Pretzel in the context of Dough

The cuisine of Philadelphia was shaped largely by the city's mixture of ethnicities, available foodstuffs and history. Certain foods have become associated with the city.

Invented in Philadelphia in the 1930s, the cheesesteak is the most well known, and soft pretzels have long been a major part of Philadelphia culture.

Reading (/ˈrɛdɪŋ/ RED-ing; Pennsylvania German: Reddin) is a city in Berks County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. The city had a population of 95,112 at the 2020 census and is the fourth-most populous city in Pennsylvania after Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Allentown. Reading is located in the southeastern part of the state and is the principal city of the Greater Reading area, which had 420,152 residents in 2020.

Reading gives its name to the now-defunct Reading Company, also known as the Reading Railroad and since acquired by Conrail, that played a vital role in transporting anthracite coal from Pennsylvania's Coal Region to major East Coast markets through the Port of Philadelphia for much of the 19th and 20th centuries. Reading Railroad is one of the four railroad properties in the classic U.S. version of the Monopoly board game. Reading was one of the first localities where outlet shopping became a tourist industry. It has been known as "The Pretzel City" because numerous local pretzel bakeries are based in the city and its suburbs; currently, Bachman, Dieffenbach, Tom Sturgis, and Unique Pretzel bakeries call the Reading area home. In recent years, the Reading area has become a destination for cyclists with more than 125 miles (201 km) of trails in five major preserves; the region is an International Mountain Bicycling Association ride center.

M&M's is the brand name of a color-varied sugar-coated, dragée chocolate confectionery made by the Mars Wrigley Confectionery division of Mars Inc. since 1941. The confection consists of a candy shell surrounding a filling that determines the specific type or variety. Each piece has the letter "m" printed in lower case in white on one side. They are produced in different colors, some of which have changed over the years.

The original confection of this brand had a semi-sweet chocolate filling that upon introduction of other varieties, was branded as the "plain, normal" variety. The first alternate variety to be introduced was the Peanut M&M in 1954. It featured a peanut coated in milk chocolate and finally, coated with a candy shell. It still remains a regular variety. Numerous other varieties have been introduced, some of which are regular widespread varieties (peanut butter, almond, pretzel, crispy, dark chocolate, and caramel) while other varieties are limited in duration or geographic availability.

Clara Peeters (Dutch pronunciation: [ˈklaːraː ˈpeːtərs]; fl. 1607–1621) was a Flemish still-life painter from Antwerp who worked in both the Spanish Netherlands and Dutch Republic.

Peeters is the best-known female Flemish artist of this era and one of the few women artists working professionally in seventeenth-century Europe, despite restrictions on women's access to artistic training and membership in guilds. Peeters specialized in still-life paintings with food and was prominent among the artists who shaped the traditions of the Netherlandish ontbijtjes, "breakfast pieces," scenes of food and simple vessels, and banketjes, "banquet pieces" with expensive cups and vessels in precious metals.

Kringle (/ˈkrɪŋɡəl/, listen) is a Northern European pastry, a variety of pretzel. Pretzels were introduced by Roman Catholic monks in the 13th century in Denmark, and from there they spread throughout Scandinavia and evolved into several kinds of sweet, salty or filled pastries, all in a characteristic pretzel-like twisted shape.

In Danish and Norwegian, the word is kringle; Estonian: kringel; Latvian: kliņģeris; Swedish: kringla; Finnish: rinkeli; German: Kringel and Icelandic: kringla. The word originates from the Old Norse kringla, meaning ring or circle.

Jello salad is an American salad made with flavored gelatin, fruit, and sometimes grated carrots or (more rarely) other vegetables. Other ingredients may include cottage cheese, cream cheese, marshmallows, nuts, or pretzels. Jello salads were popular in the early 20th century and are now considered retro.

Because of its many elements, the result has speckled bits of interior color against a colored gelatin background, and so the dish can be appreciated for its colorful visual appeal. For example, a jello salad might have green from a lime-flavored gelatin, brown from nuts or pretzels, white from bits of cottage cheese, and red and orange from fruit cocktail. Therefore, it has a "salad appearance" (small pieces of food) although it is held firm in gelatin (like aspic). The "salad" theme is more pronounced in variants containing mayonnaise, or another salad dressing. When the dish has plain gelatin instead of sweetened gelatin, the use of vegetables is more common (e.g. tomato aspic).

An ice cream cone or poke (Northern Ireland) is a brittle, cone-shaped pastry, usually made of a wafer similar in texture to a waffle, made so ice cream can be carried and eaten without a bowl or spoon. Many styles of cones are made, including pretzel cones, sugar-coated and chocolate-coated cones (coated on the inside). The term ice cream cone can also refer, informally, to the cone with one or more scoops of ice cream on top.

There are two techniques for making cones: one is by baking them flat and then quickly rolling them into shape (before they harden), the other is by baking them inside a cone-shaped mold.

Jalebi is a common sweet snack in the Indian subcontinent, West Asia and some parts of Africa. It goes by many names, including jilapi, zelepi, jilebi, jilipi, zulbia, zoolbia, jerry, mushabak, z'labia, or zalabia.

The south Asian variety is made by deep-frying maida flour (plain flour or all-purpose flour) batter in pretzel or circular shapes, which are then soaked in sugar syrup. Jalebi is eaten with curd or rabri (in North India) along with optional other flavors such as kewra (pandanus flower essence).