MigrationBritish
The History of Fish and Chips, From Soyer to Malin
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.
6 min read
Origin Stories
Where dishes really come from, and how far the popular story strays from the record. Every claim checked against cookbooks, newspapers and food historians.
38 stories · All stories
MigrationStreet FoodNorth American
The History of Hot Dogs, From Frankfurt to Coney Island
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.
6 min read
Cross-CulturalAncient
The History of Ice Cream: Snow, Salt and a Train to Baltimore
Ice cream has no single inventor. Marco Polo and Catherine de Medici never carried it anywhere, and the documents point to French, English and American hands.
6 min read
MigrationColonialismVietnamese
The History of Pho: A Beef Soup Younger Than You Think
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.
5 min read
ColonialismNorth American
The History of Soul Food, from Rations to Sylvia's
Soul food grew from the foods and skills of enslaved Africans in the American South. The name only caught on in the 1960s, and people argued about it from the start.
7 min read
MexicanAncientStreet Food
History of Tacos: Silver Mines, Not 10,000 Years
The tortilla is ancient, but the taco is younger than its legend. Where the word came from, who first printed it, and how Glen Bell's crunchy shell reached 1962 Downey.
7 min read
South AsianTrade Routes
How Curry Spread Around the World, Dish by Dish
A Tamil word, an eighteenth-century spice blend and the ships of the British Empire carried curry from India to Glasgow, Tokyo, Durban and Trinidad, changing at every stop.
5 min read
ItalianTrade Routes
How Tomatoes Came to Italy, and Why Sauce Was Slow
The tomato reached Italy from the Americas by the 1540s, but it spent about two centuries as a garden curiosity before it became the red sauce we call Italian.
7 min read
MigrationWest African
Jollof Rice Origin: How a Senegalese Dish Started a War
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.
5 min read
French
Origin of the Croissant: From Vienna Kipferl to Paris
The croissant grew from the Austrian kipferl, reached Paris with an officer's bakery in 1838 or 1839, and became a laminated pastry in the early 1900s. The siege and queen stories do not hold.
6 min read
ItalianAncient
The Origin of Pizza: From a Bishop's Rent to Naples
The word pizza is on paper in Gaeta in 997, but the tomato pie came centuries later in Naples. The famous Margherita story of 1889 is the weakest link.
6 min read
JapaneseMigration
The Origin of Ramen: Chinese Noodles, Japanese Hunger
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.
6 min read
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