The histories, migrations, and moments behind the world's favorite dishes.
Nobody knows when the first injera was cooked, but the grain behind it was farmed in the Ethiopian and Eritrean highlands by about 1600 BCE. Here is what the evidence shows.
The oldest chemical trace of a fermented drink sits in 9,000-year-old jars from a Chinese village. Here is what the evidence shows, from garum to kimchi to Pasteur.
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.
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.
Armies have fought a long battle between food that keeps and food soldiers will eat. Here is how Roman wheat, hardtack, tin cans, C- and K-rations and the MRE came about.
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.
Asian rice was first grown in China's Yangtze basin, and a second species came from the Niger delta. Here is how both reached Carolina, Italy and the age of miracle rice.
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.
From Peranakan kitchens and Phibun's noodle carts to pho stands and Singapore's hawker centres, the region's street food was layered by migration and state decisions.
Sugarcane began as a Pacific island grass, became crystals in India and a plantation crop in the Americas from 1493. Millions of enslaved Africans paid for Europe's cheap sugar.
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.
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