128 Fun Facts About World Food

Poutine, the dish of fries, cheese curds and hot gravy, was created in the late 1950s in which country?

Canada's poutine began in rural Quebec snack bars, where fresh curds from nearby cheese dairies met fries and gravy; it has since spread to fast-food chains and fine-dining menus alike.

Which savoury pudding of sheep's heart, liver and lungs is the centrepiece of a Burns supper?

Haggis is the centrepiece of Burns suppers, held on or near 25 January, Robert Burns's birthday; the traditional recipe cannot be sold in the United States, which bans sheep lung in food.

In which city is chicken tikka masala, hailed in 2001 as 'a true British national dish', thought to have been invented?

Glasgow's Shish Mahal restaurant is the usual claimant: owner Ali Ahmed Aslam supposedly improvised a creamy tomato sauce for a customer who found his chicken tikka too dry.

The croissant is descended from the kipferl, a crescent pastry from which country?

Austria's kipferl reached Paris in the late 1830s, when the Austrian officer August Zang opened a Viennese bakery there; French bakers later remade the crescent in buttery laminated dough.

The word ketchup most likely comes from Hokkien Chinese words for the brine of what?

Pickled fish brine, kê-chiap in Hokkien, is the likeliest origin; the word passed into Malay as kicap and into English in the late 1600s, ending up as the name of a sauce with no fish in it.

Before tomato versions took over, ketchup in Britain was made mainly from which ingredient?

Mushrooms were the main ingredient of early British ketchup, and mushroom ketchup is still sold in the UK; the tomato version is an American invention of the early 1800s.

Pavlova, the meringue dessert, is claimed as a national dish by Australia and which other country?

New Zealand and Australia both claim the pavlova, named for ballerina Anna Pavlova, who toured both countries in 1926; food historian Helen Leach traced a New Zealand meringue recipe to 1929.

In 2022 UNESCO listed which country's borscht-cooking culture as heritage in need of urgent safeguarding?

UNESCO added Ukraine's borscht-cooking culture to its urgent-safeguarding list in July 2022, months into Russia's full-scale invasion; the soup's name comes from hogweed, its original fermented base.

Injera, the spongy sour flatbread of Ethiopia and Eritrea, is traditionally made from which grain?

Teff, a tiny Ethiopian highland grain, is ground and fermented for a few days to give injera its sour tang and spongy bubbled surface; the bread then doubles as plate and cutlery.

Ceviche joined UNESCO's heritage list in December 2023 as a traditional dish of which country?

Peru declared ceviche national heritage in 2004 and then put it forward to UNESCO, whose listing honours the fishers, the growers and the women cooks of traditional cevicherías behind each plate.

The communal autumn making and sharing of which fermented dish was recognised by UNESCO in 2013?

Kimchi for the whole winter is made at kimjang, when families, relatives and neighbours gather in late autumn to salt and season huge batches together, so that every household has enough.

According to legend, the pizza Margherita was named in 1889 in honour of whom?

A queen of Italy, Margherita of Savoy, is said to have preferred this pizza, in the national flag's colours, on a visit to Naples; yet a writer had recorded the same toppings there decades earlier.

Which Neapolitan pizzaiolo is credited by legend with creating the pizza Margherita in 1889?

Raffaele Esposito of Pizzeria Brandi supposedly baked it for Queen Margherita's 1889 visit to Naples; Gennaro Lombardi, by contrast, is credited with opening America's first pizzeria in New York in 1905.

In the strictest Neapolitan tradition there are only two true pizzas: the Margherita and which other?

Marinara has no cheese at all, just tomato, garlic, oregano and oil; the name means 'sailor style', and seamen are said to have favoured it because its toppings kept well on board.

The name of the dessert tiramisu translates from Italian as what?

Pick me up is what tirami sù means in Italian: the lift comes from the espresso soaked into the savoiardi biscuits, which are layered with sweet mascarpone cream.

In which city was tiramisu reportedly invented at Ado Campeol's restaurant Le Beccherie in 1969?

Le Beccherie in Treviso, in the Veneto, credits Campeol's wife Alba di Pillo and pastry chef Roberto Linguanotto with the dessert; the recipe was first published by Giuseppe Maffioli in 1981.

The Turkish word döner, as in döner kebab, comes from a verb meaning what?

Döner comes from the Turkish verb dönmek, 'to turn' or 'to rotate': the meat cooks on a rotating vertical spit, and the sandwich version was popularised by Turkish immigrants in 1970s West Germany.

Which country's Cheese Union, a cartel trying to sell more cheese, promoted fondue as a national dish in the 1930s?

Switzerland's Cheese Union fixed milk prices and bought up the country's cheese, then pushed fondue to shift it; until about 1930 the dish was little known outside the French-speaking west.

What is the name of the communal pot in which fondue is served?

The caquelon, a wide ceramic or enamelled cast-iron pot, sits over a small spirit burner (réchaud) so the cheese-and-wine mixture stays liquid throughout the meal.

Pho, the broth-and-rice-noodle soup usually made with beef, comes from which country?

Pho is Vietnam's signature soup; one theory ties the name to the French pot-au-feu, since beef became common under colonial rule, and Vietnamese refugees carried it worldwide after 1975.

Residents of which northern city are credited as the first to create pho, in the early 1900s?

Nam Dinh, a textile town southeast of Hanoi, is usually named as pho's birthplace; cooks from its Van Cu village carried the soup to Hanoi, where it became a street food before spreading south.

The friendly "Jollof wars" over the best jollof rice are fought mainly between Nigeria and which country?

Ghana and Nigeria trade jollof bragging rights online and at cook-offs, yet food historians trace the dish to neither: it comes from Senegal, where it is still the national dish, thieboudienne.

"Paella" is the Valencian word for what?

Frying pan is all paella means in Valencian, from the Latin patella: the dish is simply named after the wide, shallow pan it is cooked in, traditionally over an open fire of orange and pine wood.

Which meat joins chicken among the ten basic ingredients of an officially recognised paella valenciana?

Rabbit and chicken are the only meats on the list of ten that Valencian authorities recognise; seafood, in the words of purists, is absolutely out of the question.

Often assumed to mean raw fish, sushi is actually defined by which ingredient?

Vinegared rice is what makes sushi sushi: the dish began as fish preserved in fermenting rice that was thrown away, until cooks dropped the long ferment and began eating the seasoned rice as well.

Which style of sushi is Hanaya Yohei credited with inventing as a fast food in 1820s Edo?

Nigiri means hand-pressed: Yohei laid a slice of seafood on a small ball of seasoned grains shaped in the hand, quick enough to make and sell on the spot from a street stall.

Which country produces around 90% of the world's saffron?

Iran, chiefly its Khorasan region, grows around 90% of the world's saffron; every thread is picked by hand at harvest, which is why it is the most expensive spice by weight.

Roughly how many crocus flowers does it take to produce one kilogram of saffron?

Each crocus yields just three crimson stigmas, all picked by hand, so roughly 150,000 flowers go into a kilogram of dried saffron, which is the whole reason for the price.

Which pungent 'king of fruits' is banned from hotels and public transport in Singapore?

Durian's smell can linger for several days, which is why some hotels and public transport systems in Singapore and Bangkok refuse to let the fruit through the door.

Casu martzu, a Sardinian sheep-milk cheese outlawed across the EU, is famous for containing what?

Live fly maggots, the larvae of the cheese fly, digest the pecorino into a soft cream; the name means 'rotten cheese', and diners shield each bite with a hand because disturbed larvae can leap.

Iceland's hákarl is fermented and dried for months because which animal's fresh flesh is poisonous?

Greenland shark flesh is loaded with urea and trimethylamine oxide when fresh, so it is buried to ferment for six to twelve weeks and then hung to dry for months before it is safe to eat.

In 2006 several airlines banned surströmming, Sweden's fermented herring, because the cans might do what?

British Airways and Air France banned the fish in 2006, ruling that its pressurised cans might explode; the herring keeps fermenting in the tin, so cans bulge and are traditionally opened outdoors.

Fugu, which only licensed chefs may prepare in Japan, is what kind of fish?

Pufferfish carry tetrodotoxin in the liver and ovaries, a paralysing poison with no known antidote, so Japanese chefs train for at least two years before sitting the licensing exam.

Balut, a popular street food in the Philippines, is what?

A boiled fertilised duck egg, balut is incubated for about 14 to 21 days; diners then eat the contents, broth, yolk and half-formed embryo alike, straight from the shell.

Vegemite, the dark Australian spread, is made from the leftover extract of what?

Brewers' yeast left over from beer-making was the raw material: chemist Cyril Callister developed the spread in Melbourne in 1922, after the First World War had cut off imports of British Marmite.

Bunny chow, a fast food from Durban, South Africa, is curry served inside what?

A hollowed-out loaf of bread, sold by the quarter or half, makes an edible takeaway container for the curry; the dish grew up among Durban's Indian community, and 'chow' is local slang for food.

By law in its home country, a dish sold as Wiener schnitzel must be made from which meat?

Veal is the only meat allowed under the plain name there; a version made from pork has to be sold as 'Wiener Schnitzel vom Schwein' or 'Schnitzel Wiener Art'.

Along with Chardonnay and Meunier, which dark-skinned grape is used to make almost all Champagne?

Pinot noir, pressed gently so its dark skins do not colour the juice, is grown chiefly on the Montagne de Reims and in the Aube; Dom Pérignon, despite legend, did not invent the bubbles.

Which French cheese, ripened in the Combalou caves, became the first to win AOC protection in 1925?

Roquefort's name was guarded long before 1925: in 1411 Charles VI gave one village the sole right to ripen it, and legend credits a shepherd who left his lunch in a cave and came back to find it blue.

Which Mexican dish takes its name from an Aztec word meaning simply 'sauce'?

Mole comes from mōlli, the same word that ends guacamole, literally 'avocado sauce'; in a popular legend, convent nuns in Puebla created it by grinding together whatever they had for a visiting archbishop.

Feijoada, the national food of the largest country in South America, is a slow-cooked stew built on what?

Beans are right there in the name: feijoada comes from feijão, the local word for bean; black ones are stewed for hours with salted pork and beef, then served with rice and slices of orange.

Which slow-cooked Indonesian meat dish topped CNN's 2011 poll of the world's 50 best foods?

Rendang, the Minangkabau dry beef curry of West Sumatra, won CNN's 2011 readers' poll of the world's 50 best foods; cooked dry enough, it keeps for weeks without refrigeration.

Which Indonesian fried-rice dish, sweetened with kecap manis, was runner-up in CNN's 2011 readers' poll of world foods?

Nasi goreng began as thrift: yesterday's leftover rice was fried up the next morning rather than thrown away. The poll that made it runner-up drew more than 35,000 votes.

Koshary, Egypt's national dish, mixes rice and lentils with which other staple?

Pasta, usually macaroni, is tossed with the rice and lentils under chickpeas, tomato and crisp fried onions; so affordable and filling that street carts and specialist koshary shops sell it all over Egypt.

Which fruit is cooked with saltfish in Jamaica's national dish?

Ackee, brought from West Africa in the 1700s, must be left on the tree until its pod splits open by itself: the unripe flesh contains a poison, hypoglycin, that causes severe vomiting.

Bird's nest soup, a prized Chinese delicacy, is made from swiftlet nests built out of what?

Hardened saliva is the whole nest: swiftlets glue strands of it to the walls of the caves where they breed, and the nests' rarity makes them one of the most expensive animal products people eat.

In WWII, fish and chips was one of the few British foods never subject to what?

The wartime government exempted fish and chips from rationing, judging it too important for morale; the first shops appeared in the 1860s, and newspaper wrapping lasted until hygiene rules ended it.

Which company, founded in Wichita in 1921, is generally credited as the first fast-food hamburger chain?

White Castle set out to rescue the hamburger after Upton Sinclair's The Jungle had made Americans wary of ground beef, so its restaurants were gleaming white outside and spotless stainless steel within.

The potato was first domesticated 7,000 to 10,000 years ago around which body of water?

Lake Titicaca lies high in the Andes, where early farmers bred wild Solanum plants into the first potatoes; the Spanish carried the crop to Europe in the second half of the 1500s.

Traders from which country carried chili peppers to Africa, Arabia and Asia in the 1500s?

Ships from Portugal carried the New World chili to Goa, Africa and Southeast Asia within decades of Columbus; India, Thailand and Sichuan had no chilies before the Columbian exchange.

Rice, the staple food of more than half the world, was first domesticated along which river?

Yangtze valley farmers in China tamed wild rice roughly 9,000 years ago, the scientific consensus runs, and the crop spread from there across Asia; a separate African rice was domesticated later in West Africa.

The word tomato comes, via Spanish, from tomatl, a word in which language?

Tomatl is Nahuatl, the language of the Aztecs, who grew the plant in Mexico though it originated in western South America; the Spanish took it to Europe in the 1500s, and botanically the fruit is a berry.

World Food Day is held every 16 October to mark the 1945 founding of which organisation?

The FAO was founded in Quebec City on 16 October 1945; its member states created the day in 1979 after Hungary's delegation proposed that the anniversary be marked around the world each year.

Which bread's artisanal know-how joined UNESCO's intangible heritage list in 2022?

The baguette was listed in November 2022; France had acted to protect it back in 1993, when a 'bread decree' answered decades of additive-heavy industrial baking by reserving the 'tradition' label for flour, water, salt and leavening.

Who invented instant noodles in 1958?

Momofuku Ando wanted to feed a Japan still short of food after the war; after months of trial and error he launched his precooked Chikin Ramen in 1958, and Cup Noodles followed in 1971.

Halloumi, the grillable cheese that won EU protected status in 2021, comes from which island?

Cyprus's halloumi can be grilled or fried without melting, thanks to an unusually high melting point; since April 2021 EU law has reserved the name for cheese made on the island.

In 2023 which country grew more coffee than any other?

Brazil has been the top producer for more than 150 years, yet coffee is no native: the first bush was planted there only in 1727, and the arabica plant itself comes from the highlands of Ethiopia.

Mace, the spice, is made from which part of the nutmeg tree?

The seed's covering, a red aril, is peeled off and dried to make mace; the tree is native to Indonesia's Banda Islands, and in 1667 England left one of them, Run, to the Dutch and kept Manhattan.

Which spice became a global crop after Edmond Albius, an enslaved boy of 12, learned to hand-pollinate it in 1841?

Vanilla orchids taken to Réunion flowered for twenty years without setting a pod, since nothing there could pollinate them; Albius's trick with a thin stick and a flick of the thumb is still used on plantations today.

The Hungarian word gulyás, root of the word goulash, means what?

Gulyás means 'cattle herder' (from gulya, a herd): the dish began as herdsmen's food cooked in kettles over open fires on the Hungarian plains and became a national symbol.

Adobo, the Philippines' unofficial national dish, simmers meat in garlic, soy sauce and what?

Vinegar is adobo's defining ingredient, a pre-colonial way of preserving meat in the tropical heat; the Spanish name (adobar, to marinate) was attached later to an indigenous method.

The empanada is thought to have originated in which Spanish region, home to the pilgrim city of Santiago de Compostela?

Galicia's empanada was ideal road food, its crust sealing the filling from the dust, and one is said to be carved on Santiago's 12th-century cathedral portico; the name comes from the Spanish word for bread.

Why is a finished cup of Turkish coffee turned upside down?

To tell fortunes: the brew is unfiltered, so thick grounds stay in the cup, and once it has cooled upside down on its saucer the patterns they leave are interpreted, a practice known as tasseography.

The name of the Korean dish bibimbap literally describes what?

Bibimbap literally means 'mixed rice' (bibim, mixed; bap, rice): warm rice is topped with seasoned vegetables, egg and gochujang, then stirred together at the table; the dolsot version comes in a sizzling stone bowl.

Earl Grey tea gets its distinctive flavour from the oil of which citrus fruit?

Bergamot oil, pressed from the rind of a sour citrus, scents the black tea; the blend is named after the second Earl Grey, who is said to have been given such a tea as a gift.

Which food doubled as money in Mesoamerican markets?

Cacao was counted out as small change across Mesoamerica: a single one bought a tomato or a tamale at market, and forgers cheated by refilling emptied shells with wax or earth.

The Italian word gelato literally means what?

Frozen is all gelato means, from gelare, to freeze: in Italy it is simply the everyday word for any ice cream, and only abroad has it come to mean the dense, lower-fat Italian style.

Algeria, Mauritania, Tunisia and which country jointly nominated couscous to UNESCO in 2020?

Morocco shared the December 2020 listing with Algeria, Mauritania and Tunisia; making the dish is a ceremony in itself, the semolina rolled by hand into granules and then steamed with tools kept for the task.

A tagine's tall conical lid is designed to do what?

Return condensation to the pot is the lid's whole job: steam cools on the tall cone and trickles back down, so a stew braises with very little added water, a real advantage where water is scarce.

In 2010, 300 cooks in which country made a record-breaking 10,450 kg plate of hummus?

Lebanon's 10,452 kg plate, made in Beirut in May 2010, more than doubled a record set in Israel that January, the latest round in a long tug-of-war over the dish; hummus is simply Arabic for chickpeas.

Under its 2011 protected status, a genuine Cornish pasty must be D-shaped and crimped where?

On one side, never across the top, says the 2011 PGI rule; the thick crimp is said to have given tin miners a handle for dirty fingers, though others argue pasties were eaten whole from paper or muslin bags.

Masa, the dough of tortillas and tamales, starts with maize kernels cooked in which liquid?

Limewater, an alkaline solution of slaked lime, loosens the hulls and unlocks the corn's niacin; where maize became a staple without this step, called nixtamalization, the deficiency disease pellagra followed.

Pierogi already appear in the oldest cookbook of which country, printed in 1682?

Poland's oldest cookbook, Stanisław Czerniecki's Compendium ferculorum, already has pierogi, stuffed with kidney; one legend has Saint Hyacinth bringing them home from Kyiv in the 13th century.

Chef Nikolaos Tselementes gave Greek moussaka its modern form by topping it with which French sauce?

Béchamel was the chef's borrowing from French cooking: his cookbook, reprinted for decades, taught Greek home cooks the sauce and reshaped the national kitchen.

Jamaican jerk seasoning is built around Scotch bonnet peppers and which other key spice?

Allspice, the berry of the pimento tree, flavours jerk twice: it goes into the rub and its wood feeds the fire, a method the Maroons, who escaped slavery into Jamaica's hills, took over from the Taíno.

The Cantonese term 'dim sum' is popularly translated as what?

Touch the heart is the well-loved rendering, though dictionaries gloss the two characters more plainly as 'dot' and 'heart'; the snacks grew up as small bites served with tea in Guangzhou's teahouses.

Gaziantep baklava, the first Turkish product to win EU protected status, is filled with which nut?

Pistachio is so bound up with the city that the Turkish name for the nut, Antep fıstığı, means 'Antep nut'; the baklava itself is said to have arrived in 1871 with a baker who learned it in Damascus.

Pad thai became Thailand's national dish through a nationalist campaign led by whom?

The prime minister, Plaek Phibunsongkhram, pushed the dish to build a Thai identity and, by the usual account, to save rice during wartime shortages; its original name still carried a Chinese loanword for noodles.

Raw salmon only became a common sushi topping in Japan after a 1980s sales drive by which country?

Norway had more farmed salmon than it could sell, so its exporters pitched it to Japan, where raw salmon had been avoided for fear of parasites.

Caesar Cardini is credited with creating the Caesar salad in 1924 at his restaurant in which city?

Tijuana drew thirsty Americans over the border during Prohibition, and by his daughter's account Cardini improvised the salad when a Fourth of July rush emptied his kitchen.

Captain James Cook loaded barrels of which German staple on his Pacific voyages to ward off scurvy?

Sauerkraut is cabbage soured by its own bacteria, which gives it a long shelf life while keeping the vitamin C that sailors on long voyages went without.

Real wasabi is so scarce that most wasabi paste sold outside Japan is mainly which dyed root?

Horseradish, coloured green, stands in because the real plant is hard to farm even in ideal conditions: it needs cool, humid air and shrinks from direct sunlight.

Fortune cookies, not Chinese in origin, were popularised in the early 1900s in which US state?

California is where rival immigrant bakers all claimed the idea. It most likely came from Japanese immigrants, and a very similar cookie was made in Kyoto in the 1800s.

Which Tex-Mex snack is named after Ignacio Anaya, who improvised it in Piedras Negras in 1943?

Nachos carry his nickname, the usual short form of Ignacio. A maître d' who could not find the cook, he topped fried tortilla triangles with cheese and jalapeños for a party of US officers' wives.

The Michelin Guide, whose stars are fine dining's top honour, is published by a maker of what?

Tyres were the point: the Michelin brothers launched the guide in 1900 hoping motorists would drive further and wear out their rubber sooner.

In a popular legend, Kaldi discovered coffee after which of his animals turned lively on the plant?

Goats are the heroes of the tale, though it is probably a myth: Kaldi supposedly lived in the ninth century, and no version of the story appears in print before 1671.

The prized ingredient of Chinese bird's nest soup is a nest that swiftlets build out of what?

Their saliva sets into hard interwoven strands, and in water the nest turns gelatinous, a texture that has made it a delicacy for more than 400 years.

Nobel laureate Albert Szent-Györgyi extracted his research vitamin C from which red spice?

Paprika supplied the vitamin for his experiments, and it also colours Hungary's best-known dishes, including the stew the rest of the world calls goulash.

Kopi luwak, one of the priciest coffees, uses cherries that were eaten and excreted by which animal?

Civet droppings are the harvest: the cherries ferment in the animal's gut, and coffee gathered from wild animals sells for about ten times the price of the farmed kind.

Escargot, a French delicacy that was already an elite food in ancient Rome, is which animal?

Snail farming has its own name, heliciculture, and a Roman breeder, Quintus Fulvius Lippinus, is remembered as its father.

Tzatziki, the chilled Greek dip, blends strained yogurt and garlic with which vegetable?

Cucumber is the constant in a very old idea: the first Ottoman cookbook, printed in 1844, already described a near-identical dish as yogurt with cucumber and garlic.

Which Japanese port city gives its name to a famously marbled beef from the Tajima strain of Wagyu?

Kobe beef is so tightly defined that the animals must be born in the surrounding Hyōgo Prefecture and meet rules set by a local marketing association.

Tequila, named after a town in the Mexican state of Jalisco, must be distilled from which plant?

Blue agave is the only agave allowed, and that is what separates tequila from mezcal, a spirit that can be distilled from other agave species.

Poke, the diced raw fish dish now sold in bowls around the world, comes from which US state?

Hawaii gave the dish its name as well: poke is the Hawaiian word for slicing or cutting crosswise into pieces.

The sandwich takes its name from John Montagu, an 18th-century holder of which English noble title?

Earl of Sandwich was his title, and the story goes that he ordered roast beef between slices of toast so he could keep gambling without greasing his cards.

Beef Stroganoff, sautéed beef in sour cream, is named after a noble family from which country?

Russia's Stroganov family lent the name, and legend says a chef posted to Siberia cut the beef into strips because the cold had left it too hard to carve any other way.

Black pudding, a fixture of the full breakfast in England, gets its dark colour from what?

Blood, usually from pigs, is bound with oatmeal or barley, and that high share of cereal is what sets black pudding apart from other blood sausages.

Tahini, the paste that enriches hummus, baba ghanoush and halva, is ground from which seeds?

Sesame is the whole recipe: the seeds are usually hulled and toasted, then ground into an oily paste.

Which rhizome of the ginger family gives curry powder its deep orange-yellow colour?

Turmeric was a dye before it was a seasoning, and in India its yellow still colours the robes of monks and priests.

The scale that rates the heat of chillies is named after which American pharmacist?

Wilbur Scoville's test relied on tongues: a chilli extract was diluted in sugar water until most of a five-person panel could no longer feel the heat.

The tandoor, a vase-shaped oven used since antiquity to bake naan and roti, is usually made of what?

Clay tandoors can reach about 480 °C and are routinely kept lit for long stretches, and fine hairline cracks let their walls expand and contract.

Traditionally, true caviar is the salt-cured roe of which fish of the Caspian and Black seas?

Sturgeon roe is the only kind traditionally called caviar, and the rarest and costliest of all comes from the critically endangered beluga.

Moules-frites, a pot of mussels served with fries, is the national dish of which country?

Belgium claims the dish, though much of the shellfish in the pot comes from farms just over the border in Zeeland in the Netherlands.

Pesto, pounded from basil, pine nuts, garlic and hard cheese, originated in which port city?

Genoa's dialect named it too: pesto comes from the Genoese verb for pounding or crushing, the same Latin root that gives English the word pestle.

Bouillabaisse began with fishermen cooking bony rockfish they could not sell in which French port?

Marseille still serves it in two acts: the broth comes first with bread and rouille, then the fish arrives separately on a large platter.

Which soft cheese is named after the Normandy village where Marie Harel reportedly first made it?

Camembert owes its recipe, by tradition, to a churchman: Harel is said to have followed the advice of an abbot from Alençon in 1791.

The finest jamón ibérico comes from free-range pigs that spend their last months eating only what?

Acorns are bellota in Spanish, and the top grade, jamón ibérico de bellota, is named for them: the pigs roam oak pastures called dehesas.

Which empire's people nicknamed quinoa chisiya mama, Quechua for the mother of all grains?

The Inca prized quinoa, but the Spanish who colonised the Andes looked down on it as a subsistence food.

Gazpacho, the cold soup of raw blended vegetables, takes its full name from which Spanish region?

Andalusia lends the soup its full name, Andalusian gazpacho, and one theory traces it to a Roman-era mix of bread, olive oil, garlic and water.

Guanciale, the cured pork used in spaghetti alla carbonara, comes from which part of the pig?

Cheek is in the name: guanciale comes from guancia, the Italian word for it, and the same cut flavours the tomato-based amatriciana.

The savoury galette, a thin pancake that once stood in for bread, is tied to which French region?

Brittany's galette is served in crêperies all over France, where the smaller, sweeter wheat-flour pancakes take the name crêpe instead.

Under Germany's official baking guidelines, which cherry drink must be clearly tasted in a Black Forest gateau?

Kirsch, a clear spirit distilled from cherries, has to come through clearly in the taste, and one theory says the gateau takes its name from it.

Smørrebrød, Denmark's open-faced sandwich, is traditionally built on bread made from which grain?

Rye makes rugbrød, the dense, dark sourdough bread under the toppings, which is spread with butter or, in some versions, lard.

The tingling, numbing part of the 'mala' flavour in dishes such as mapo tofu comes from which spice?

Sichuan peppercorn is no relative of black pepper or chillies: it is the dried husk of a plant in the citrus family.

Which tinned food, a star of South Korea's 'army base stew', was illegal to sell there until 1987?

Spam reached Korean kitchens through black markets around US bases, and during one crackdown smuggling it was a crime punishable by death.

Vindaloo grew out of a colonial-era pork dish, marinated in garlic and vinegar, from which Indian state?

Goa's pork dish became, in its British form, a fiery curry-house staple made with a choice of meats and known as the curry to eat after pub closing time.

Butter chicken was popularised in the 1950s by the Moti Mahal restaurant in which city?

Delhi's Moti Mahal is said to have hit on it by chance, stirring leftover tandoori chicken into a buttery tomato gravy.

Lutefisk, a Nordic Christmas dish with a jelly-like texture, is dried cod cured in what?

Lye is in the very name, which means lye fish, and the stiff dried cod turns gelatinous as it is rehydrated over several days.

Pastéis de nata, the custard tarts, were created by monks at a monastery in which Lisbon district?

Belém's monks began selling the tarts at a nearby sugar refinery after the Liberal Revolution of 1820 left their monastery facing closure.

Mansaf, lamb cooked in fermented dried yogurt, is the national dish of which Arab country?

Jordan claims a long pedigree for mansaf: tradition there dates the dish to a king of Moab in the ninth century BCE.

Bagels were first mentioned in 1610, in Jewish community rules written in which Polish city?

Kraków's 1610 rules name the bagel as a gift for women in childbirth, and the city's ring-shaped obwarzanek shows up in royal accounts as early as 1394.

Which stuffed corn griddle cake is El Salvador's national dish, with its own day of celebration?

Pupusa fillings run from cheese to squash and chicharrón, and neighbouring Honduras disputes El Salvador's claim to be the cake's birthplace.

Fish amok, a mousse-like curry steamed in a banana leaf, is a national dish of which country?

Cambodia's cooks steam the curry for 20 to 30 minutes until it sets, and the dish is believed to go back to the royal kitchens of the Khmer Empire.

Which country's national dish is khachapuri, a cheese bread whose price is used to track inflation?

Georgia's economists really do track it: the khachapuri index, devised at Tbilisi State University, compares the cost of making one in different cities.

Carpaccio, raw beef sliced thin at Harry's Bar in Venice in 1950, was named after a Venetian what?

Painter Vittore Carpaccio was known for his red and white tones, and Giuseppe Cipriani first made the dish for a countess whose doctors had told her to eat raw meat.

The stroopwafel was first made, folklore says from sweetened bakery scraps, in which Dutch city?

Gouda, better known abroad for its cheese, had 17 stroopwafel factories by 1960, and one story credits the invention to a local baker, Gerard Kamphuisen.

Chemist Kikunae Ikeda identified umami in 1908, then teamed up with a businessman to sell which seasoning?

MSG, short for monosodium glutamate, went on sale in Japan in 1909 under the name Ajinomoto, a year after Ikeda's discovery.

Which French chef drew on his army service to organise restaurant kitchens into the brigade system?

Auguste Escoffier, hailed by the French press as the king of chefs and chef of kings, also created Peach Melba in honour of the singer Nellie Melba.