How dishes cross borders in the luggage of migrants, and come out changed on the other side. Food as the most portable piece of home.
11 stories · All stories
The meatless Christmas Eve supper is southern Italian and in print by 1847. The name and the fixed seven are Italian American, and nobody has found them in print before 1983.
In 1899 a New York Jewish weekly scolded readers for eating in Chinese restaurants. By 1935 chow mein was arriving at a Newark children's home on Christmas Day.
Fungee and pepperpot is the national dish of Antigua and Barbuda. Its African cousins are clear, its exact history is not, and here is what the sources support.
The fortune cookie began as a Japanese cracker with a paper slip in its fold. Japanese bakers made it American, and internment in 1942 handed it to Chinese restaurants.
Fried fish tied to Sephardic Jewish cooks met the fried potato chip in 1860s Britain. Joseph Malin and John Lees both have claims, and neither is settled.
Frankfurt and Vienna both claim the sausage, and Coney Island, St. Louis and a ballpark all claim the bun. Here is what the record actually shows.
Pho is not ancient. It took shape in northern Vietnam in the early 1900s under French rule, and its beef, its name and its birthplace are still argued over.
Pizza, chop suey, hamburgers and Tex-Mex all took their American shape from immigrant cooks. Here is what the records show about where each dish started and what changed.
A 2009 government campaign, a palace-kitchen TV drama and a Los Angeles taco truck all helped Korean food travel. Here is what each did, and how well the plan worked.
Jollof rice traces back to ceebu jen, a fish and broken rice dish from Saint-Louis, Senegal. Here is what the evidence shows, and how Nigeria and Ghana ended up fighting over it.
Ramen began as Chinese noodle soup in Japan's treaty ports, then took off in the hungry years after 1945. Here is what the records show, and what is only legend.
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