Did yoy know: pickles were once used as a form of payment?
Imagine fighting a war and getting your paycheck in cucumbers.. I digress:
pickles were a form of payment or barter at various points in history.
Bartering for essentials: In the 1920s, Illinois pickle farmers Omar and Cora Fanning bartered their surplus sweet-and-sour pickles for staple goods like bread and butter at their local grocery store. This led to their eventual trademarking of the "Fanning's Bread and Butter Pickles" brand.
Wages for laborers: Some records indicate that workers in ancient Mesopotamia received pickled cucumbers as part of their wages. This made sense, as the high-salt food helped restore electrolytes lost during hard labor.
Incentives for preservation: In 1809, Napoleon Bonaparte offered 12,000 francs (worth over $250,000 today) to anyone who could develop a method for preserving food for his troops. Pickles and other preserved items were a significant part of the winning proposal, which contributed to the invention of modern canning.
Health and trade in the New World: During the Age of Exploration, Christopher Columbus reportedly gave pickles to his sailors to prevent scurvy on transoceanic voyages. He even grew cucumbers in Haiti to restock his supply, using them as a valuable trade good. Early street food and currency: In the mid-1600s, Dutch settlers in New York (modern-day Brooklyn) sold pickled cucumbers from barrels as one of the first street foods, using them as a form of commerce
So were tulips. ..which is why Durch currency was then called "florins". The name was later changed to "guilders", but they were still called "florins" as well. This became the source of a one-liner in the movie "The Princess Bride" about the battles between the Guilders and the Florins (the joke being that guilders=florins).
