117 Fun Facts About Beef

The English word 'beef' ultimately comes from which Latin word?

Bōs became Old French buef and then English 'beef', which for centuries could mean the living animal as well as its meat, a wrinkle in the old tale of Norman lords dining on what Saxon peasants raised.

Which old plural of 'beef' is still used for cattle raised for meat?

Beeves was the original plural when 'a beef' meant the animal itself, which is why ranchers and old cattle-trade writers use it; the other plural, 'beefs', is kept for complaints.

Which wild ox, shown in the cave art of Lascaux, is the ancestor of modern domestic cattle?

The aurochs once ranged across Europe, Asia and North Africa, but forest clearance shrank its range and hunting it became a privilege of nobles and kings, until the last herd died out in the 17th century.

In which region were cattle first domesticated, roughly 10,500 years ago?

The Near East: DNA studies trace today's taurine cattle to a small founding herd tamed in what is now Turkey and Syria, while the humped zebu was domesticated separately in South Asia.

Which country was the world's largest beef producer in 2018, ahead of Brazil and China?

The United States produced about 12 million tons of beef that year, more than Brazil, even though Brazil's cattle herd was over twice the size of the American one.

Beef ranks where among the most widely consumed meats in the world?

Third: pork and poultry are both ahead, yet the world produced more beef than poultry until the mid-1990s, when chicken output overtook it and kept climbing.

Which potent greenhouse gas do cattle produce as microbes ferment grass in their stomachs?

Methane: contrary to the popular joke, almost all of it leaves the animal as burps rather than from the other end, a by-product of the fermentation that lets cattle live on grass.

India ranked among the world's top beef exporters in the 2010s, yet nearly all of that meat came from which animal?

Water buffalo: its meat, sold as carabeef, falls outside the cow-slaughter bans in force across most Indian states, so a large export trade grew up around it while cow beef stayed off limits.

A cow's stomach has how many compartments?

Four: the first and largest, the rumen, holds microbes that break down the tough cellulose in grass, and the cow brings the half-digested cud back up to chew it again.

Oxen, the cattle trained to pull ploughs and carts, are usually which kind of animal?

Castrated males: without testosterone they are docile and far safer to handle than bulls, yet they grow bigger than cows, which are in any case more valued for their calves and milk.

A cow's pregnancy lasts about as long as which other mammal's?

A human's: a cow carries her calf for about nine months, and because a dairy cow has to calve to keep giving milk, she is bred again and again through her working life.

Which primal cut is the classic choice for both Texas barbecue and corned beef?

Brisket comes from the chest, whose muscles carry much of the standing animal's weight and are full of connective tissue, so the meat stays tough unless it is cooked long and slow.

In American butchery, T-bone and porterhouse steaks are cut from which primal?

Short loin: both steaks are slices across the same T-shaped bone, and one only earns the name porterhouse when it comes from the thick rear end, where the smaller of its two muscles is widest.

Filet mignon is cut from which part of the animal?

The tenderloin lives up to its name as the tenderest part of the animal, but the dish's name travels oddly: order filet mignon in France and you will usually get a cut of pork or veal rather than beef.

Which primal cut is used mostly for grinding, apart from one long, flat steak that shares its name?

Flank: its namesake steak has long, coarse muscle fibres, so cooks slice it thinly across the grain to keep it from being chewy, which is how it is served as London broil.

As a rule, beef gets more tender the farther it is from what?

Hoof and horn: the legs and neck do the most work, so cuts near them such as shank and chuck are tough, while the little-used muscles along the middle of the back give the tenderest steaks.

In USDA grading, which grade denotes beef of the highest quality with heavy marbling?

Prime demands the most marbling, the flecks of fat within the lean, and comes from young, well-fed cattle, which is why it is generally sold in upscale restaurants.

The word 'steak' is related to an Old Norse verb meaning to cook meat in which way?

Roasting on a spit: Old Norse steik meant roast meat, from the verb steikja, and the word is kin to 'stick', the skewer that the meat was cooked on.

Which New York restaurant, opened by two Swiss brothers in 1827, gave its name to a style of steak?

Delmonico's began as a small café and pastry shop and grew into a string of grand dining rooms, whose kitchens are also credited with Delmonico potatoes and Lobster Newberg.

In which South American country, known for the cattle ranches of its Pampas, is the asado barbecue a cherished tradition?

Argentina: escaped cattle ran wild and multiplied on its grasslands, and the gauchos who hunted the herds lived almost entirely on beef.

Which sauce of butter, egg yolk and tarragon is a classic partner for steak?

Béarnaise is a child of hollandaise, flavoured with shallot and tarragon; although named after the province of Béarn, it is commonly said to have been created at a restaurant near Paris in 1836.

Which dish is made from raw minced beef?

Steak tartare is usually said to take its name from tartar sauce, once served alongside the raw beef; the old tale of Tartar horsemen softening meat under their saddles is only a legend.

The word 'wagyu' literally means what?

Japanese cattle: 'wa' means Japanese and 'gyu' cow, yet until the Meiji Restoration of 1868 these animals were kept to pull ploughs and carts, and their meat was rarely eaten.

Which of the four Wagyu breeds makes up about nine in ten of the national Wagyu herd?

Japanese Black grew out of native draught cattle that were crossed with imported European breeds, until the crossing was halted around 1910 because the meat was getting worse.

In the Japanese grading system for beef, which of these is the top grade?

A5: Japanese carcasses are graded twice, with a letter for how much meat they yield and a number for quality, so a 5 for quality only tops the scale when the yield earns an A as well.

Kobe beef must come from cattle raised in which Japanese prefecture?

Hyōgo: the name is reserved for Tajima-strain cattle born, raised and slaughtered in the prefecture, and a local association then turns away any carcass whose marbling or grade falls short.

In which Japanese dish do diners cook paper-thin slices of beef by dipping them briefly into a pot of simmering broth?

Shabu-shabu takes its name from the sound of the cooking pot, and each diner cooks the meat piece by piece at the table, unlike sukiyaki, which is simmered together in a sweeter sauce.

Which Chicago sandwich of thinly sliced roast beef is often dunked whole in its own cooking juices?

Italian beef goes back to the city's Italian-American immigrants around the 1930s, and found a new audience in the 2020s through The Bear, a TV drama set in a sandwich shop that specialises in it.

The last known wild ancestor of domestic cattle died around 1627 in which country?

It died in the forests of Mazovia, and a memorial stone now marks the spot at Jaktorów.

Angus beef cattle were first bred in the north-east of which country?

Scotland: the breed takes its name from the counties of Aberdeen and Angus, and four bulls shipped across the Atlantic in 1873 began its spread through American ranching.

Angus cattle are 'naturally polled', meaning they are born without what?

Horns: polled cattle never grow them, which spares calves the dehorning that farmers otherwise carry out because horned animals can injure people and each other.

Corned beef gets its name from what?

Large grains of salt called corns were sprinkled and rubbed onto the beef to cure it, so despite appearances the name has nothing to do with maize or with cattle fattened on it.

Which sandwich pairs corned beef with Swiss cheese and sauerkraut on grilled rye?

Reuben: two origin stories compete, one crediting grocer Reuben Kulakofsky, said to have asked for it during a late-night poker game at an Omaha hotel, the other Arnold Reuben's delicatessen in Manhattan.

The Frigorífico Anglo plant in Fray Bentos, source of wartime corned beef, is in which country?

Uruguay: the Liebig meat-extract company set up its works there in the 1860s to process cattle from the vast prairies nearby, and shipped the results to Europe.

In the British military, tinned corned beef rations were known by what name?

Bully beef is thought to be a corruption of the French bouilli, 'boiled', and tinned corned beef eaten with hard biscuit was a standard ration for British forces through both world wars.

Beef Wellington is a beef fillet wrapped in puff pastry with which mushroom mixture?

Duxelles is mushrooms minced with onion or shallot and cooked in butter until reduced to a dry paste, because any water left in the layer would turn to steam and spoil the pastry around it.

Beef Wellington is presumed to be named after a duke famous for winning which battle?

Waterloo made the Duke of Wellington a national hero in 1815, yet the link is only presumed: no dish of that name is recorded until decades after his death in 1852.

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy is better known by what name?

Mad cow disease is caused not by a virus or a bacterium but by a misfolded protein called a prion, which slowly destroys the animal's brain and nervous system.

The first confirmed case of BSE occurred in 1986 in which country?

United Kingdom: the disease grew into a nationwide epidemic among its herds, and people who ate infected beef went on to develop a fatal human form, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

Cattle are believed to have caught BSE from being fed what?

Meat-and-bone meal, a protein feed rendered from carcasses, carried the remains of infected animals back into the trough, so the disease was recycled through herds of natural grass-eaters.

The hamburger takes its name from a city in which country?

Germany: 'Hamburger' simply means 'from Hamburg', and the minced-beef Hamburg steak appeared on American menus during the heavy German immigration of the 1800s before anyone put it in a bun.

Hamburgers gained national recognition in the US at a World's Fair held in which city in 1904?

St. Louis: legend also credits its 1904 fair with inventing the ice cream cone and iced tea, but the fair is more likely to have spread such foods to a national audience than to have created them.

White Castle, generally counted as the first fast-food hamburger chain, opened in 1921 in which city?

Wichita, Kansas: Upton Sinclair's novel The Jungle had left Americans wary of ground beef, so the founders built small, spotless restaurants with stainless-steel interiors and uniformed staff to make their burgers seem clean.

Which bacterium, behind a deadly 1993 outbreak at Jack in the Box, made undercooked hamburgers notorious?

E. coli O157:H7 infected more than 700 people and killed four children after patties were not cooked hot enough to destroy it, and the USDA now advises cooking burgers to an internal 160 °F.

Who created the Big Mac, first sold in 1967?

A Pennsylvania franchisee: Jim Delligatti put it on sale at his Uniontown restaurant, later saying he had simply copied the double-decker burger of the Big Boy chain, and McDonald's took it nationwide in 1968.

Which publication created the Big Mac Index to compare the buying power of currencies?

The Economist introduced it in 1986 as a semi-humorous guide to whether currencies are over- or undervalued, and the joke now features in academic textbooks under the name 'burgernomics'.

In a famous 1984 commercial, Clara Peller barked 'Where's the beef?' on behalf of which fast-food chain?

Wendy's cast Peller, an 81-year-old former manicurist, to bark the line at a rival's huge bun and tiny patty, and it became an all-purpose American phrase for anything lacking substance.

Which 1984 presidential hopeful turned 'Where's the beef?' against rival Gary Hart in a debate?

Walter Mondale used the line in a televised primary debate to mock Hart's 'new ideas' as empty of substance; he went on to win the Democratic nomination, then lost the election to Ronald Reagan.

Which New York pastrami deli hosted the 'I'll have what she's having' scene in When Harry Met Sally?

Katz's Delicatessen has sold pastrami on the Lower East Side since 1888, and a sign now hangs over the table where the scene was filmed so that visitors can find it.

The word 'pastrami' reached Yiddish, and then English, from which language?

Romanian pastramă, itself probably borrowed from a Turkish word for pressed, dried meat, travelled to New York with Jewish immigrants, where the ending was likely reshaped to echo 'salami'.

Pat's King of Steaks, founded by the hot dog vendor credited with inventing the cheesesteak, faces which rival across the street?

Geno's Steaks opened in 1966 directly opposite Pat's, when Joey Vento fired up his grills with two boxes of steaks and a few hot dogs, and the two have traded on the rivalry ever since.

Which processed cheese sauce is a signature topping for the Philadelphia cheesesteak?

Cheez Whiz only went on sale in 1952, some twenty years after the sandwich first appeared, so the earliest versions were chopped steak and onions on a roll with no cheese at all.

The word 'jerky' comes, by way of Spanish, from which South American language?

Quechua was the language of the Inca, who freeze-dried strips of llama meat and stocked this ch'arki along their roads as food for travellers.

Why must most fat be trimmed from meat before it is dried into jerky?

Fat increases the chance of spoilage, which is why jerky starts with lean, trimmed strips, and why packets of oxygen absorber are sealed in with it to stop any remaining fat from oxidising.

'Les rosbifs' is a French nickname for the people of which country?

England: the nickname teases a nation so proud of its roast beef that Henry Fielding's 1731 ballad 'The Roast Beef of Old England' became a patriotic ballad, still played at naval mess dinners.

Which side dish is the traditional partner to roast beef in a Sunday roast?

Yorkshire pudding began as a thrifty way to use the hot fat dripping from the joint, with batter cooked in the pan beneath it, and it was often eaten first, with gravy, before the meat.

'Beef on weck', a roast beef sandwich on a salted caraway roll, is a tradition of which region?

Western New York: the 'weck' is a kümmelweck roll thought to have been created by a German baker in Buffalo, and a pub owner is said to have chosen it because its salty top made customers thirsty.

Beef Stroganoff, sautéed beef in a mustard and sour cream sauce, comes from which country?

Russia: the dish honours the noble Stroganov family, yet it is still debated which member it was named for, and it has since spread worldwide in versions far removed from the original recipe.

The Yeoman Warders, better known as Beefeaters, are the ceremonial guardians of which British landmark?

The Tower of London: its warders are all former senior members of the armed forces with at least 22 years of service, and one theory traces their nickname to an old jibe for a well-fed servant.

Bulgogi, the Korean dish of thin marinated beef slices, literally means what?

Fire meat: 'bul' is fire and 'gogi' meat, a name from the Pyongan dialect of what is now North Korea, and refugees from that region made the dish popular in Seoul.

Phở bò, the beef version of Vietnam's noodle soup, emerged in the early 1900s in which part of the country?

The north, near Hanoi: beef was not widely eaten in Vietnam until demand for it grew under French colonial rule, which is why the soup is so recent, though its exact origins are still debated.

What does the French cooking term 'sous-vide' literally mean?

Under vacuum: the food is sealed in an airtight pouch and held in a water bath at a low, steady temperature, so a steak cooks evenly to the centre without the outside overcooking.

In fondue bourguignonne, diners cook small pieces of beef at the table by dipping them into what?

Hot oil: 'fondue' is French for 'melted' and long meant a pot of melted cheese, but the name stretched to any shared pot at the table, even one where nothing melts and the beef is fried.

During dry-aging, what breaks down connective tissue and makes the beef more tender?

The meat's own enzymes do the tenderising over several weeks, while evaporation concentrates the flavour and a harmless crust of mould forms on the outside, to be trimmed away before sale.

Bresaola, the air-dried salted beef, comes from Valtellina, an Alpine valley bordering Switzerland, in which Italian region?

Lombardy: the name goes back to a northern Italian dialect word for braised, or cooked, meat, although bresaola is never cooked at all, only cured and hung to dry.

In 2015 the WHO's cancer agency put processed meats such as corned beef in the same hazard group as what?

Tobacco smoke: both sit in Group 1, 'carcinogenic to humans', but the groups rank how strong the evidence is, not how big the risk, and unprocessed red meat sits one step lower.

Salisbury steak, a patty of ground beef served in gravy, is named after an American what?

Physician: Dr James Salisbury served in the American Civil War, where he became convinced that a diet of coffee and lean chopped beef could cure the troops' digestive troubles.

Which oxygen-binding muscle protein, rather than blood, gives raw beef its red color?

Myoglobin changes chemically as it heats, which is why a steak cooked well done turns from red to brown.

Which word for an unbranded calf comes from a Texas landowner who neglected to brand his cattle?

Maverick comes from Samuel Maverick, a lawyer and signer of the Texas Declaration of Independence, and the word was first recorded in 1867.

Which astronaut smuggled a corned beef sandwich into orbit on NASA's Gemini 3 flight?

John Young hid it in a spacesuit pocket and offered it to crewmate Gus Grissom, and both were reprimanded because loose crumbs could have harmed the electronics.

Which potent greenhouse gas do cattle release mainly by belching while digesting grass?

Methane is made by microbes fermenting feed in the gut, and most of it leaves through the animal's mouth rather than the other end.

Which cattle virus is the only infection besides smallpox ever wiped out worldwide?

Rinderpest is the closest relative of the measles virus, and its last confirmed case was diagnosed in 2001, a decade before the formal declaration in 2011.

Which invention patented by Illinois farmer Joseph Glidden brought the era of the open range to an end?

Barbed wire was cheaper and quicker to put up than any hedge or rail, and it set farmers who wanted fences against ranchers who were losing free grazing.

Which Upton Sinclair novel about meatpacking provoked the outcry behind the Meat Inspection Act?

The Jungle was written to win readers over to socialism, but the public fixed on its passages about unsanitary meat instead, and food-safety laws followed.

Which city's Union Stock Yards, opened in 1865, made it the center of American meatpacking?

Chicago kept the Yards running for 106 years before they closed in 1971, after the meatpacking industry had spread out to other places.

The French dip, a beef sandwich served with a cup of cooking juices, was created in which US city?

Los Angeles has two restaurants, Cole's and Philippe the Original, that each claim to have invented it, and the name seems to refer only to the style of bread.

Which chemical process between amino acids and sugars gives a seared steak its brown crust?

The Maillard reaction is named after the French chemist who first described it in 1912, and it proceeds rapidly from about 140 °C.

A traditional Wiener schnitzel, one of Austria's national dishes, is a breaded cutlet of which meat?

Veal mostly comes from male calves of dairy breeds, which are not needed for milking or for breeding.

Which term describes a castrated male bovine raised for beef, as a gelding is a castrated horse?

A steer castrated improperly or too late grows coarse and bull-like, and is known as a stag in Canada.

Which is the largest compartment of a cow's stomach, where microbes ferment tough plant fiber?

The rumen, also known as the paunch, works with the chamber next to it to hold about 80% of the stomach's total volume.

Which humped cattle, originating in South Asia, tolerate heat better than European breeds?

Zebu carry a fatty hump and a large dewlap, and because they cope so well with high temperatures they are raised throughout the tropics.

Which red beef breed with a distinctive white face is named after a county in the West Midlands?

Hereford cattle had their white face fixed by the end of the 18th century, and by 2023 more than seven million of them were kept in 62 countries.

Which giant white Tuscan cattle breed supplies the meat for a true bistecca alla fiorentina?

Chianina is the largest cattle breed in the world and also one of the oldest.

Which European beef breed is famous for 'double muscling', caused by a mutated myostatin gene?

The Belgian Blue lacks working myostatin, a protein that normally limits muscle growth, so it builds extra muscle fibers and very lean meat.

Beefalo, bred in managed programs for hardier herds, crosses domestic cattle with which animal?

American bison were crossed with cattle by a rancher who had watched thousands of cows die in an 1886 blizzard, and he called the hardy result 'cattalo'.

Which raw, hard fat from around the kidneys of cattle goes into British jam roly-poly?

Suet has a high melting point of 45 to 50 °C, and when it is slowly melted, simmered and strained it becomes tallow.

Which beef offal is the key ingredient of Mexican menudo and of Florentine lampredotto sandwiches?

Tripe is the muscle wall of a cow's stomach chambers, and each chamber gives a different texture, from smooth blanket to honeycomb.

Slow, gentle braising makes tough beef cuts tender by breaking down which connective-tissue protein?

Collagen is the most abundant protein in mammals, and as it breaks down it lubricates the muscle fibers, which is why a braise seems moist.

Which dish of thinly sliced raw beef, named after a painter, was invented at Harry's Bar in Venice?

Carpaccio was first made for a countess whose doctors had told her to eat raw meat, and its colors recalled the reds in Vittore Carpaccio's paintings.

Which thick, salty British beef extract takes part of its name from an 1871 science-fiction novel?

Bovril took its ending from Vril, a mysterious energy that powers a superior race in Edward Bulwer-Lytton's novel The Coming Race.

Beef bourguignon is named after which wine region, though the recipe probably did not begin there?

Burgundy red wine is the usual braising liquid, but the dish was first documented only in 1867 and does not appear to be a regional recipe at all.

Which dry beef curry, cooked down in spiced coconut milk, is popular across Indonesia and Malaysia?

Rendang takes its name from the frying stage, when the liquid cooks away and the meat fries in what is left of its own sauce.

Ropa vieja, stewed beef and tomatoes with roots in Spain, is a national dish of which country?

Cuba first recorded the dish in 1857, and it is believed to have crossed the Atlantic with immigrants from the Canary Islands.

Goulash, a paprika-seasoned stew named after cattle herders, is a national dish of which country?

Hungary's word gulyás means cattle herder, and the earliest versions had no paprika, a spice that did not reach Europe until the 16th century.

Biltong, southern Africa's air-dried cured beef, takes its name from two words in which language?

Afrikaans gave the name, and although game such as kudu and ostrich was the traditional meat, biltong is mostly made from beef because it costs less.

Which uncooked South American sauce of parsley, garlic and vinegar is served with grilled beef?

Chimichurri also carries oregano and chili, and one theory traces its name to a Basque word for noise brought over by 19th-century settlers.

Which sauce of clarified butter, egg yolk, shallot and tarragon is a traditional partner for steak?

Béarnaise is regarded as a child of hollandaise and is named after the province of Béarn, yet it became a fixture of steak dinners in the Nordic countries.

The chuck, a primal cut popular for grinding into burgers, is which part of the animal?

The shoulder gives chuck a rich flavor and a good balance of meat and fat, and British butchers simply call this part braising steak.

Canada shares its beef cut names with the US except for the round, which Canadians call what?

The hip is the lean, moderately tough primal from the rear of the animal, and the British name rump is also common in Canada.

Which cut of beef, according to a fictitious story told since the 1600s, was knighted by a king?

Sirloin really comes from the Old French 'surlonge', and the name is older than every king named in the tale, from Henry VIII to Charles II.

Which tough, sinewy cut is used mainly for soups and, cross-cut from a calf, for Milanese osso buco?

Shank is the meat around the leg bone below the knee, the toughest cut on the animal, and it also goes into bulalo, a Filipino beef stew.

Which gelatin-rich beef cut, usually slow-cooked, is the base of Rome's coda alla vaccinara?

Oxtail once meant only the tail of an ox but came to cover any cattle, and the Roman recipe simmers it with a very large amount of celery.

Which beef cut is boiled, skinned and served with chrain in Ashkenazi cooking or in Mexican tacos?

Tongue is very high in fat, which supplies up to 72% of its calories, and it is also sliced for open-faced sandwiches in Britain.

Peruvian anticuchos, skewers sold from street carts, are most often made from which part of a cow?

Heart became the favorite after the 16th century, when beef began to replace the llama meat used for the dish in the time of the Inca Empire.

Which cut did butchers so often keep for themselves that it was nicknamed after their trade?

Hanger steak, the 'butcher's steak', hangs from the diaphragm and is prized for its flavor and tenderness, yet butchers once took it home instead of offering it for sale.

Which cut of beef was the original filling of Tex-Mex fajitas, grilled and served on tortillas?

Skirt steak gave fajitas their name, a Tejano diminutive of the Spanish 'faja', a word for a belt or band.

Which showy cut is a ribeye left on a long cleaned bone, giving it a distinctive handle?

A tomahawk steak gets its look from French trimming, in which the meat and fat are scraped away from the exposed bone.

Which cut became the meat of choice for Santa Maria-style barbecue, grilled over red oak coals?

Tri-tip was usually ground into hamburger before the 1950s, and in Santa Maria it comes with pinquito beans, salsa and grilled French bread.

Which fat-capped rump cut became popular first in Brazil and is a favorite of churrascaria grills?

Picanha is the cut that British butchers call rump cap, and after Brazil it caught on in Portugal and then across Latin America.

Which cut, developed by university researchers in the late 1990s, do the British name after butlers?

Flat iron steak came from a 1998 beef-industry program to cut waste, after researchers found tender meat hidden beside a seam of tough tissue in the top blade.

Which pounded cut, named for the marks a tenderizer leaves, is the one most often chicken-fried?

Cube steak is flattened by a process called cubing, and it cooks so fast that Canada and Ireland know it as minute steak.

Which boneless cut forms the larger side of a porterhouse, opposite the small, most tender portion?

Strip steak comes from the longissimus, a sizable muscle that does little work, and American menus also sell it as ambassador, hotel-style or veiny steak.

Which French name for a premium boneless steak is the usual cut in a brasserie's steak frites?

Entrecôte replaced rump steak, the historic choice for steak frites, a dish that Belgium claims to have invented.

Which British hindquarter cut is named for a tough wall of connective tissue on its side?

Silverside is so often brined that in Ireland and South Africa its name is used for corned beef itself.

Which rich beef delicacy did 18th-century European diners dig out with a special long, thin scoop, often made of silver?

Marrow is the soft, fatty tissue inside beef leg bones, and it is traditionally eaten on toast with a sprinkle of coarse salt.

The T-shaped bone in a T-bone steak is a vertebra from which part of the animal's spine?

The lower back supplies a lumbar vertebra for every T-bone, and steaks cut nearer the rear carry more of the smaller, most tender muscle.

Which opera composer gives his name to a tournedos steak topped with foie gras and truffle?

Rossini, who wrote The Barber of Seville, lends his name to a dish whose invention is credited to Carême, Dugléré or Escoffier, depending on the teller.