Kansas City Food Blog

​Not all inventions have managed to improve our lives. In fact, some should have been taken out behind the Patent Office and forgotten. And when Life magazine set out to find 30 dumb inventions, a few food choices naturally made the list.

The prime example is something called Honegar:

Inventor of a honey and vinegar mixture, called Honegar, Dr. DeForest C. Jarvis. Honegar was said to be a folk remedy for aches and pains, though it mainly sounds like a cure for lack of nausea.

With a label that evoked a bee hive and a consistency that mirrored that of caster oil, this seems like an invention that might have warned off would-be drinkers. Apparently it's still made -- here's a current recipe that " tastes better than it sounds." And those who drink a cider-vinegar version swear that it a homeopathic cure for arthritis. 

While there is some support for honegar, the external turkey roaster may be a tougher sell. The contraption requires a whole bird be placed on a spit that resembles a triton or garden weasel in the center of a series of what look like floodlights or heat lamps. It's essentially an open-air fry warmer. If this was the future of kitchens as envisioned in 1966, we'd all need different methods for food safety.  

On the other end of the food invention spectrum lies Magic Shell, the syrupy dessert topping that hardens when it comes into contact with ice cream. A few years back, Chow explained the key ingredient in the hot fudge-like-substance: it's coconut oil. These are the kinds of breakthroughs we need in food science -- desserts that can transform from liquid to solid.

[Image via Flickr: *micky]