Famous Foods and How they Got Their Names

People regularly ask what is in a particular dish they are about to eat, but rarely do they ask how that particular meal got its name. The origins of a dish are generally as interesting as the food itself, as the below meal reveals.

Beef Stroganoff

A mixture of beef, mushrooms, and sour cream, Beef Stroganoff was the prize-winning recipe created for a cooking competition held in the 1890s in St. Petersburg, Russia. The chef who devised the recipe worked for the Russian diplomat Count Pavel Alexandrovich Stroganov, a member of one of Russia's grandest noble families.

Beef Wellington

A national hero for defeating Napoleon at Waterloo in 1815, Arthur Wellesley was made the first Duke of Wellington. He loved a dish of beef, mushrooms, truffles, Madeira wine, and paté cooked in pastry, which has been named in his honor.

Caesar Salad

In the 1920s, Caesar Cardini, owner of an Italian restaurant in Tijuana, Mexico, and his brother, Alex, invented a salad of romaine lettuce, anchovies, coddled egg, lemon juice, grated Parmesan cheese, and garlic-flavored croutons tossed with a garlic vinaigrette flavored with Worcestershire sauce. At first it was called Aviator's Salad, but later Cardini named the dish after himself.

Eggs Benedict

A dish that many consume to alleviate the common hangover, this breakfast mainstay was in fact inspired by a night of excessive drinking over a century ago. According to the New York Times in 1894, a dapper Wall Street aristocrat, Lemuel Benedict ordered a la carte of the Waldorf Hotel’s menu: poached eggs, buttered toast, bacon and a pitcher full of hollandaise sauce on the side. Benedict has complained of a hangover and somehow figured this mélange of breakfast foods would sop up the alcohol in his belly. The hotel’s restaurant still bears his name - tasted Benedict’s concoction and decided it should be a permanent addition to the Waldorf-Astoria’s menu

Cordon Bleu

Literally means 'blue ribbon' and is a name given to distinguished chefs. In cooking, it's a stuffing for meat made of cheese and ham; classically, Gruyere cheese and prosciutto.

Reuben Sandwich

The Reuben may be the first celebrity sandwich though it wasn’t named after the actress who inspired it, but rather after the chef who arranged it. Patricia Taylor, daughter of the late Arnold  Reuben, told the New York Times that it was back in 1914 when a Broadway actress friend of Charlie Chaplin entered her father’s delicatessen and said, “Reuben, make me a sandwich, make it combination, I’m so hungry I could eat a brick”. With that command, Reuben stacked ham, roast turkey, swiss cheese, cole slaw.