40 Fun Facts About Appetizers

Which cheesy snack is named after Ignacio Anaya, a maître d' who improvised it for US military wives?

Nachos take their name from Anaya's nickname, Nacho, a common short form of Ignacio. He made the first plate in 1943 at the Victory Club in Piedras Negras, a Mexican border town.

Which city's Anchor Bar is credited with inventing hot chicken wings served with celery and blue cheese?

Buffalo is where Teressa Bellissimo is said to have fried the first batch in 1964, as a quick late-night snack for her son's friends.

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

Carpaccio honors Vittore Carpaccio, whose paintings were known for their red and white tones. Giuseppe Cipriani first made it for a countess whose doctors had told her to eat raw meat.

The canapé, bread with a savory topping, takes its name from the French word for which piece of furniture?

Sofa is the joke behind the name: the topping sits on the bread the way a person sits on a couch. A canapé is meant to be held in the fingers and often eaten in one bite.

Antoine's restaurant in New Orleans named its rich baked oyster dish after which American tycoon?

John D. Rockefeller was the wealthiest American when Jules Alciatore created the dish in 1889. Antoine's has kept the recipe for its green sauce a secret ever since.

Which restaurant chain had the deep-fried Bloomin' Onion on its menu when it first opened in Tampa?

Outback Steakhouse made the dish a charter menu item in 1988 and trademarked the name. A fried version was likely invented three years earlier at a New Orleans grill where one of the chain's founders worked.

Caesar salad, a classic starter, was first tossed by restaurateur Caesar Cardini in which Mexican border city?

Tijuana drew Americans dodging Prohibition, which is why Cardini, an Italian immigrant living in San Diego, ran a restaurant there. The salad is said to date from a Fourth of July rush in 1924.

In 1992, the dollar value of salsa sold in the United States passed that of which rival condiment?

Ketchup was outsold in dollars by a food whose name simply means sauce in Spanish. In English, salsa came to mean Mexican table sauces in particular, above all the chunky tomato-and-chili kind.

Which fried wonton filled with cream cheese was probably invented at the tiki restaurant Trader Vic's?

Crab rangoon borrows the old name of Yangon in Myanmar, yet cream cheese is found in neither Burmese nor Chinese cooking. It was on the Trader Vic's menu in Beverly Hills by 1955.

Which menu word means the main course in the United States but a dish served before it in France?

Entrée began as the entrance to the table, the opening stage of a French banquet. Beyond North America it still generally means an appetizer or starter.

The dip hummus takes its name from the Arabic word for which legume, blended with tahini to make it?

Chickpeas supply the whole name: the full Arabic phrase, hummus bi tahini, simply lists the two main ingredients. Lemon juice and garlic complete the standard recipe.

Which Spanish bar snacks, served alongside drinks, take their name from a word meaning lid or cover?

Tapas comes from the verb tapar, to cover. One popular story has Andalusian tavern drinkers laying a slice of meat over the glass to keep fruit flies out of their sherry.

Japan's batter-fried tempura began with a technique learned from 16th-century missionaries of which country?

Portugal still has a close cousin of the dish: peixinhos da horta, or garden fishes, which are green beans dipped in batter and fried. Japanese cooks picked up the technique in Nagasaki.

In Britain, pigs in blankets are small sausages wrapped in which meat and served with the Christmas turkey?

Bacon is the blanket in Britain and Ireland, where the dish is also known as kilted sausages. The American snack of nearly the same name wraps its sausage in bread or pastry dough instead.

Which melted-cheese dish did the Swiss Cheese Union promote as a national dish in the 1930s?

Fondue was pushed by the union simply to get people eating more cheese. After wartime rationing ended, it kept the campaign going by sending fondue sets to army regiments.

Which French word for a shop selling prepared pork is now used for boards of cured meats and cheeses?

Charcuterie joins the French words chair, flesh, and cuit, cooked. The craft covers hams, sausages, terrines and pâtés, most of them made from pork.

Which South American country counts ceviche, raw fish marinated in citrus juice, as its national dish?

Peru has had its ceviche tradition recognized by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Before limes reached the Andes, coastal cooks used the juice of a native passionfruit called tumbo.

True caviar, traditionally from the Caspian and Black Seas, is the salt-cured roe of which fish?

Sturgeon roe comes in three classic kinds: beluga, ossetra and sevruga. The eggs of other fish, such as salmon or lumpfish, are also sold under the caviar name.

Which US state made tortilla chips and salsa its official state snack by a legislative resolution in 2003?

Texas lawmakers ranked chips and salsa with the square dance, the guitar and the rodeo as state traditions. Their resolution also boasts that the state led the nation in growing jalapeño peppers.

The French term hors d'oeuvre, used for small bites served ahead of a meal, literally translates as what?

Outside the work meant apart from the ordinary set of courses in a meal. In the 17th century, such small dishes began to be set outside the main, symmetrical arrangement of plates on the table.

Guacamole is traditionally mashed in a molcajete, a three-legged Mexican tool best described as what?

Stone mortar is the plain description: a true molcajete is carved from a single block of bubbly volcanic basalt. Its pestle, the tejolote, is cut from the same rock.

Baba ghanoush, the Levantine dip scooped up with pita, is made by roasting and mashing which vegetable?

Eggplant is traditionally charred whole over an open flame before it is peeled, which gives the dip its smoky taste. Tahini, olive oil and lemon juice are then mixed into the soft pulp.

Which Greek dip of strained yogurt, garlic and cucumber takes its name from the Turkish word cacık?

Tzatziki belongs to a family of yogurt dishes that Turkic migrations carried from Central Asia into Anatolia and the Balkans. Dill or mint and a little olive oil usually finish it.

Arancini, the fried rice balls whose name means little oranges, are a staple food of which Italian island?

Sicily's eastern cities, such as Catania and Messina, shape theirs into cones inspired by Mount Etna. The snack is said to date from the 10th century, when Arabs ruled the island.

Which restaurant chain, begun as a Manhattan singles bar, is one of several claiming to have first served potato skins?

TGI Fridays shares the claim with rivals such as the Prime Rib Restaurant, and the dish is documented from 1974. Founder Alan Stillman bought his local bar partly with $5,000 borrowed from his mother.

French onion dip, once called California dip, mixes sour cream with which brand's dry onion soup mix?

Lipton promoted the recipe on Arthur Godfrey's television show in 1955, a year after an unknown Los Angeles cook came up with it. Potato chips are its usual partner.

Which salad dressing did plumber Steve Henson first mix in Alaska to feed his work crews in the early 1950s?

Ranch takes its name from Hidden Valley Ranch, the California guest ranch Henson bought after leaving Alaska. Visitors liked the house dressing so much that they took jars of it home.

Which French term names the bite-sized dish a chef sends out free ahead of a meal, which diners cannot order?

Amuse-bouche literally means mouth amuser. Because the kitchen alone chooses it, the tiny course doubles as a preview of the cook's style.

Edamame, the salted green pods served at Japanese restaurants, are the immature form of which crop?

Soybeans picked young have been called edamame since at least 1275, when the Japanese monk Nichiren thanked a parishioner in writing for a gift of them. The pods are boiled or steamed.

Which city's Golden Gate casino began selling a fifty-cent shrimp cocktail in 1959 that became a local cliché?

Las Vegas visitors paid the same 50 cents until 1991, when the price rose to 99 cents because the casino was losing $300,000 a year on the dish. It came in a sundae glass.

The smörgåsbord, a buffet that customarily begins with cold herring dishes, comes from which Nordic country?

Sweden introduced the spread to Americans at the 1939 New York World's Fair, where its pavilion's Three Crowns Restaurant served one. The name literally means sandwich table.

American cocktail sauce, the red dip served with chilled shrimp, gets its sharp heat from which grated root?

Horseradish has spiked the sauce since the 19th century, when it dressed oyster cocktails. Shrimp became the favorite only after overharvesting thinned the oyster supply.

The finest grade of Spain's jamón ibérico comes from black Iberian pigs fattened on which woodland food?

Acorns give the top grade its name, jamón ibérico de bellota, bellota being the Spanish word for them. The pigs roam oak groves known as dehesa as slaughter time approaches.

Which Midwestern city's Italian neighborhood, The Hill, is credited with creating toasted ravioli?

St. Louis lore says a chef on The Hill dropped a ravioli into the fryer by accident, and several restaurants there claim the moment. Locals call the result T-ravs and dip them in marinara sauce.

Which Piccadilly department store, known for its food hampers, claims to have invented the Scotch egg in 1738?

Fortnum & Mason has a rival in Whitby, Yorkshire, where another account says the snack began in the 19th century with a coating of fish paste rather than sausage meat.

Tapenade, the Provençal olive spread, actually takes its name from the local word for which other ingredient?

Capers are tapenas in Provençal, and the classic recipe still rests mainly on them and the olives. The paste serves as a condiment or a cooking ingredient as well as a spread.

Gravlax, Nordic salmon cured with salt, sugar and dill, is named for which medieval way of making it?

Burying in sand above the high-tide line let medieval fishermen lightly ferment their salted catch. The grav in the name comes from a Nordic word meaning to dig, a relative of grave.

Setting saganaki, Greek fried cheese, alight at the table reportedly began in the Greektown of which American city?

Chicago's Parthenon restaurant reportedly lit the first one in 1968 at a customer's suggestion. In North America the flames are usually put out with a squeeze of lemon juice.

Kibbeh, a national dish of Lebanon and Syria, is made by pounding meat with which wheat product?

Bulgur and lean meat are pounded into a fine paste, then shaped into ovals with toasted pine nuts and spices. One version, kibbeh nayyeh, is served completely raw with mint leaves and olive oil.

Fried dill pickles were popularized in 1963 by Bernell Austin at the Duchess Drive In, in which Southern state?

Arkansas pickle fans gather each May at Picklefest in the town of Atkins, the one time a year that Austin's family makes his secret recipe. He went by the nickname Fatman.