Which century saw the creation of ciabatta bread? And how old is the biscuit with the chocolate chips? You shouldn’t be shocked if your predictions are wildly off if you don’t know the answers to these questions. The chocolate chip cookie is only four years older than Joe Biden, and ciabatta was created in the same year as Diet Coke. These are just a few of the foods that most people mistakenly think to be older than they actually are. Discover the history of these and other well-known foods from around the world that are surprisingly new.
Tiramisu (1972)
The real history of tiramisu is widely contested, as is sometimes the case with current recipes, although it is undeniable that it is a relatively recent development. The restaurant La Beccherie in Treviso, Italy’s Veneto region, has made the strongest claim. Although the restaurant claims it dates back to 1955, when the then-owner, Alba Campeol, was pregnant and ate zabaglione and coffee for energy at breakfast, the dish was placed to the menu in 1972 as “Tiramesù,” a contraction of a term meaning “lift me up” in the local dialect. She then created a dessert that tasted similar with the help of her chef, Roberto Linguanotto.
According to Italy’s official recognition of it as a “traditional agricultural food product,” other sources indicate that it first originated in the Udine region in the 1950s, according to food historian Sue Bailey. The dispute between Veneto and its neighbour Friuli Venezia-Giulia, where Udine is situated, has been prompted by the recognition, which came in 2017 from the Italian Ministry of Agriculture.
Unquestionably, the meal that is still well-liked today is a variation of the one from Le Beccherie.
Tiramisu is a modern take on the classic sbatudin dish. It is formed of ladyfinger biscuits dipped in coffee, topped with a layer of mascarpone, sugar, and beaten egg yolks, and dusted with cocoa powder. In a more contemporary rendition, alcohol or sweet wine—typically Marsala—is added. Several more variants.
Masala chicken tikka (1970s)
This meal, which is frequently regarded as Britain’s national dish, also originated in a restaurant. Ali Ahmed Aslam claimed to have created the meal in his Glasgow restaurant, Shish Mahal, or at least that’s what we assume it was. In response to a customer’s complaint about the meat being dry, he apparently had an epiphany and decided to add tomato-cream sauce to chicken tikka, an Indian dish of marinated chicken in yoghurt and spices.
Others contend that he wasn’t the meal’s true creator and that he was merely rearranging ingredients in a modified form of the Indian dish butter chicken.
The dish was designated as a Glaswegian delicacy in 2009 by British politician Mohammed Sarwar, and the late Robin Cook, the country’s foreign secretary, referred to it as a “genuine British national cuisine.” Whatever the dish’s origins, Aslam played a part in popularising it until his death in 2022.
Ciabatta (1982)
A baker and rally racing driver named Arnaldo Cavallari invented ciabatta in 1982. He gave it the full name “ciabatta polesana” or “Polesine slipper,” after the area where he lived, which is located in Italy’s Veneto region.
According to Bailey, “He was attempting to develop a substitute for French baguettes, but with a little more water and a little more distinctive – Italian and competitive.” It has a crusty outside and a soft, chewy interior.
Cavallari’s flour mill trademarked the term and later granted a global licence for ciabatta since adding more water actually reduces the cost of making the bread.
Banana of Cavendish (1960s)
Bananas have only been sold commercially for around 60 years now, when they first began to appear in stores all over the world. Because commercial banana production simply means repeatedly cloning the same plant, they are of the Cavendish variety and are astonishingly uniform from nation to nation and year to year.
The plants become less disease-resistant as a result of the decreased biodiversity. This is precisely what occurred in the 1950s, when a different variety of banana known as Gros Michel was the most widely used commercially.
Richer, sweeter, and bigger than the Cavendish, “Big Mike” was superior, but when a fungus called fusarium started ravaging plantations, it spread so quickly that the only option was to completely eradicate all Gros Michel plants and start over with a different variety that was resistant to the disease. The Cavendish is one such variety.
Young carrots (1986)
Two things become clear from this: first, most baby carrots are basically regular carrots that have been shrunk down to a smaller size, and second, a Californian farmer named Mike Yurosek invented them in 1986. Yurosek was trying to find a solution for the tonnes of carrots that were being thrown away because they were broken, crooked, or otherwise not up to shop standards.
He chopped “subprime” carrots into peeled, two-inch tubes to be sold in plastic bags using an industrial potato peeler. As a result of the invention, the popularity of carrots in the US has skyrocketed. Almost 50% of all carrot sales in the US now are tiny carrots.
Chicken General Tso’s (1955)
This meal of sweet, savoury, and spicy fried chicken, which is typically served with pork fried rice, was created in Taiwan in 1955 at a dinner for US diplomats during the Taiwan Strait Crisis by a cook by the name of Peng Chang-kuei. He called it after general Zuo Zongtang, a 19th-century military leader from his native Hunan province in China, for no apparent reason.
The dish, which the cooks had tried in Peng’s Taipei restaurant, was tweaked when the first Hunanese restaurants opened in New York in the 1970s. In order to launch his own restaurant, Uncle Peng’s Hunan Yuan, and put General Tso’s Chicken on the map, Peng himself immigrated to New York City in 1973.
Nachos (1940)
Nachos originated in Piedras Negras, a border city in Mexico, where they were created on a whim in 1940. Ignacio Anaya, a restaurant employee, was asked to quickly prepare a snack for some American military women, according to Bailey. He then fried several triangle-shaped tortillas, topped them with cheese and jalapenos, and served them.
He referred to the meal as “Nacho’s special,” Nacho being a slang term for those with the last name Ignacio. As he launched his own restaurant, nachos became quite popular in the area. After he crossed the border into Texas and the US, the recipe was changed and made more popular. Soon, “Ballpark nachos” were a standard food item in theatres and stadiums.
Pineapple pizza (1962)
The most contentious pizza in the world has a very contemporary and improbable beginning. It was neither a Hawaiian nor an Italian innovation, according to Bailey.
Actually, it comes from Canada. Sam Panopoulos, a chef in Ontario with a very eccentric restaurant, had the idea to create a slightly unique pizza. He therefore added some pineapple to the pizza.
Why was it referred to as Hawaiian pizza? She explains, “I gather that was just from the type of canned pineapple he used. Put that on the list of dishes with, at best, a tenuous relationship to their own names.
Carbonara (1944)
As you might have realised by now, one of the most well-known Italian pasta meals is also the focus of controversy regarding its ancestry. Renato Gualandi, a chef from Bologna, is credited with creating the meal near the close of World War II utilising products that the American troops who had just liberated Italy had brought into the country.
He may have been elaborating on the centuries-old pasta alla gricia, a dish identical to it but without the egg, by using bacon and powdered eggs, which may have been part of military rations. The strong association of Rome with carbonara can be attributed to Gualandi, who later served as the cook for the Allied troops stationed there.
Cookie with chocolate chips (1938)
The chocolate chip cookie isn’t ancient; it was created in the late 1930s by Whitman, Massachusetts restaurant owner Ruth Wakefield. She named it the Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookie after the name of her establishment. She first released the recipe in 1938, and a year later she sold it to Nestlé for a symbolic $1.
Many people claim that Wakefield’s innovation came about by accident after he ran out of nuts and decided to use pieces of chocolate from a Nestlé bar instead. That is not the case, though; more accurate sources portray Wakefield’s recipe as intentional. When the cookie gained in popularity, its convoluted name was dropped. They were no longer Nestlé’s exclusive source of production in 1983, which allowed for countless commercial variations.
