Chow Down Chicago: Good Eats from the Windy City

  Jeppson's Malört was once a niche liqueur consumed mainly within Chicago's Swedish community. Now it's a Chicago favorite that can be found throughout the city and beyond. What caused this change? Turns out all it took was for someone to promote the comedic value of this extremely bitter-tasting drink. Malört is a Swedish liqueur similar to absinthe that is made with wormwood, a bitter herb. It has traditionally been used to treat intestinal parasites and other maladies such as indigestion, hangovers, and nausea. The word malört is Swedish for wormwood .  In the 1920s, Swedish immigrant Carl Jeppson started making his own version of Malört. (He came from a region in Sweden where wormwood grows wild.) Jeppson sold his liqueur door to door in Chicago's Swedish community on the North Side. He got around Prohibition laws by marketing his product as a tonic to cure stomach worms and parasites. Law enforcement concluded that because of its awful taste nobody would drink Mal...

Before the Chicago-style hot dog, there was the Depression dog. A more scaled-down version of the Chicago-style hot dog with its many toppings, the Depression dog is topped with only mustard, onions, sport peppers, and sometimes relish. It comes on a plain bun and is usually served with french fries that are either wrapped up with the dog or tossed on top of it. As the name suggests, Depression dogs were popular in Chicago around the time of the Great Depression (1929-1941). When looking at the origins of the Depression dog, it becomes clear that hot dogs and immigrants are closely linked. German immigrants brought sausage to the United States, and hot dogs became a popular street food in all major American cities that had German immigrant populations. The name “hot dog” was coined around 1890 and came from claims at the time that immigrants ate dogs and cats. (History repeats itself.)   During the Great Depression, vegetable cart owners in Chicago would sell hot dogs and fries wi...

Most people know the nursery rhyme "Hot Cross Buns," but lesser known is just how far back in history these treats go. Since ancient times, hot cross buns have been a way to celebrate faith, spring, and new life.  Ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans offered small round breads with cross symbols to their gods and goddesses. Depending on the celebration, the cross symbolized the four seasons, the four quarters of the moon, or the horns of the sacrificial ox. In Greece, these ceremonial breads were called boun , which is where the word "bun" comes from. Pagan Anglo-Saxons baked crossed cakes to honor their goddess Eostre, who was celebrated with a springtime festival. Some elements of this festival were later adopted by Christians as Easter. In 1361, Christian monk Brother Thomas Rocliffe of St. Albans, England, developed a recipe for what he called "Alban buns" and distributed these crossed buns to the poor on Good Friday. Now the buns took on a Christian ...

Twinkies are one of the most popular snack cakes in America. Invented in 1930 in suburban Chicago, the Twinkie has enjoyed worldwide popularity and is still going strong today. The Twinkie was invented by James Dewar, a bakery manager at the Continental Baking Company in River Forest. Dewar wanted to find a use for the machines that made strawberry shortcakes that were dormant when strawberries weren’t in season. He made banana cream-filled cakes because bananas were plentiful year-round. The name Twinkie was inspired by a billboard that Dewar saw for Twinkle Toe Shoes. A pack of two Twinkies cost only a nickel, which helped their popularity since it was the Great Depression. The Twinkie soon took off.   In the 1940s, production using bananas was affected by World War II rationing, so the company instead used vanilla cream for Twinkie filling. It became popular, so they stuck with it. The Continental Baking Company was eventually purchased by Hostess, and production moved to a Sc...

Light, fluffy Pullman bread hearkens back to the days of luxury travel on Chicago's Pullman railcars in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when the bread was a staple of the fine cuisine served in Pullman’s chandeliered dining cars. The Chicago-based Pullman company favored the use of a special rectangular bread pan with a sliding flat lid that was compact and easy to store on the train cars. Even though this type of pan was already being used in the baking world to make pain de mie sandwich bread, it became so closely associated with Pullman trains that it came to be known as the Pullman pan. Bread baked in this type of pan was ideal for use in Pullman kitchens because both the bread and the pans stacked well and made for an efficient use of space.  Bakers use the Pullman pan today to bake soft sandwich bread with an even crumb, a fine texture, and minimal crust.  The Pullman Palace Car Company was founded in 1867 by George Pullman with the goal of making train travel a more co...