The name, of course, conjures a grumpy, toga-clad emperor tucking into a spot of lunch before perhaps throwing a Christian or two to the lions, in the name of entertainment, to keep the people of Rome happy. But instead it turns out that Caesar salad is less than a hundred years old and comes from …
The world’s favourite brunch dish, eggs Benedict comprises an English muffin cut in two, each half topped with ham, a poached egg and a dollop of hollandaise sauce. Various Benedicts claim to have invented it. In 1942, the New Yorker published an interview with one Lemuel Benedict, a retired New York stockbroker, who told the …
Many cultures have a rule that you must have a bite to eat every time you have a drink. Spain has taken that idea and developed a whole cuisine around it – tapas. Consisting of wide range of little snacks or appetizers, from juicy olives to spicy chorizo or rings of battered squid, these are …
A Lamington is a small sponge cake covered in chocolate icing and rolled in desiccated coconut that is hugely popular throughout Australasia. No arguing about the origins of this one (see Pavlova) as it is definitely Australian, although New Zealand’s strawberry version is widely claimed to be better. (Don’t they ever stop arguing, that lot?) …
The foreign origins of the Lamington, Australia’s favourite cake. Read More »
Pizza, the signature Italian dish that is a favourite in just about every country in the world, wasn’t actually invented in Italy. The ancestor of the modern dish was created thousands of years ago by the ancient Greeks and Persians. It is said that soldiers of the Persian king Darius I (521–486 bc) baked a …
How Margherita inspired the world’s most famous pizza Read More »
Originally known simply as rolled oat biscuits (rather like oatcakes), these are made from a simple recipe of oats, golden syrup and coconut. At the beginning of the First World War, women in Australia and New Zealand began baking huge numbers and shipping them off to the soldiers of the Australian and New Zealand Army …
The earliest written description of a meat and vegetable pasty dates from the reign of Henry III (1207–72) and Chaucer refers twice to venison pasties in the fourteenth-century Canterbury Tales. Originally a luxurious dish enjoyed by the nobility, who discarded its tough outer pastry to eat the tender filling, the pasty was a humbler version, …
From the Author of the Internationally Bestselling Books – Red Herrings & White Elephants, What Caesar did for My Salad, Shaggy Dogs, Pop Goes the Weasel, They Laughed at Galileo: Have you ever wondered where your Margherita, Melba, Suzette or Eggs Benedict come from? This is the fantastic history and origins of your favourite foods …
Auguste Escoffier (1846–1935) was a French chef, restaurateur and writer, a key figure in the development of modern French cuisine. In the 1880s, he formed a partnership with the equally celebrated César Ritz (founder of the Ritz Hotel in London), the two of them being called upon by Richard D’Oyly Carte (see sole Véronique) to …
The name, of course, conjures a grumpy, toga-clad emperor tucking into a spot of lunch before perhaps throwing a Christian or two to the lions, in the name of entertainment, to keep the people of Rome happy. But instead it turns out that Caesar salad is less than a hundred years old and comes from …
