When you’ve woken up with the room still spinning, your mouth parched and ears ringing, chances are that brunch still sounds delicious. That is, if you can only find your pants and the way out of this stranger’s apartment.

What you may not realize is that brunch was designed specifically for the late Sunday riser (or late Saturday partier)–a meal originally proposed by the English writer Guy Beringer as a counterpoint to Sunday night’s religious feasts. And some of brunch’s most famous components, like Eggs Benedict and Bloody Marys, were formulated–one by an infamous New York partier eating breakfast at the Waldorf, the other by a Paris bartender–expressly to soften the edge of a hangover.





Oddly enough, even pharmacist John Pemberton originally sold Coca-Cola as an a.m. hangover cure (and no doubt, the one-two punch of caffeine and cocaine can probably work wonders on a headache). Coke’s addictive flavor (and drugs) made it gain mass popularity quickly.

It’s all documented over on the Smithsonian’s Food & Think blog with more historical detail and anthropological nuance than we’ll reprint (so really, head over there and enjoy the read). But it just goes to show, design exists in the most unexpected parts of the human experience, solving the most fundamental problems–even if it’s eventually thwarted by more of our own bad judgments (and bottomless mimosas).

Read more here.

[Images: Coke, Eggs, Bloody Mary via Shutterstock]