1918 - Food And Drink

Food And Drink

Italian-born pasta maker Emanuele Ronzoni, 48, acquires American-made macaroni machinery and incorporates under his own name. Production manager for the past 12 years of a Brooklyn, N.Y., macaroni factory, Ronzoni has seen the growing demand for U.S.-made pasta products. With the help, first, of his two daughters and, later, of his three sons, he will have so much success supplying the Italian-American market with macaroni, spaghetti, and egg noodles that he will build a large Long Island City, N.Y., factory in 1925 and start selling under the Ronzoni name in 1932.

Americans call sauerkraut "liberty cabbage"; German toast becomes "French toast."

Hobart Manufacturing Co. engineer Herbert L. Johnston receives a patent April 23 for an electric mixing machine for stores and bakeries (see 1897). He will adapt it to kitchen use and will also invent electric food cutters, potato peelers, and potato slicers (thousands of young U.S. men are now peeling potatoes by hand for consumption by "doughboys").

Cadbury's acquires Joseph Fry & Sons, pioneer producer of candy bars, in the first major British candy-company consolidation.

The nickel Hershey Bar that weighed 9/16 oz. in 1908 now weighs 15/16 oz., and the company's gross sales top $35 million, up from little more than $10 million in 1915.

U.S. candy sales escalate in the second half of the year as the Food Administration permits confectioners to use 80 percent of the amount of sugar they used before the war, up from 50 percent last year. Distribution of candy to soldiers in the field has increased men's demand for sweets; more significantly, perhaps, high wages have put more money in people's pockets and there is not that much to spend it on. Industry employs more women than ever before and the chief candy buyers are women.

Jamaica's Red Stripe beer is introduced by Kingston brewers Desnoes and Geddes, whose dark, ale-like brew will give way in 1934 to a light-tasting lager.