The secret Asian histories behind your favourite Western dishes

Food history, for all its charm and scholarship, is almost never static. Recipes don’t politely stay put; they hitch rides on ships, cross deserts, and get reinvented by whoever’s stirring the pot next. So while you might think of Scotch eggs as quintessentially British or goulash as purely Hungarian, a closer look reveals a web of shared cravings — stews born on the steppes, sweets refined in Persian courts, and sauces that sailed from Fujian all the way to your fries.

To be fair, much of this is speculative. Culinary historians can trace ingredients, techniques, and trade routes, but pinning down who first battered, simmered, or sweetened something is like chasing the scent of cardamom through time. Still, these cross-continental echoes remind us that even the most “Western” comfort foods might have an Eastern backstory — and that good ideas (especially edible ones) are too delicious not to travel.

Here are some of the dishes whose origins might surprise you — and the Asian inspirations quietly simmering beneath their Western façades.

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Scotch egg: Mughal roots with a British twist

Scotch eggs may trace its roots to Mughal-era nargisi kofta

Scotch egg is widely known not to be Scottish at all, but the humble British picnic staple—a boiled egg wrapped in sausage and fried—might not even be completely British. Food historians like Annette Hope have speculated that the Scotch egg could be a toned-down adaptation of nargisi kofta, a Mughlai dish of eggs encased in spiced minced meat and fried until golden. While hard proof is elusive, the overlap is tempting: both were favourites of colonial-era tables and both rely on the same dramatic “cut-in-half” reveal. It’s easy to imagine the dish evolving along the trade routes of the British Raj, the spices fading while the structure remained.

Goulash: stew with Central Asian ancestry

Goulash, Hungary’s national stew, owes a simmering debt to Central Asia’s nomadic cooks

Even Western dishes that serve as national food may owe a little bit to Asia. Hungarian goulash, rich with paprika and slow-cooked meat, may trace its roots back to the Eurasian steppes. The Magyar tribes who migrated westward in the 9th century likely carried preserved meats and portable stews, a tradition common among Turkic and Central Asian nomads. Historians can’t pinpoint a single ancestor, but the method—meat simmered over an open fire—mirrors ancient nomadic cooking. The paprika came centuries later via Ottoman trade, giving a fiery hue to what was once a traveller’s plain survival meal.

Doughnuts and fritters: fried indulgence across continents

Doughnuts is but a modern offshoot of fried dough treats that began with ancient traders from China and Arabia

Whether you call it a doughnut, fritter or beignet, the joy of fried dough spans continents. Culinary historians suggest that Europe’s love for sweet, spiced dough may have travelled along Arab trade routes, which were themselves influenced by even older Chinese and Central Asian traditions like youtiao. While it’s impossible to pin down one direct ancestor—fried dough was everyone’s guilty pleasure—what’s notable is how the idea sweetened over time, from simple sustenance to sugary indulgence, shaped by centuries of cross-cultural grease and genius.

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Sorbet and sherbet: frozen Persian refreshment reborn in Europe

Sherbet, sorbet, sharbat: the linguistic connection is certain

That frosty scoop of lemon sorbet owes its name—and maybe its concept—to sharbat, a Persian and Arabic drink flavoured with fruit, flowers and herbs. The link is linguistically certain, though culinary historians note the transformation from chilled drink to frozen dessert likely happened after the technique of using mountain snow to cool drinks spread across the Mediterranean. By the time Italians adapted it into sorbetto, the East’s perfumed drink had become Europe’s most elegant way to stay cool.

Marzipan and medieval sweets: almond paste with Persian heritage

Marzipan, which became a royal European treat, was first perfected in Persia’s almond-scented kitchens

The ornate confections of medieval Europe—made with almond paste, rosewater, candied fruits—have their roots in Arab and Persian sugarcraft. This is one of the better-documented culinary transmissions: sugarcane cultivation and almond-based sweets entered Europe through Muslim Spain and Sicily. While marzipan’s exact birthplace is still debated (Spain, Italy or Persia all lay claim), its DNA is unmistakably Eastern, a legacy of spice caravans, Crusaders and confectioners who learned that almonds and sugar make excellent ambassadors.

Meat pies: from nomad parcels to British plates

The quintessentially British meat pie has deep roots in Asia’s tradition of spiced meat encased in pastry

Before Cornish pasties and steak-and-kidney pies filled British tables, nomads across Central Asia were baking samsa—flaky, portable parcels stuffed with minced meat and onions. The connection isn’t directly proven, but the resemblance is uncanny, especially since the Silk Road made both dough and fillings a shared language. While Europe refined them into oven-baked comfort food, their origins might just lie in caravan camps rather than cottages.

Catsup or ketchup: Fujian’s fish sauce turned global condiment

Kê-tsiap, the Fujian forebear of the modern catsup or ketchup, was a fermented fish sauce

Whether you spell it catsup or ketchup, this beloved condiment, which goes well with so many Western dishes, can be traced back to Fujian’s fermented fish sauce. Yes, long before Heinz bottled tomato ketchup, sailors in the 17th century were acquiring a taste for kê-tsiap, a fermented fish brine from China’s Fujian province. The adaptation is well-documented: British traders brought the condiment home, replaced the anchovies with mushrooms or walnuts, and by the 19th century, Americans added tomatoes. It’s one of the clearest examples of a truly global flavour swap: East Asia’s funky umami reborn as the West’s sweetest sauce.

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Ice cream: from ancient Persia and China to modern gelato

Persian snow and Chinese milk gave rise to the world’s favourite indulgence

Italians perfected gelato, the French gave us parfait, but the earliest experiments with frozen desserts date back to the Persians, who mixed mountain snow with grape juice as early as 500 BCE, and to the Chinese, who chilled rice mixtures centuries before refrigeration was a thing. Historians consider the lineage probable but indirect. After all, techniques, not recipes, travelled. What’s clear is that, without Asia’s ancient obsession with snow and sweetness, European summer would be a lot less creamy.

Pasta: noodles that traveled around the world

Italian pasta echoes ancient Chinese noodles stretched across the Silk Road

One of the most popular Western dishes in the world may possibly be descended from Asian noodles. The story of Marco Polo bringing noodles to Italy is largely apocryphal, but there’s no denying that long before Italy’s durum wheat pastas, Asia was making noodles from millet and rice.

The two traditions likely evolved separately yet inspired one another through centuries of trade. Historians are careful here: it’s not that spaghetti “came from China,” but that the Silk Road made flour, water and creativity a shared human instinct. Still, the next time you twirl linguine, imagine an echo of Lanzhou noodle-pullers in the motion.

Punch: the Indian drink that conquered Europe’s parties

Your party punch bowl is inspired by India’s five-ingredient drink, panch

Have you ever heard of Indian panch? Colonial sailors in the 17th century encountered a local Indian drink called panch, made of five ingredients: alcohol, sugar, lemon, water and tea or spice. They took it back to Europe as “punch,” where it became the life of the party in Georgian England. Its DNA—a balance of heat, spice, citrus and sweet—is pure South Asian chemistry, manifested in porcelain bowls.

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