Table of Contents (start here!)
Discover more from Snack Stack
Table of Contents (start here!)
Your handy guide to every Snack Stack post. Start here if you're looking for something specific or just want to browse the goods.
Hello, Snackers. This is a full inventory of the pantry, which is to say your easy-access guide to every Snack Stack post I’ve published since the beginning of 2022. I’m working on adding all posts since this newsletter began in May 2021; I’ll also keep the list updated as time goes on.
My hope is that you’ll keep coming back to check the pantry and sample some treats, snackbrowsing as an alternative to doomscrolling. Enjoy!
(Also, I’m always open to suggestions! Email me at hello@snackstack.net or find me on Twitter @douglasmack.)
— Doug Mack, Snack Fan
Posts are listed in descending chronological order within each category.
Posts with a star (⭐) are my own favorites.
Posts with a lock (🔒) are available only to paid subscribers. If that’s you, thanks for your support! If you’d like that to be you, go ahead and sign up for a paid subscription, please and thank you. It’s $5 per month or $52 per year, which is a lot less than you pay for actual snacks!
Categories
Investigations (meticulously researched pieces on the origins or cultural significance of a particular food, often revealing new information that debunks the established origin story)
Explorations (spin-the-globe Google Map journeys in which we drop into a random place and see what food stories we can find)
Introductions (quick intros to snacks and their cultural histories, along with videos and random interesting tangential things I found in my research)
Essays, lists, and random things (personal essays, interviews, round-ups of other snack writing, and other stuff that doesn’t fit elsewhere)
1. Investigations
Bear-shaped honey bottles (USA)
The snacks of 1923 (USA)
⭐Pizza Rolls (USA)
Chick-o-Sticks (USA)
Pop Rocks (USA)
Angels on horseback (USA)
The Explorers Club and the wooly mammoth meal (USA)
Gummi worms (Europe and the USA)
Snacks in a soda can (USA in the 1990s)
The great Midwest cheeses duel of 1935 (USA)
The technology of waffles (USA, mostly) (guest post by Jeffrey Rubel)
Toaster waffles and toaster pastries (USA, mostly)
⭐The contentious history of official state foods (USA)
Jell-O Pudding Pops (USA)
⭐Everything bagels (USA, mostly)
Steamed hams, both meme and reality (USA, mostly)
Baking with crushed crackers (USA, mostly)
Baked/fried ice cream (USA and France)
Cheese straws (USA, England)
History and methods of sandwich-cutting (worldwide)
Communion wafer leftovers (also known as host cuttings) (Québec)
Dog biscuits (USA, England)
“Fun-size” foods (USA)
Ice cream trucks (USA)
Ketchup chips (podcast version) (Canada)
🔒Chocolate Easter bunnies (USA)
Jiffy Pop and E-Z Pop popcorn (USA)
Star-Spangled Ice Cream (USA)
Goldfish-swallowing fad (USA)
⭐Square-cut pizza (USA)
Blue raspberry flavor (USA)
⭐Strawberry bon-bons and other “old-fashioned” candy (USA)
🔒Bubble gum (USA)
The curious battle between Hershey’s Ice Cream and Hershey’s Chocolate (USA)
Seven-layer dip (USA)
⭐Pavlova and a gator-loving ballerina (Australia, New Zealand, USA)
President Andrew Jackson’s 1,400-pound block of cheese (USA)
Pop Rocks (USA)
2021
Handi-Snacks (USA)
Ants on a log (USA)
🔒The Explorers Club and the Wooly Mammoth (USA)
Singles by Gerber (USA)
Sun Chips (USA)
Bugles (USA)
2. Explorations
2021
The snack you find for yourself (a Choose Your Own Adventure post)
3. Introductions
🔒Sitostick (deep-fried turkey on a stick from the Netherlands)
🔒Bombay Mix (dry snack mix including crunchy chickpea noodles, fried lentils, and nuts; from India)
🔒Tiger bread (crunchy roll from the Netherlands and Great Britain or maybe the West Coast of the USA)
🔒Beer cheese (cheesy spread from Kentucky, USA)
🔒Burek (spinach-filled pastry/pie from the Balkans, the Middle East, and Central Asia)
🔒Dosa (crepe of sorts made using a batter of ground black lentils and rice; from India)
🔒Somlói galuska (layered cake from Hungary)
🔒Momo (dumpling from Nepal)
🔒Conkies (sweet tamales from Barbados)
🔒Fruitcake in Kolkata (it tastes the same as other fruitcake … but the story behind it is fascinating)
🔒Caliente (chickpea pie from Morocco)
🔒Coconut fingers (small cakes from the island of St. Helena)
🔒Glamorgan sausage (“sausage” made with extinct cheese from Wales)
🔒Kama bars (fake chocolate from Estonia)
🔒Barbajuan (hand pie from Monaco)
Stargazy pie (fish-filled pie from Cornwall, England)
🔒Finger steaks (deep-fried steak strips from Idaho, USA)
🔒Scallop pie (scallop-filled hand pie from Hobart, Tasmania)
🔒Ogura toast (toast with adzuki bean paste from Nagoya, Japan)
🔒Chipa (roll from Paraguay)
🔒Zapiekanki (baguette pizza from Poland)
🔒Cholado (elaborate cold drink from Valle del Cauca, Colombia)
🔒Gato (various fried fritter-like snacks from Mauritius)
🔒Pylsa/Pulsa (Icelandic hot dogs)
🔒Calentita (pancake/flatbread from Gibraltar)
🔒Fricassée (sandwich from Tunisia)
🔒⭐Pav bhaji (vegetable curry with a soft roll from Mumbai, India)
🔒Bánh xèo (“sizzling pancake” from Vietnam)
🔒Il Sospiro di Bisceglie (possibly scandalous pastry from Bisceglie, Italy)
🔒The foods of the 1964 World’s Fair (New York City, USA)
🔒Baursak (fried dough from Kazakhstan)
🔒⭐Klek convenience stores (Sofia, Bulgaria)
🔒French bread pizza (food truck snack from Ithaca, New York, USA)
🔒German chocolate cake (dessert from Texas, USA)
🔒Ovos moles (pastry from Aveiro, Portugal)
🔒Cadbury Guarana Boost chocolate bars (caffeinated candy bar from Great Britain)
🔒Blaa (breakfast roll from Ireland)
🔒Koura koura (cookie from Plateau-Central, Burkina Faso)
🔒Kalakukko (fish-filled hand pie from Finland)
🔒Kilishi (meat jerky from West Africa)
🔒Satay (grilled meat from Southeast Asia)
🔒Dulse (seaweed from Iceland and the British Isles)
🔒Bulz/urs de mămăligă (grilled polenta balls from Romania)
🔒⭐Sān dàpào/Three Big Cannons (sweet, loud street food from Chengdu, China)
🔒Kue lapis (layered cake from Indonesia)
🔒Tree-climbing goats (Souss Valley of Morocco)
🔒Gatsby sandwich (Cape Town, South Africa)
🔒Pastel de Chaves (hand pie from Chaves, Portugal)
🔒The snacks of the Great Depression (USA)
🔒Youtiao (pastry from China)
🔒Kürtőskalács and other chimney cakes (carnival pastries from Hungary and Romania)
🔒Kerak telor (omelet from Jakarta, Indonesia)
🔒Karjalanpiirakka (hand pie from Finland and Russia)
2021
⭐Donair (a variation of gyros from Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada)
🔒Møsbrømlefse (flatbread with a sweet filling from the far north of Norway)
🔒Black cake (dense dessert from Massachusetts, USA and various Caribbean islands)
🔒Lucia buns (breakfast/snack roll from Sweden)
🔒Coxinha (royal hand pie from Brazil)
Fruitcake in Kolkata (Christmastime treat from India)
Takis (crunchy chip snack from Mexico and USA)
4. Essays, lists, and random things
🔒The snacks “invented” by a chatbot (in which we test the limits of AI by asking for new recipes)
⭐A brief history of pie-throwing (featuring jilted lovers, political protests, Hollywood stars, and other food-fighters)
⭐How toothpicks got fancy (the curious history of a tiny teeth-cleaning tool that became an elaborate fashion accessory and a fancy food-skewer)
⭐A history of midnight snacks (how late-night meals reflect a changing society)
The root-beer-selling, island-living “Florence Nightingale of the Northwoods” (the story of Dorothy Molter, a legend of the Boundary Waters)
A history of New Year’s Eve snacks
A history of awkward dinner conversations (advice learned the hard way by presidents, assassins, transcendentalists, and other people for whom chitchat got weird)
In search of snacks in soccer cities (a quest to find delicious snacks in each of the 32 countries participating in the men’s World Cup)
🔒The snack stands that sustain us (six stories about public markets around the world)
A timeline of Halloween treats (a look at the evolution of sweets associated with the holiday of the last century)
⭐The snack that saved me (a personal history of Sport Shakes, chronic illness, and the pursuit of normalcy)
🔒The snack that went to court (the true tales of four legal matters where a burrito was crucial evidence)
🔒The snacks at the patent office (a look at the patent filings for Nachosaurus, the Fantastic Fruit Holder, pretzel spoons, and other real snack-related inventions)
⭐The snacks at the Minnesota State Fair (how the evolution of novelty foods at the fair reflects the state’s demographic changes)
The snack that supported a war (freedom fries, cancel culture, and the legacy of a most ridiculous rebranding effort)
🔒The sound of snacks (how what we hear changes our perception of what we eat)
The snacks of political protest (Paschal's soul food, Greek yogurt, Argentine pastries, and other fuel for the fight)
Notes on Cheez-It Tostadas and [insert other novelty food here] (some thoughts on corporate novelty foods that desperately want to go viral on social media)
⭐Chocolate chip cookies and other lies (notes on food origin stories and the mythology of the things we eat)
🔒The snacks made by AI (in which we ask an artificial-intelligence-powered art bot to make some snack-themed art)
🔒The lunches of 1955 (excerpts from a LIFE magazine story on what people were eating around the USA)
The snacks on my shelf (a discussion of the food books that have influenced me)
⭐The snacks students sell in schools (an interview with a researcher who studies the sociology of illicit snack sales in a Chicago-area high school)
🔒⭐The snacks that break the law (secret s'mores, off-the-books churros, smuggled Gardetto's, and other tales of illicit snacks around the world)
The snacks that weren't in Prince’s fridge (Dunkaroos, yak milk, and the long life of an April Fools' Day joke, Minnesota, USA)
The snack stand at the head of the 1970s Hippie Trail (a brief history of the Pudding Shop in Istanbul, Turkey)
⭐Cincinnati is the best food city in the USA. Maybe. (Notes on food rankings, understanding the Midwest, and what we talk about when we talk about culinary scenes.)
🔒The snacks that are fried, fried, and more fried (a round-up of interesting stories about fried foods)
🔒The snacks endorsed by Salvador Dalí (that time the artist made an extremely odd TV ad for chocolate bars)
⭐The snack that comforts me (a deeply personal essay on microwave nachos, anxiety, and parenting during a pandemic)
Before you go
Snack Stack is funded entirely by support from readers like you. It requires many hours of research, writing, and reporting, along with resources like newspaper database subscriptions and books used for research. If you enjoy the newsletter, please chip in to help me continue this work. Thanks so much.
A paid subscription is just $5 per month (or $52 per year)—an amazing deal for such a feast of delicious, meticulously-crafted content.
Table of Contents (start here!)
As a newer subscriber I appreciate the roundup as well as the breakdown of categories. Thanks for sharing!