A very recent example is “yogurt” of Turkish origin.
Yogurt was virtually unknown in the world outside of the Ottoman empire.
Even a hundred twenty years ago, there were European travel records about this mysterious yogurt which could be consumed in large quantities without adverse effect and which was so different from the already known sour milk.
During the collapse of the empire, a Jewish Ottoman resettled to Spain and took the yogurt with him. He would administer it to people suffering from gastrointestinal problems. Eventually this yogurt proved extremely popular and he founded a yogurt company named after his son that was born in Spain, Daniel who was known by the pet name of Danone.
The introduction to America happened similarly. Ottoman citizens (Armenians etc) that were fleeing the collapsing empire brought it to America and retained the Turkish name as Turkish was their lingua franca. Also comparable with pastrami from the Yiddish language which derives from Turkish “pastırma”, pressed meat.
> [yogurt] is thought to have been invented in Mesopotamia around 5000 BC. In ancient Indian records, the combination of yogurt and honey is called "the food of the gods". Persian traditions hold that "Abraham […]
> The cuisine of ancient Greece included a dairy product known as oxygala (οξύγαλα) which was a form of yogurt. Galen (AD 129 – c. 200/c. 216) mentioned […] Pliny the Elder […]
> Until the 1900s, yogurt was a staple in diets of people in the Russian Empire (and especially Central Asia and the Caucasus), Western Asia, South Eastern Europe/Balkans, Central Europe, and the Indian subcontinent. […]
> Dahi is a yogurt from the Indian subcontinent […] derived from the Sanskrit word dadhi […] Dadiah or dadih is a traditional West Sumatran yogurt made from water buffalo milk, fermented in bamboo tubes. Yogurt is common in Nepal […]
(And so on; I stopped quoting…) It's pretty universal and ancient; mentioned even in the Vedic literature. And a common food too: as https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Curd_rice&oldid=1... says, it is (with rice) consumed ”at the end of almost every South Indian meal”.
Pastrami is Turkish too? Those Ottomans knew how to eat! You know what else is Ottoman and nobody knows? Steamed dumplings (baozi). People think they're Chinese, but there's a clear Ottoman transfer lineage through Central Asia to Tibet and Mongolia as well as China.
Very important rider - the rich or well-off ones did. Peasants, who were the greatest majority, subsisted on a lot of cheap bread/rice with a very little meat or other protein thrown in, and suffered malnutrition.
Source: experience.
Take away this one point, that when people talk about the food/cuisine of some country, they're likely talking about what the top few percent ate, which was beyond what the plebs had access to. Not always, but something to consider.
Yogurt was virtually unknown in the world outside of the Ottoman empire.
Even a hundred twenty years ago, there were European travel records about this mysterious yogurt which could be consumed in large quantities without adverse effect and which was so different from the already known sour milk.
During the collapse of the empire, a Jewish Ottoman resettled to Spain and took the yogurt with him. He would administer it to people suffering from gastrointestinal problems. Eventually this yogurt proved extremely popular and he founded a yogurt company named after his son that was born in Spain, Daniel who was known by the pet name of Danone.
The introduction to America happened similarly. Ottoman citizens (Armenians etc) that were fleeing the collapsing empire brought it to America and retained the Turkish name as Turkish was their lingua franca. Also comparable with pastrami from the Yiddish language which derives from Turkish “pastırma”, pressed meat.