Learning from a mistake is smart, but the luckiest of people earn from them as well.

Consider young Frank Epperson.

One evening in 1905, this 11-year-old from San Francisco mixed up water and soda powder, but forgot the drink - stir stick and all - on the porch. Temperatures dropped to record lows overnight, and Frank awoke to find that his fruit-flavored drink had frozen to the stick.

Eighteen years later, Epperson patented the "Eppsicle," but his children dubbed them Popsicles.

Most new foods and recipes are the result of tireless tinkering or exacting invention by cooks or food companies seeking fresh flavors, textures or combinations. But recipes and foods discovered purely by accident are as rare as a hard freeze in the Golden Gate City and as unique as a man who turns a youthful blunder into a frozen treat millions enjoy on hot summer days.

Toasted ravioli is one such serendipitous slip.

According to lore, sometime in the early 1930s or '40s, a cook at an Italian restaurant in St. Louis accidentally dropped an order of ravioli into oil instead of water. Instead of tossing out the mistake, the pasta was left for the kitchen staff, which declared the fried "pillows" delicious.

Exactly who created the dish and which restaurant began serving it first is a matter of debate, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, which declared the recipe's origins "lost in the fog of time," last year.

But murky beginnings suit some just fine.

"My father, along with aunts and uncles, started a fruit stand in St. Louis in 1929," said Carmen Lombardo, whose family now operates four eateries in the city - all serving toasted ravioli. "He built a restaurant in 1934, and we started toasting it right off the bat. That dish has helped the restaurant business grow."

Lombardo's version includes hand-made crescent-shaped ravioli, traditionally meat-filled. The pasta is dredged in Parmesan cheese and bread crumbs, then fried crisp. Lombardo's serves its ravioli with homemade marinara, but St. Louis chefs are known to change fillings and sauces.

The Post-Dispatch credits a now-defunct restaurant owned by Angelo Oldani as the birthplace of toasted ravioli, but little else is clear - except for the appetizer's popularity.

"You know there's a lot of confusion about who started what when. What really matters now is how it's made," said Lombardo, the second-generation restaurateur, who sounds as if he should be cooking for Tony Soprano. "We still make it the way we did when I was a little kid and started working in the restaurant: hand-made. Ours is big and crescent-shaped, which helps it stand out. And our secret spice and beef blend are unique, too."

It doesn't surprise food buff Lynne Olver that the story behind St. Louis' most famous appetizer remains nebulous.

"Food history and lore often perpetuate myths that quite simply are not true," said Olver, a reference librarian in New Jersey who created The Food Timeline, a Web site devoted to food history, everything from water and prehistoric roast pork to the Krispy Kreme doughnut.

Olver draws a clear line between deliberate inventions and accidental discoveries.

"Mistakes are a slightly different story," she said. "They happen when someone purposely sets out to accomplish one goal which, inadvertently, results in another. The 'oops factor,' if you will."

Take refrigerator rolls.

In the early 1930s, Louisville, Ky., baker Lively Willoughby wrapped unbaked biscuits in foil, stuffed them into cardboard tubes and stored them in the fridge.

When the dough was taken out for baking, it exploded. According to the Encyclopedia of Consumer Brands, Willoughby's son had to stand on a ladder to scrape the dough off the ceiling with a putty knife.

Bread, popcorn, beer and yogurt also fall into the marvelous mistake category, Olver said.

Snack time has been a huge beneficiary of lucky discoveries.

In the 1850s, George Crum was an irascible Saratoga Springs, N.Y., cook known for sabotaging dishes that were returned to the kitchen.

When a customer complained that his fried potatoes were not sufficiently crisp, he is said to have sliced potatoes thinner and thinner and salted them so thoroughly as to make them inedible. But the customer loved them.

In the 1930s, dietitian and baker Ruth Wakefield was trying to make a favorite cookie recipe but was out of baking chocolate.

She had a bar of bittersweet chocolate, which she cut into bits and incorporated into the dough. Wakefield expected the chocolate to melt while baking, but to her surprise the morsels kept their shape and added a new chocolate taste and texture to the cookies.

Decades later, no one can mistake the hypnotic draw of chocolate chip cookies baking in the oven or the satisfying salty crunch of a fresh chip as anything other than delicious.

On the Web web.mit.edu/invent/i-archive.html

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You can learn a lot by messing up

Other foods and recipes found by "accident":

• Cheese puffs: According to the Food Timeline, created by librarian and food buff Lynne Olver, the invention of cheese puffs - puffed corn coated with cheese flavoring - was discovered quite by accident right in Wisconsin.

During the 1930s, the Flakall Co. of Beloit created a machine to crush grains to produce animal feed without sharp hulls and grain dust. One day, Edward Wilson noticed that workers poured moistened corn kernels into the machine to reduce clogging. He found that when the flaking machine ran continuously, it got quite hot. The moist cornmeal came out of the machine in puffy ribbons, hardened as it hit the air and fell to the ground. Wilson took the ribbons home, added oil and flavor and made the first cheese curls. Early versions were called Korn Kurls.

• Kellogg cereals: In the early 1900s, Will Kellogg was working at the Battle Creek (Mich.) Sanitarium. Trying to create a bread substitute for patients, Kellogg boiled some wheat and left it out. Though the mush didn't resemble dough, Kellogg rolled it out, and the wheat berries separated into flat flakes. He put them in the oven, where they became crispy. Patients liked the flakes so much, they often asked to take some home. He later experimented with other grains.

• Bird's Eye frozen foods: Clarence Birdseye was a naturalist for the U.S. government stationed in the Arctic, where he observed the culture of Native Americans. He saw that the combination of ice, wind and abominably cold temperatures would instantly freeze foods, especially fish. Unlike other frozen foods, these "flash"-frozen foods tasted fresher.

• Lee and Perrin's Worcestershire sauce: Two chemists in Worcester, England, were approached by a customer to create a sauce he'd sampled in India. John Wheeley Lea and William Perrins' creation was so horrible tasting that they abandoned it in the basement. Two years later, the pair found the sauce had mellowed and that it flavored meats wonderfully. It went on sale in 1837.

Sources: "How Products are Made: An Illustrated Guide to Product Manufacturing," "Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America," Worcester City Museums, Lemelson-MIT Program "Inventor of the Week"

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This Kellogg's recipe pays tribute to Wheaties inventor Will Kellogg and can be made with little helpers.

Itsy-Bitsy Fruit Pies

Makes 24

½ cup (1 stick) butter or margarine 1 cup milk chocolate morsels ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon 4 cups puffed rice cereal 2 cups assorted fresh chopped fruits Frozen non-dairy whipped topping, thawed Assorted sprinkles

In medium saucepan, melt butter over low heat. Stir in chocolate morsels until melted. Remove from heat. (Chocolate and butter can be melted in the microwave, on low, in a heat-proof dish.) Stir in cinnamon.

Place cereal in large bowl. Carefully pour melted chocolate mixture over cereal. Gently stir until cereal is coated.

Spoon cereal mixture into 24 (1 ½-inch) muffin-pan cups coated with vegetable oil spray. Using your finger or thumb, press cereal mixture onto bottoms and up the sides of each cup, forming crusts (see note).

Place crusts in freezer 30 minutes. Remove from freezer. Refrigerate, covered, until ready to serve.

Before serving, fill each crust with fresh fruit. Dollop with whipped topping. Decorate with sprinkles. Serve immediately.

Notes: Cereal is sticky at this point. Greasing fingers can help. Or, you may prefer to use muffin tins with mini-liners. Also: Extra unfilled crusts may be frozen in airtight container for up to a month. Let stand at room temperature 15 minutes before serving.

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Who hasn't tasted a Tollhouse Cookie? We think Ruth Wakefield would be pleased with the addition of espresso, a nice surprise in a rich cookie. From The Chocolate Chip Cookie Web page:

Chocolate Chip Espresso Cookies

Makes 4 dozen

3 squares (1 ounce each) unsweetened chocolate 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips (divided) ½ cup (1 stick) butter 3 eggs 1 cup sugar 2 ¼ teaspoons finely ground espresso beans ¾ cup flour 1/3 teaspoon baking powder 1 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease cookie sheets or line them with parchment paper.

In top of a double boiler, melt unsweetened chocolate, half the chocolate chips and the butter. (This can be done in a microwave oven on low. Stir occasionally until melted.)

In a medium bowl, beat eggs and sugar until thick and light, about 3 minutes. Stir in espresso. Add chocolate mixture and mix well. Sift together flour and baking powder, and fold into egg mixture. Carefully fold in nuts and remaining chocolate chips.

Drop dough by tablespoonfuls, 2 inches apart onto prepared cookie sheets. Bake in preheated oven 10 to 12 minutes.

Cookies will have a crackled appearance when done. Cool on baking sheets.

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The Lea and Perrins' Web site describes this dish as comfort food with a regional French flair. The allspice in the flour mixture gives the meat an added zing.

Hearty Weekend Beef Ragout

Makes 8 servings

3 tablespoons flour 1 teaspoon ground allspice 2 ½ pound boneless beef chuck, trimmed and cut into ½-inch cubes 4 carrots and potatoes, cut into 1 ½-inch pieces 8 small white onions, halved 4 garlic cloves, halved 1 bottle (750ml) dry red wine (divided) ¼ cup Worcestershire sauce ½ cup ketchup 1 bay leaf 1 teaspoon dried thyme

Preheat oven 325 degrees.

Place flour and allspice in a resealable plastic bag. Add beef and shake to coat evenly. Remove beef and discard bag.

In a large skillet coated with vegetable oil spray over medium-high heat, brown beef 5 to 7 minutes on all sides in a single layer. Coat with additional vegetable oil spray if needed. Brown beef in separate batches if needed. Remove from skillet and place in a 3-quart baking dish.

To same skillet, add carrots, onions, potatoes and garlic, and sauté 5 minutes, or until lightly glazed. Place in baking dish.

Deglaze skillet with wine, reserving ¼ cup. Stir in Worcestershire sauce, ketchup, bay leaf and thyme. Bring to a boil and pour into baking dish.

Cover and bake in preheated oven 2 ½ to 3 hours, until beef is tender. Stir in reserved ¼ cup wine, and season with salt and pepper to taste. Remove bay leaf and serve hot.

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St. Louis restaurants label their ravioli "toasted," when by and large, it's fried in oil. This version, from the Food Network and Giada De Laurentiis, calls it like it is: fried.

Fried Ravioli

Makes 24

1 cup buttermilk 2 cups Italian-style bread crumbs 1 package prepared cheese ravioli (about 24) ¼ cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese 1 jar (16 ounces) prepared marinara sauce, heated, for dipping Olive oil for frying

Pour enough olive oil into a large, deep skillet to reach a depth of 2 inches. Heat the oil over medium heat until a deep-fry thermometer registers 325 degrees.

While oil is heating, put buttermilk and bread crumbs in separate shallow bowls. Working in batches, dip ravioli in buttermilk to coat. Allow excess buttermilk to drip back into bowl. Dredge ravioli in bread crumbs. Place ravioli on a baking sheet, and continue with remaining ravioli.

When oil is hot, fry ravioli in batches, turning occasionally, until golden brown, about 3 minutes. Using a slotted spoon, transfer fried ravioli to paper towels to drain.

Sprinkle fried ravioli with Parmesan and serve with a bowl of warmed marinara sauce for dipping.