1,165 articles
Asiago cheese
Asiago is an Italian PDO semi-cooked cow's milk cheese from Vicenza and Trento provinces, made in two types: Fresco (pressato), mild and aged 20 days, and Stagionato (d'allevo), made from partially skimmed milk and aged at least 90 days.
Aspic
Aspic is a savory jelly of clarified meat, fish, or vegetable stock set with gelatin, used to glaze, mold, and garnish cold dishes; also called gelée, distinct from consommé by gel strength, with roots in medieval Le Viandier.
Au jus
Au jus (French, 'with juice') describes meat, especially roast beef, served with its own thin, unthickened pan juices, or in American usage the sauce itself; unlike gravy it is never thickened with flour or dairy.
Avocado toast
Avocado toast, also known as smashed avocado, is a dish of crushed avocado on toasted bread, popularized by Australian café culture and Bill Granger around 1993.
Baba ghanoush
Baba ghanoush (بابا غنوج, baba ganoush, baba ghanouj) is a Levantine smoky eggplant dip of mashed charred eggplant with olive oil, lemon, and garlic, served in mezze; closely related to, and often conflated with, mutabbal.
Babka
Babka, also called krantz cake (עוגת קראנץ), is a sweet Eastern European Jewish yeast bread twisted with chocolate, cinnamon, or poppy seed filling; Polish in origin, chocolate-filled since New York, revived by 2010s bakeries.
Bacalao al pil pil
Bacalao al pil pil (bakailaoa pil-pilean) is a Basque salt-cod dish: desalted cod with skin gently cooked in olive oil with garlic and chili, swirled so gelatin emulsifies the sauce, named for the bubbling 'pil pil' sound.
Bacon
Bacon (培根) is cured, usually smoked pork, defined in the US as the cured belly of a swine carcass. Covers curing methods, nitrite limits, Chinese and regional variants, nutrition, and WHO Group 1 carcinogen classification.
Bagel
Bagel (Yiddish beygel, Polish bajgiel): ring-shaped bread from Jewish communities in Poland, boiled before baking for a chewy crust; first documented in Kraków in 1610, brought to New York and Montreal by Jewish immigrants, and mass-marketed by Lender's frozen bagels from 1962.
Baguette
Baguette: long, slender French bread loaf of flour, water, salt and leaven or yeast; regulated by the 1993 French bread decree as baguette de tradition française and inscribed by UNESCO in 2022 as intangible cultural heritage.
Baharat (بهارات)
Baharat (بهارات), the Arabic word for spices, is a warm ground blend central to Middle Eastern cooking, sold in the Levant as sabaa baharat, seven spices, and used on kofta, kebabs, stews, and rice.
Bak kut teh
Bak kut teh (肉骨茶, bah-kut-tê, rou gu cha), literally 'meat bone tea', is a Malaysian-Singaporean pork-rib herbal soup with no tea in it; styles include clear peppery Teochew and dark soy Hokkien/Klang versions, with a disputed origin.
Baked beans
Baked beans: white (navy/haricot) beans slow-cooked in sauce, sweet molasses style in North America, tomato-sauce tinned style in Britain; Boston-derived dish commercialized by Heinz from 1869.
Baked potato
Baked potato (jacket potato in the UK): a whole potato baked in its skin by dry heat until fluffy inside and crisp outside. Covers russet varieties, oven, microwave, and air fryer methods, nutrition, Victorian street-food history, and foil botulism safety.
Baklava
Baklava, also known as baqlawa or pakhlava, is a layered pastry of buttered filo sheets, nut filling, and syrup, made across Greece, Turkey, the Middle East, and Central Asia.
Banana split
Banana split: American ice cream dessert of a lengthwise-split banana, three ice cream scoops, sauces, nuts, whipped cream, and a cherry; invented 1904 by David Strickler at Tassell Pharmacy, Latrobe, Pennsylvania, with competing claims from Wilmington, Ohio, and Boston.
Banchan (반찬)
Banchan (반찬, 飯饌) are Korean side dishes served with rice and soup, graded in 3 to 12 cheop on a bansang table; types include kimchi, namul, jorim, jeon, bokkeum, and gui, with a traditional free-refill custom.
Bánh mì
Bánh mì (banh mi) is Vietnam's baguette sandwich, a French colonial import rebuilt with rice-flour dough, pâté, cold cuts, pickles, and herbs; OED-listed since 2011, TasteAtlas's top 2024 sandwich, but prone to salmonella outbreaks.
Banoffee pie
Banoffee pie, originally Banoffi pie, is an English dessert of bananas, cream, and boiled condensed-milk toffee, created by Nigel Mackenzie and Ian Dowding at The Hungry Monk restaurant in Jevington, East Sussex, in the early 1970s from Blum's Coffee Toffee Pie.
Baozi (包子)
Baozi (包子), Chinese steamed stuffed bun: yeast-leavened dough wrapped around meat, vegetable, or sweet fillings and steamed; distinct from plain mantou, with northern, southern, and Guangdong styles, famous brands like Goubuli, and a large frozen-food industry.
Barbacoa
Barbacoa: Mexican slow-cooked meat, usually lamb or goat, wrapped in maguey leaves and pit-cooked underground; Taíno-derived word that gave English "barbecue"; heartland Hidalgo, Actopan.
Barbecue sauce
Barbecue sauce (BBQ sauce) is a seasoned American condiment for smoked and grilled meat, with tomato-based Kansas City, vinegar-based North Carolina, mustard-based South Carolina, Memphis, and Texas regional styles.
Battenberg cake
Battenberg cake, also spelled Battenburg, is a British teatime cake of pink and yellow sponge joined with apricot jam to show a chequered slice, wrapped in marzipan.
Baumkuchen
Baumkuchen (バウムクーヘン), German "tree cake," is a layered spit-roasted cake with tree-ring cross-section. Introduced to Japan by WWI POW Karl Juchheim in 1919, it symbolizes longevity there; Salzwedel Baumkuchen holds an EU PGI.
Bavarian cream
Bavarian cream (crème bavaroise, Bayerische Creme, Bavarois): a gelatin-set vanilla custard lightened with whipped cream, molded and unmolded; origin disputed between Bavaria and France, codified by Carême as fromage bavarois.
Béarnaise sauce
Sauce béarnaise (béarnaise sauce), also called la béarnaise: a warm French emulsified sauce of clarified butter, egg yolks, shallot-vinegar reduction and tarragon, derived from hollandaise, served with grilled meats and fish, attributed to Collinet in 1830s Saint-Germain-en-Laye.
Beef
Beef is meat from full-grown cattle about 2 years old, from Bos taurus and Bos indicus descended from the aurochs. Produced in extensive grazing and grain-fed feedlot systems; the U.S. is the largest producer and consumer, and beef has the highest carbon footprint per unit of protein.
Beef bourguignon
Beef bourguignon (bœuf bourguignon, boeuf à la bourguignonne, beef Burgundy) is a French stew of beef braised in red Burgundy wine with lardons, pearl onions, and mushrooms; first recorded in 1867, codified by Escoffier in 1903, and popularized in America by Julia Child in 1961.
Beef cheek
Beef cheek (ox cheek, cheek meat) is the masseter jaw muscle of the cow, a dark, collagen-rich secondary cut, roughly twice the collagen of chuck roast, made tender by long braising, sous-vide, or pressure cooking into gelatinous barbacoa or carbonnade.
Beef on weck
Beef on weck, also known as Kimmelweck, is a Western New York sandwich of thinly sliced roast beef with horseradish on a kummelweck roll, dipped in au jus.