With the recent trend of hard-boiled eggs, potatoes, and other types of food flights taking over the internet, I realized how many strange food combinations that people make. I know that there are some weird combinations I’ve grown up with, so I asked some of my friends and family what their favorite odd food combinations are and why they ended up liking them. Most of my friends found this combination from grandparents, parents, and other friends. However, some of them made these combinations due to seeing a trend, it was all they had in their fridge or cabinet, or simply because they liked both and decided to mash them together. After asking my friends and family, I decided to try out their odd combinations and rank them from favorite to least favorite.
Starting out, tomato slices with sugar, scrambled eggs with ketchup, carrots with peanut butter, and tortilla chips with peanut butter were my favorites. I’m a little biased with these choices because I grew up eating them though. My grandpa used to always make a little plate of tomatoes with sugar for him and I when we ate family dinners together. My other grandpa and my dad would have ketchup on their scrambled eggs every morning when we would come down to visit, and that passed down to my sister and I. My best friend would eat carrots and peanut butter growing up, learning that from her mom, and I grew to love that combination too. Lastly, my friend eats tortilla chips with peanut butter and I grew up eating Ritz crackers with peanut butter, which both taste really similar, so I enjoyed that combination a lot.
Moving on to combinations that were fine, but I wouldn’t eat on a regular basis were cantaloupe with salt and pepper, Hot Cheetos with cream cheese and pepperoni, pickles with whipped cream, hard-boiled eggs with sugar, barbeque sauce with mac and cheese, corned beef hash with mac and cheese, cucumbers and sugar, and fried fish with ketchup. My friend started to put salt and pepper on her cantaloupe because she saw her grandpa doing it. It reminded me of the tomatoes and sugar that I eat. I also heard it’s common for people to put salt on their watermelon. Another friend saw a trend of people eating Hot Cheetos with cream cheese and pepperoni online, and honestly it wasn’t too bad. Some of my other friends would dip their Hot Cheetos in cream cheese or sour cream so it wasn’t too strange of a combination to me. This same friend also saw the pickles and whipped cream online as well, and it was fine, but nothing special really. Maybe the combination would be better with sweet instead of dill pickles. My cousin’s grandma would eat hard boiled eggs with sugar all the time when she was growing up, so she started to as well. Typically, I put salt and pepper on my hard boiled eggs, but this wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. Another friend really enjoyed putting barbeque sauce on their mac and cheese when they were little, and it stuck with them up to now. I’ve done this combination before and it’s not too bad, but I think it needs to be with the right mac and cheese, like Kraft. Another friend likes both corned beef hash and mac and cheese, so they decided to mash them together one night and it came to be a staple in their diet now. I like both of these, but I’m not sure how I felt about them together. I do mix my scrambled eggs with corned beef hash though. The same friend who eats carrots and peanut butter also learned to eat cucumbers and sugar together from her mom. This combination was fine, but all I could taste was the sugar, and honestly, I’m not mad about it. All in all, it was a refreshing little treat. Lastly, it’s not that odd, but my mom would eat fried fish with ketchup when she was younger at school, and she still will do it to this day. This combination was fine as well, however, I much prefer to eat my fried fish with tartar sauce.
Coming in at my least favorite combinations are bleu cheese with apples, and cottage cheese with diced onions or fruits. When my mom comes down to visit, she loves to go to Trader Joe’s and buy the bleu cheese and roasted pecan dip. Last time she visited was when the fixation started, she would slice an apple and dive right in. I know that cheese and apples go very nicely together, but I’m not a fan of bleu cheese, so that is why this combination was one of my least favorites. I know that it is really common for people to mix cottage cheese with different fruits, my mom mixes hers with pineapple, pears, peaches, etc. However, my grandma used to mix cottage cheese with diced white onion, and that was one of my least favorite combinations through this entire experience. My mom told me a story of when she was little, my grandma would make this concoction and keep it in the fridge in the same container as the plain cottage cheese was in. When my mom would go to grab some of what she thought was plain cottage cheese, she was met with a big bite of onions. I’m a fan of onions, but not a fan of cottage cheese, and this combination just was not for me.
What I learned from this little experiment is that a lot of the odd food combinations my friends and family eat came from them seeing other people in their family eat. I will say, it was really interesting to learn what everyone likes to mash together, and some of the combinations were surprisingly very good. I recommend trying out some of these combinations, because you never know what new snack you might like, don’t knock it till you try it.