social networking website, and the greatest timesuck on the World Wide Web. I’m addicted).
Within a matter of hours, I had received over one hundred responses to my query. I learned quickly that butter beans and ketchup, or Milk Duds and popcorn, are tame in comparison to what some folks are combining.
Many of the entries were typical combinations that I have seen through the years— lots of potato chips inside sandwiches and hot sauce or ketchup on eggs. Heinz 57 and A-1 sauce made multiple appearances and are being used daily severely alter the flavor of hundreds of formerly good-tasting food items.
Some people put yellow mustard on graham crackers; others dip barbeque potato chips into chocolate soft-serve ice cream. My friend, Marcia, reminded me of the butter-sugar-white bread sandwiches my mother used to make.
The main offenders were the Three P’s: Pickles, peanut butter, and potato chips. People all over the South are abusing these three food items on a daily basis.
One of the more interesting discoveries in my informal survey was that many people— most of whom don’t know each other— dip French fries into their Wendy’s Frosty.
Some of the strange food pairings sounded good. My Facebook friend Kevin mixes pineapple and cream cheese. Another tops their pancakes with orange marmalade. Anne Marie melts Hershey’s miniatures on top of saltine crackers. I have seen people place peanuts into bottles of Coca Cola for years, but how about Red Hots into Coke Icees? I might try it.
I also learned that everyone thinks that they hail from the town where the French-dressing-on-pizza craze began. Some claim to know the person who started the strange coupling, others claim they are the ones who made the actual discovery. I don’t know who first dipped their pizza into French or Catalina dressing, or where it was first done, but I first ate it in 1984 after a friend told me that she liked it that way, so whoever can trace the practice to the first Regan administration, or earlier, can stake the claim.
People professed their love for all manner of strange food pairings, some were longstanding family traditions, and others were complete accidents. There were so many entries, that I decided to publish the top ten most-offensive food combinations from my Facebook friends, here:
10. Peanut butter on a hamburger— Heather S.
9. Chocolate syrup in orange juice— Amy W.
8. Bacon bits in orange sherbet— Unknown
7. Banana, cheese, ham, and mayonnaise sandwich— Elizabeth B.
6. Peanut butter, crackers, and spaghetti— Jan M.
5. Vinegar and lettuce on pizza— Christina G.
4. Purple hull peas, cornbread, and Heinz 57 (a dish called “Bitty”)— Leigh V.
3. Scrambled eggs, grape jelly, mayo, and hot sauce on biscuits— Cindy W.
2. Potted meat, scrambled egg, and mayonnaise sandwich— Darla P.
… and the number one most offensive food combination (submitted by Amy, but eaten by her husband, William):
1. Pickled beef tongue and mayonnaise on a cracker