Why is peppermint the flavour of the holiday season? The Epicurious writes that the answer probably lies with peppermint candy canes, though there are competing theories on how the iconic treat became so closely associated with the holiday. Peppermint itself—the plant—is native to the Middle East and Europe, where the stuff has been around forever, including in medicinal uses, and where a lot of U.S. candy-making techniques come from. Whither candy canes? According to The Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, a local choirmaster in Cologne, Germany, sometime around 1670, was looking for a way to keep rowdy young people quiet while they were watching the live Nativity and asked a local confectioner to create a special hard candy for the kids to keep busy on for a while. It was shaped like a cane—or, more to the point, a shepherd’s staff.

TheCompanionalso suggests another interpretation: “Owing to the Christian…