10 Foods Unexpectedly Named After Real People from History

What’s in a name? If you’re eating one of these ten foods we’ve listed below, the answer is a whole heck of a lot! See, foods aren’t just named after their ingredients or how they are prepared. Some foods—including some very famous foods—have been named after people. (Including some very famous people!)

Having a city or country put up a statue for you after your life’s work is complete is one thing. And it must be nice to have a street named after you or a building or even a whole city, state, or country. We can’t even begin to imagine! But to have a food named after you? Especially a popular food that everybody loves to eat? For us, that would be the pinnacle.

Below, we invite you to dive into these ten delectable tales of food-naming fun and learn more about how these dishes came to be. Bring your appetite, too, because you’ll want to chow down when you’re done here!

Related: Top 10 Popular Foods That Aren’t What You Think

10 Fettuccine Alfredo

A century ago, an Italian man named Alfredo Di Lelio was struggling with a pregnant wife who really did not want to eat very much. But he knew that she had to maintain her strength for the coming baby—and for her life after childbirth, too. So he went into the kitchen and began to experiment with food combinations that she would want to eat. Eventually, he developed a version of noodles that included just the right amount of parmesan and butter and a very primitive white sauce. Sounds simple, right? Well, it was. But it was also novel. And most importantly, his wife loved it. She began eating it regularly and built strength to have a healthy pregnancy and birth.

Fast forward a couple years to a moment in the early 1920s when Hollywood celebrities Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford were in Rome. The famed couple went into Di Lelio’s restaurant for a meal, and he served them that same pasta dish his wife had so adored. They loved it, too. More importantly, for the meal, they had high profiles in Hollywood and around the world to make it famous. And that’s just what they did! When they returned home, they raved about the dish to all their famous friends. Soon enough, “fettuccine alfredo,” as it came to be known, was in the world forever and named after the man who made it. Yum!^[1]

9 Caesar Salad

Many people think the Caesar salad was named after Julius Caesar, but it’s not. However, it is named after an Italian! Back in 1920, Prohibition went into full swing, and people in the Southwestern United States began to head across the border into Mexico to drink and party. The hottest hotspot along the Mexican border at the time was Caesar’s Palace in Tijuana. It was owned by an Italian man named Caesar Cardini. He loved it when Americans came down and spent lots of money on booze—and food.

Well, on July 4, 1924, it was a particularly busy day at Cardini’s hotspot. Supplies were running low, and yet customers still wanted more food. So Caesar took what he had on hand—some parmesan cheese, some salad, a dressing, and a few croutons—and mixed it all up into a big bowl. Thankfully, people who were there that day absolutely loved the finished product. In fact, they loved it so much that Cardini got out of the restaurant business altogether… and into the salad dressing game! He perfected the dressing recipe and started selling salad dressings, which you can still buy today.^[2]

8 Beef Stroganoff

All historians can agree that beef stroganoff was undoubtedly named for somebody in Russia’s famed Strognov family… they just can’t agree on who. Some sources claim that the lucky man for whom the rich dish is named was Alexander Grigorievich Storganov, who was born in 1795 and became famous for hosting lavish dinners for other rich people in Russia. Supposedly, he loved to serve very rich dishes, including the one that would (allegedly) bear his name one day.

But he’s not the only option here! Other food historians point to a story contending that the dish is actually named for Grigory Alexandrovich Stroganov. As the story goes, he loved the dish because it was an easy and enjoyable thing for him to eat. Pretty simple, right?

And yet, there’s even a third Stroganov contender! During the late 18th and early 19th century, a Russian aristocrat named Pavel Alexandrovich Stroganov was one of the elites in that society who wanted the tsar to have unlimited authority. And somehow, because he supported unchecked Russian power, the powers that be were able to tweak things so that this famous dish would be named for Pavel forever after. Which one of those three stories do you think is most likely correct?^[3]

7 Oysters Rockefeller

Back in the early 20th century, Antoine’s restaurant in New Orleans was very popular with the locals. It was known for serving snails and did that better than anybody else along the Gulf Coast. But at some point, management decided they wanted to branch out a bit. So, they came up with a new dish made from oysters, which were also plentiful in the area. Along with the oysters, Antoine’s concocted a rich green sauce made out of shallots, parsley, spinach, and green onions.

Because the dish was very rich in texture, flavor, and color—and also, the green tint of the dish apparently made people think of money—the shrewd folks at Antoine’s decided to name it after John D. Rockefeller. At that point, he was the richest man in America after founding the Standard Oil Company. And even today, when you consider his wealth as a percentage of the country’s GDP at the time, he remains one of the richest men to ever live. So it made sense to name a rich dish after a rich guy. And the name has stuck around!^[4]

6 Carpaccio

According to legend, an Italian restaurateur named Giuseppe Cipriani (the man behind the renowned Harry’s Bar in Venice) was asked one day to come up with a dish for a customer who wasn’t allowed to eat cooked meat. And the result was, well, carpaccio. But while we’re not sure whether the customer who couldn’t eat cooked meat was real or just apocryphal, that part of the story really doesn’t matter—at least not for our purposes here. After all, we only want to know how a dish was named after a famous person—and not whether the situation that inspired the name was legit or not. And to do so, we have to think about the color of raw, uncooked meat: red. Lots and lots of red.

From there, we must look at the body of work of legendary Venetian artist Vittore Carpaccio to understand it. Let’s take Carpaccio’s 1505 painting Saint John the Baptist as the perfect piece of proof here. The barefoot saint can be seen wearing red robes. Or, if you prefer, the artist’s Portrait of a Woman that depicts a very solemn woman standing up against a very red backdrop. See where we’re going here? Carpaccio loved to paint in reds, and raw meat is, well, red. Simple! And thus, that’s how one of the world’s most famous red meat dishes got its name.^[5]

5 Salisbury Steak

Salisbury steak hits the spot like few other meals. It’s hearty and filling and has the perfect savory taste to satisfy you. If you feel that way, well, you have more in common than you may have realized with Civil War soldiers. See, Salisbury steak was created by a doctor named James Henry Salisbury during the American Civil War. The doctor was rightly concerned about how many soldiers were dropping like flies during the war due to illnesses like dysentery and other diseases. So he set out to create a superfood to combat disease and keep soldiers strong. And he came up with… Salisbury steak?

Dr. Salisbury believed that many battlefield illness deaths could be avoided if soldiers were only given the proper diet—an opinion that was at least partially correct. But like many health practitioners at the time, Dr. Salisbury also believed that a proper diet included a lot of meat and very few vegetables—an opinion that is not quite as correct, to put it mildly. Regardless, he created the chopped beef dish that would come to use his name and touted it as the perfect health food. Plenty of soldiers ate it, though we’re not sure it helped with dysentery. Regardless, the dish—and the name—stuck around even long after the Civil War ended.^[6]

4 Kung Pao Chicken

Kung pao chicken is named after a real person who lived in China in the 19th century, Ding Baozhen. His honorific was “gong bao,” which is the thing people who wanted to honor him knew him by. That roughly translates into “kung pao,” hence the name. Ding Baozhen was a civil servant and governor who was best known during his life for overhauling the city of Shandong’s military and commerce cultures. He became so popular for doing those things that he started hosting dinners with his friends. And during those dinners, he would cook up a dish that included stir-fried chicken and vegetables. He even started adding Sichuan peppers to his dish when his carer in civil government took him to Sichuan Province at one point. Sound familiar?

When Mao Zedong came to power, most of Ding Baozhen’s life was destroyed. Everything he used to do, including the stir-fried chicken dish he liked to make, was wiped out. Except one single restaurant in the city of Jinan managed to preserve a single recipe and build off it to maintain the dish going forward. From there, the legend of the dish was built and spread by word of mouth. It wasn’t long before it reached the United States, either. There, it became a truly famous dish that managed to keep the unlikely name of the man who first came up with it two centuries ago.^[7]

3 Lobster Newburg

The classic lobster Newburg is one of the most well-known appetizers. And it’s named after a 19th-century boat captain who became a legend in New York City—when he wasn’t away sailing the high seas, of course. It all started one day in 1876 when Ben Wenberg, as he was officially named, showed up at the famed New York restaurant Delmonico’s with an idea. He wanted a lobster meal prepared, so he spoke with the head chef of the famed establishment, Charles Ranhofer. Immediately, Charles liked the idea, so he got to work on it. Eventually, he concocted what would later become the classic lobster Newburg. Almost immediately, it was a hit with patrons at Delmonico’s.

But what of the name, then? How did “Wenberg” turn into “Newburg”? As the story goes, Wenberg eventually got into a feud with Mr. Delmonico himself, and Ben stopped showing up at the restaurant. Miffed by the little tussle, Delmonico’s opted to rename the dish to not give Ben any “credit” for coming up with it. They couldn’t just get rid of the appetizer; it was too popular with customers. But they could flip the “e” in “berg” into a “u.” Legend has it that “Wen” became “New” as a way to rename the dish after New York.^[8]

2 Eggs Benedict

Eggs Benedict may be one of the trickier breakfast dishes to put together, but when done well, it’s so worth it. The dish is so memorable, in fact, that it makes sense it would be named in such a way. Surely, the first Benedict was a very important person, right? And who was that guy, anyway—Benedict Arnold or someone equally famous or infamous? Nope! The actual story is a bit more convoluted than that.

The dish’s history goes back to the Gilded Age, a little more than a century ago, and it has two different origin stories of its name. The first claim is that it was named after a wealthy couple in New York City who were also frequent patrons of the famed Delmonico’s restaurant—a certain Mr. and Mrs. LeGrand Benedict. They supposedly asked for a special and new dish one day; the egg-based plating came together, and the rest is history. Or…

The other naming option holds that it was named after a young guy named Lemuel Benedict, born in the late 19th century. See, Lemuel was a party boy, and one day, he staggered (drunkenly, we wonder?) into New York’s Waldorf Hotel looking for sustenance. He supposedly pushed the chefs to create what is now known as eggs Benedict but with American bacon instead of the now-typical Canadian variety. The dish was good, but according to that naming tale, chefs eventually tweaked it to the Canadian version of the bacon in the long run. Whatever the origin, we’re just hungry for it!^[9]

1 Nachos

You might be surprised to learn that nachos aren’t even a century old. Not even close! The whole tale goes back to 1943 and takes us to a city in northern Mexico right along the American border called Piedras Negras. There, a man named Ignacio Anaya Garcia—whose nickname was, appropriately, Nacho—was hit with a spark of creative energy. Travelers coming through the border town were looking for food one afternoon when he realized he had a few interesting ingredients in his kitchen: tortilla chips, cheese, and jalapenos. Before he knew it, he’d mixed them together, and voila! Nachos.

The dish was an immediate sensation with everybody who ate it that day. And because it was so unbelievably simple to make, it quickly spread all across Mexico and the American southwest. It was cheap, easy, reliable, and it seemed like it always hit the spot. What more could you ask for, really? Today, the dish is celebrated all across Mexico, the United States, and even further around the world. Honestly, we don’t think we’ll ever get sick of eating nachos. What about you?^[10]