I love the history of cuisine. Cooking/restaurants was my first career and true love. Every national cuisine is some sort of fusion of local ingredients and techniques, as well as the traders, invaders who influence it, or the explorers who bring back ingredients and ideas.
I think to the cuisine I grew up, Ukrainian, and most Ukrainian dishes and ingredients can be traced from elsewhere. Cabbage rolls (holubsty) have an analogue in dolma(des), perogies (varenyky) can likely be traced to China, maybe via Italy, maybe not. Potatoes and tomatoes come from the new world. Rice from the orient. Shashlyk possibly from muslim invaders, although the history of kebab-like items goes back to the beginning of history. And so on.
And every cuisine has many interesting stories, Sicilian especially, as pointed out in the article. Nice link.
I think to the cuisine I grew up, Ukrainian, and most Ukrainian dishes and ingredients can be traced from elsewhere. Cabbage rolls (holubsty) have an analogue in dolma(des), perogies (varenyky) can likely be traced to China, maybe via Italy, maybe not. Potatoes and tomatoes come from the new world. Rice from the orient. Shashlyk possibly from muslim invaders, although the history of kebab-like items goes back to the beginning of history. And so on.
And every cuisine has many interesting stories, Sicilian especially, as pointed out in the article. Nice link.