Can you think of any English expressions about food? It's a piece of cake! Food expressions are all around us. We can even find them on the breakfast table. Take a look, for example, at the popular Western breakfast dish, Eggs Benedict. It is made with eggs, bread, Canadian bacon, salt, and sometimes cheese. Did you know that each of these ingredients has its own English expression with a story behind it? Let's find out more!

Long ago, some crowds were overly responsive to theatrical performances. When they did not like the performance, they threw things at the performer, sometimes even eggs! Needless to say, having egg on the face was very embarrassing. Not only did the appearance look funny, but it also meant that the performer had given a poor performance. Today, we no longer throw eggs at people on stage, but we still use the expression egg on one's face to mean an embarrassing situation.

Although bread has fed mankind for over 30,000 years, it was not mass-produced until the Industrial Revolution. Even after the Industrial Revolution brought the convenience of factory-produced bread to the dining table, people still had to cut it by hand. Otto Frederick Rohwedder from Iowa invented the first bread slicing machine and put it into service in 1928. Several bread companies used his machine and advertised sliced bread as "the greatest forward step in the baking industry since bread was wrapped." From there, the expression the greatest thing since sliced bread was coined to refer to a wonderful invention.

There was a couple living in England in the 1100s. The couple loved each other so much that a priest awarded them some bacon. From then on, any couple who did not argue with each other for a year and a day was also awarded bacon. Since bacon was very expensive at that time, the expression to bring home the bacon took on the meaning of making money for the family.

The expression the big cheese most likely came from the U.S. in the early 20th century. Back then, it was common practice to display a big wheel of cheese at a large public event for some time. It would then be ceremonially cut up at a later date by a very important person. For example, in 1911, US President William Howard Taft cut up a big cheese wheel at an event in Chicago. Gradually, the expression the big cheese took on the meaning of a person of great power or importance.

Long, long ago, there lived a king who feared being poisoned by his enemies. So, he created a recipe for a remedy against poison. His recipe contained seventy-two ingredients, including leaves of trees and nuts. In the last line of his recipe, he wrote with a grain of salt. This line became very famous since the grain of salt was the deciding ingredient in protecting against being poisoned. Later, the expression take something with a grain of salt came to have the meaning that a little bit of doubt can help protect against being poisoned by inaccurate or misleading information.