When the dark, wet misery of January comes around, the temperature plummets, and the realisation sinks in that it is six months until the summer holidays, it is always tempting to turn to time-honoured old foodie favourites to give ourselves a lift. What could be better – and more traditional - than a cheese fondue to provide comfort on a cold winter’s evening, perhaps followed by that age-old Italian dessert, tiramisu?

Well, if it’s tradition and ancient culinary customs you are looking for, then neither of those dishes fit the bill – nor do many of the so-called historic foods which we tend to turn to when seeking that warm, fuzzy feeling of familiarity.

You see, cheese fondue and tiramisu are among many dishes which fall into the ‘chicken tikka masala’ category – invented in recent times, often either by accident or by marketing people desperate to increase consumption of whichever foodstuff they are tasked with peddling.

Most people know that chicken tikka masala has nothing to do with the sub-continent, and was in fact invented in 1971 by Ali Ahmed Aslam, owner of the Shish Mahal restaurant in Glasgow. When a customer complained that his chicken tikka was too dry (as it authentically should be), Aslam returned to the kitchen and concocted a sauce from some spices, a dash of cream, and a can of condensed tomato soup.

Aslam sadly died just before Christmas; however, he left behind a dish which has become one of the most popular in the UK, a foodie legacy which few of us can aspire to matching.

Another culinary pioneer who died recently was Ado Campeol, who passed away in October 2021, aged 93. He is widely credited with creating another dish which is generally thought of being much older than it is: tiramisu.

In fact, it was Campeol’s wife Alba and a chef in their restaurant in Treviso near Venice, Roberto Linguanotto, who came up with the idea, believe it or not in 1972, just a year after the birth of chicken tikka masala. Tiramisu was actually an accident, caused when Linguanotto dropped some mascarpone in a bowl of eggs and sugar.

Other supposed traditional dishes were created more deliberately, and perhaps more cynically. You may think that cheese fondue is as old as the hills (or should I say mountains), but in actual fact it was invented by the Swiss Cheese Union in the 1930s in an effort to persuade more people to eat Emmental and gruyere cheese. Our own UK Cheese Bureau took a leaf out of the Swiss book in the 1950s and came up with the idea of the Ploughman’s lunch, with much the same aim.

And if you think that skimmed milk is an age-old health food, think again. Until the 1940s, the liquid – actually a waste product of making butter – was generally discarded; but then some bright spark in the US came up with the idea of rebranding it as a health food.

For perhaps the most surprising recent food invention, we have to return to Italy. In 1982 the relentless worldwide growth in popularity of the baguette was causing Italian bakers considerable headaches, and the call went out to find something which would put a stop to this culinary invasion. 

The call was answered by baker Arnaldo Cavallari who created a similarly-shaped bread, and called it ciabatta (which translates as ‘slipper’, reflecting the long, flat shape of the loaf).

So when the waiter in an Italian restaurant offers you some ‘traditional’ ciabatta, you can tell then that when the loaf was first baked, the mobile phone had been around for almost a decade.

All of which makes me wonder what foods are being invented today which in just a few decades will be regarded as having been around forever, and viewed as the best thing since sliced bread (itself invented in 1928).

It’s tempting to say that in today’s hugely diverse food world, everything that can be invented already has been. But the last person to say that (supposedly US Commissioner of Patents Charles Duell in 1899, although there is considerable doubt whether he did actually say it) could be said to have egg on his face, so I’m going to make no such prediction.

What I will say is that a combination of accidental discovery, cynical marketing initiatives and pure inventiveness will probably keep on providing us with new things to eat – and some of those are bound to become ‘traditional’ before very long.