Think you know who invented pizza? Your favorite foods have surprising global origins

Tracing the origins of food is a complex and often debated topic. For instance, while some claim the first bagel was made in Krakow, Poland, in 1610, others argue it originated in Vienna, Austria, in the late 17th century—or perhaps even from the German obwarzanek as far back as the 14th century. When a dish evolves and changes names as it travels, does it remain the same?

On the other hand, consider ketchup, which originated as kê-tsiap, a fermented fish sauce from Southeast Asia. As it made its way to Europe, British cooks experimented, swapping the fermented fish with vinegar and anchovies to mimic the original flavor. Over time, tomatoes became the main ingredient, and sugar was added, creating the sweet, tangy condiment now associated with American cuisine. Despite these changes, the name lingered, even as the recipe transformed dramatically.

So, where did these iconic foods really come from? And can any dish truly claim a single origin?

Churros: a fried dough with a global twist

Food wasn’t meant to stand the test of time, so historians often sift through written records and compare recipes to trace their origins. Churros, a type of fried dough often linked to Mexico or Spain, have ancient roots and many look-alikes across cultures.

For example, Chinese historian Miranda Brown questions the popular myth that churros originated from China’s youtiao, calling it “silly.” Unlike churros, which are made from batter squeezed from a tube, youtiao is made from egg dough rolled out, cut into cylindrical shapes, and deep-fried. “Youtiao is more like deep-fried breadsticks,” Brown says, noting that while delicious, it is not related to churros.

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Instead, Brown traces the origins of churros to a Persian sweet known as zulabiya, noting that a 10th-century recipe from Baghdad, Iraq, is almost identical to the modern churro. The dish moved to several countries in various iterations and eventually to Algeria as the “banana zlabia,” which is also piped from a syringe device. Although zulabiya is featured in a 13th-century Spanish cookbook, churros evolved into a form more closely resembling the North African version.

Tomatoes are just the beginning of the pizza debate

Simple recipes are more likely to be influenced by multiple cultures. “The fancier and more multi-step, multi-ingredient it is, I think the number of people who even have the opportunity, let alone the likelihood, to invent it shrink,” says food anthropologist Katheryn Twiss.

Pizza, for example, starts with a simple base: flatbread. “Flatbread is something people are going to create everywhere,” says Twiss. The first recorded instance of flatbread comes from Egypt around 2200 B.C., where it was eaten with toppings. This meal later appeared in Greece, Italy, and throughout the Mediterranean.

You could argue that adding cheese and marinara sauce is what makes it the pizza we know today. However, tomatoes, an essential ingredient, originated on a different continent, specifically in present-day Mexico and Peru.

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“It’s really associated with Italy now,” says Christine Hastorf, UC Berkeley’s chair of anthropology. “People think of tomato sauce, tomato pizza, Italian Pomodoro—very Italian food. And yet it took a couple of hundred years for the European palate to even realize it was edible.”

While the origins of ingredients are easier to determine than recipes, since food archaeologists can trace where produce first grew, the tomato’s journey was a long one. Colonizers brought tomatoes to Europe in the 16th century, and while initially believed to be poisonous, they eventually became a staple. Today, Italy is one of the leading tomato producers in Europe.

“Don’t talk to an Italian who grows and cans tomatoes and say, oh, that’s not really your crop,” says Hastorf. “That’s insulting. They’ve indigenized it; they’ve made it their own.”

Though Italian immigrants may have introduced their version of pizza to the U.S. in the 19th century, that doesn’t erase the historic Turkish or Greek versions—or the iconic New York style that followed.

Sushi’s origins are anything but Japanese

The first recorded mention of sushi in Japan dates back to the eighth century A.D. However, according to Eric Rath, a Japanese food historian and author of Oishii: The History of Sushi, the recipe actually originated in sixth-century China.

The Chinese word for the dish translates to “sour,” which Japanese people pronounced as sushi. That’s because the meal was quite pungent. Unlike the fresh catch used today, the original version used preserved fish—a Southeast Asian technique. Chinese and later Japanese chefs fermented the fish by encasing it in rice, which took about a year and left a dizzyingly strong flavor.

After the 14th century, Japanese cooks continued to tweak the recipe in order to speed up the process, lighten the sour taste using rice vinegar, and eventually arrived at today’s nearly instantaneous sushi.

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Over the years, the dish has embraced numerous cultural influences. According to Rath, Portuguese sailors started trading with Japan in the 16th century and introduced battered and deep-fried tempurari, which became tempura. He also says the first salmon sushi likely came from Norway.

“Sushi is constantly evolving,” says Rath. “A lot of people were involved in creating it, and it’s going to continue evolving—and that’s okay, that’s fascinating—as it becomes a global food.”

The chicken tikka masala debate

For some, food is deeply intertwined with identity, often sparking debates about cultural ownership. Take chicken tikka masala, for instance. If the ingredients are Indian, but the dish was tweaked in Scotland by adjusting spice levels and chicken texture, does that make it British or Indian?

Ali Ahmed Aslam, an Indian-Pakistani chef based in Scotland, claimed he invented the dish in the 1970s by merging canned tomato and cream with chicken tikka. Since then, it’s been called “Britain’s national dish.” But according to Santosh Mahapatra, a linguist at BITS Pilani, Hyderabad Campus who oversaw a study on the “Evolution of Indian Cuisine,” “the cream use, the yogurt use, the masala use, the spices, the tikka—all those things existed in different parts of pre-British India.”

While you could argue that Aslam combined these ingredients in a new way, a similar dish called chicken butter masala already existed in India. Pritha Sen, an expert on indigenous Indian cuisine, says the dish originated in India around 1947, but it used shredded chicken rather than chunks called tikka.

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Today, both versions use tikka. “So it comes to the same thing,” says Sen. “Just I call it chicken butter masala; he calls it chicken tikka masala.”

Yet, because of that one-word difference, Sen says chicken tikka masala is British. On the other hand, Mahapatra argues that since the name uses Indian words, the dish will always be linked to India.

Perhaps both are correct, says Mahapatra. “With chicken tikka masala, I think it’s a shared identity,” he says. “We have shared identities. Food is also a shared identity.”