13 Iconic Dishes Named After Real People

Food can be a deeply personal thing, especially when it's shared with loved ones. How many stories have we heard of families who try to get that top-secret recipe that always shows up on holiday tables, or how it's a sign that you're truly welcomed into a family when you're given a recipe card for Grandma Yvonne's World-Famous Pecan Pie? It's a lovely thing when family dishes are passed down through the generations and are given a name that pays homage to those who first made them — and that happens on a global scale, as well.

There are plenty of dishes that were named after very real people, and we're not just talking about Aunt Marcia or Jennifer from down the street. Sometimes, names are a reference to the person who first made the dish, and sometimes, it's given in tribute.

Sadly, we don't always remember who some of these dishes were named after ... even though they might be on our regular meal rotation. So, let's talk about a little bit of history that you'll be able to share the next time you serve nachos, beef stroganoff, or a Caesar salad. (And no, it's not the Caesar you're thinking of.)

It's tough to imagine a world without nachos. There's no end to the number of creative toppings that you can dress up your weekly nachos with, and surprisingly, nachos aren't that old of an idea. They only date back to 1943, and they actually have an origin story similar to that of Buffalo wings. The story around nachos goes that a group of shoppers ended their day looking for a bite to eat in a town called Piedras Negras, and came up mostly empty. Until, that is, an enterprising restaurant employee came to the rescue with the simple yet delicious meal that we all know and love today. He took some tortilla chips, added some cheese and jalapeños, and served them up. 

Details regarding that employee's official job title vary by the telling, but his name was Ignacio Anaya Garcia. His nickname? "Nacho," which is where he got the name of his spur-of-the-moment creation. The dish was a massive hit that quickly traveled across the border, and the rest, as they say, is history. It's history that was honored with a Google Doodle on what would have been his 124th birthday: August 15, 2019.

Any time you're looking for a classy yet simple appetizer, there's no way to go wrong with a classic lobster Newburg. The real person that it was named after was Ben Wenberg, a salesman, trader, and boat captain who was a late 19th-century regular at the iconic Delmonico's restaurant, stopping in between trips to the Caribbean. And that's kind of where the story starts to branch off into a few versions. (There's also another, less popularly-told story about the dish's origins, but this is the more widely accepted one.) 

Wenberg reportedly returned from one of his many trips one day in 1876, and shared the idea that would become lobster Newburg. It's up for debate on whether or not he should be credited with inventing it, but it's generally accepted that the dish as we know it was finalized by Delmonico's chef Charles Ranhofer.

The dish became a staple at Delmonico's, and customers seemed to agree that it was pretty delicious. It wasn't all smooth sailing, though, and it was dropped after Wenberg and Charles Delmonico were involved in one of those apparently minor arguments that turned into a big deal. Ultimately, it was brought back due to popular demand ... albeit under a new name. How it ended up as being Newburg varies: Some suggest he switched the letters in Wenberg's name, while others say the "New" was a tribute to New York.

Nothing hits the spot on a chilly winter night quite like a hearty Salisbury steak. It's flavorful and delicious, and it has an almost shockingly long history that goes all the way back to the American Civil War as an attempt to keep troops from dying — at least, while they were off the battlefield. Just how many died during the Civil War is hugely debated, with most recent estimates suggesting casualties of between 650,000 and 850,000. A huge percentage of those deaths weren't related to combat at all but disease and illnesses like dysentery.

Enter: Dr. James Henry Salisbury. He joined the war effort on the Union side, and put forward the idea that many of the disease-related deaths could be avoided with the right diet. So far, so good, but here's where things sort of fell off. Salisbury believed the healthiest diet was one with few vegetables and plenty of meat, and he created a chopped beef dish that he touted as the ideal food. While it wasn't exactly that, it was wildly popular and the centerpiece of a late 19th-century fad diet. Fast forward to World War I, and Salisbury steak had become a widespread favorite.

Oysters Rockefeller have been around for a long time — and yes, the dish is named after a member of the iconic American family. The story is a pretty neat one, and it starts with a New Orleans restaurant called Antoine's. Originally known for serving up snails, the turn of the 20th century was the time for something new. That ended up being a signature dish made from the area's plentiful oysters, and the idea of using "rich" to describe the dish was twofold. In addition to being a texturally rich experience, the green sauce was typically made with ingredients such as spinach, parsley, green onions, and shallots. 

When it came time to name the dish after someone just as rich (and with just as much green), that was John D. Rockefeller, the founder of the Standard Oil Company. To say Rockefeller was rich was an understatement, and while a net worth of $1.4 billion doesn't seem like much compared to the tycoons of today, he's still considered one of the richest men in American history in terms of the percentage of the nation's gross domestic product (GDP) that he controlled. He was also known as one of the most generous: His philanthropic donations helped revolutionize public health, advance medical research, and led to the founding of the University of Chicago.

First, let's get the obvious thing out of the way here: The Caesar salad has nothing to do with Julius Caesar, but it does have something to do with Italy. We'll explain, and we'll have to go back to the 1920s to do it.

When Prohibition kicked off in 1920, it started an era in which heading over to Mexico was an easy way to get around the new and unpopular laws. One major hotspot was Tijuana's Caesar's Palace, a restaurant that was owned by Caesar Cardini. He's the one who invented the salad that now bears his name.

It's a bit of an oddity in the food world in that we know exactly when it was invented. According to Cardini's family, it was a particularly busy day on July 4, 1924. Supplies were getting low, but customers were still hungry. The enterprising Cardini — an Italian immigrant — made the salad with what he had on hand. It was such a big hit that Cardini not only opened another restaurant, but ultimately ended up getting out of the restaurant business and into the salad dressing business. You can still pick up Cardini's Original Caesar Dressing, and here's a fun fact: The original featured not chopped lettuce but whole spears, and it was meant to be finger food.

Eggs Benedict is one of the trickier brunch dishes to master, but it's worth it. There's just something about the creaminess of the sauce and the eggs, partnered with the crispiness of the muffins and the Canadian bacon. But who was the "Benedict" in question? American history buffs might think of OG traitor Benedict Arnold, fans of classic '80s TV shows might think of Dirk Benedict from "The A-Team" and "Battlestar Galactica," and, well, there are a lot of Benedicts out there. It turns out that although it's debated exactly who the dish is named after, there are similarities in the stories. 

The dish itself dates back to the Gilded Age, and there are two different stories that come out of the same general time frame. The first credits the dish to Mr. and Mrs. LeGrand Benedict, who were said to have requested the dish at Delmonico's. It became something of an early sort of secret menu item and spread from there.

The other possibility is that it was named for Lemuel Benedict, a late 19th-century party boy who stumbled into the Waldorf Hotel and ordered what was essentially eggs Benedict with American bacon instead of the Canadian bacon that's typically used today. The recipe got tweaked and added to the menu, and interestingly, the same year is cited in both stories. Lemuel Benedict placed his order in 1894, the same year that Delmonico's chef Charles Ranhofer included the recipe in a cookbook.

It's no secret that many of the most famous dishes found on the menus of Chinese restaurants in America were almost entirely invented in the U.S. and occasionally inspired by authentic recipes. That includes things like orange chicken, General Tso's, and beef and broccoli, but one of the most fascinating stories involves kung pao chicken. 

Kung pao chicken is also known as gong bao chicken, which refers to the honorific given to a very real person who was born in Guizhou in 1820. Ding Baozhen lived an incredible life as a civil servant and governor who was known for overhauling Shandong's military and industrial sectors. Throughout the course of his career, he was known for serving guests a stir-fried chicken dish that he (or at least, his chefs) perfected over the course of his travels. 

After the rise of Mao Zedong, most traces of his life were destroyed. However, one restaurant in Jinan has preserved the story of how elements of the dish — including the use of high-heat stir-frying methods — came together. One of the most important ingredients was added when his career in the government took him to Sichuan, and his personal chefs amended it to include the Sichuan pepper. It defines the dish today, but was impossible to source in the U.S. until 2005.

Today's chefs have to be familiar with a wide range of dietary restrictions, and it turns out that's not a new thing. According to the oft-told story about the origins of Carpaccio, Guiseppe Cipriani — the culinary genius behind Venice's legendary Harry's Bar — was asked to come up with a dish for a customer who couldn't have cooked meat. The result was the flavorful and raw creation that's still popular today. But who was Carpaccio? 

Take a look at the dish, and you'll see it's a rather beautiful arrangement that is, of course, largely defined by the reds in the raw meats. It's those colors that inspired Cipriani to name the dish after a Venetian artist Vittore Carpaccio, and a quick look at his body of works can make the connection very clear. Carpaccio's 1505 painting "Saint John the Baptist," for example, shows the barefoot saint wrapped in red robes, his "Portrait of a Woman" portrays a solemn-looking lady against a red backdrop, his "Two Venetian Ladies" depicts one wearing a deep red dress, and his "Salvator Mundi" pops from the canvas thanks to a red gown. (Pictured is his "Sermon of St. Stephen.") Interestingly, carpaccio isn't the only famous dish created at the restaurant and named for an Italian artist: Cipriani also created the Bellini cocktail, and named it for Venetian painter Giovanni Bellini.

We're going to talk about an interesting dish, and not only because a meaty, creamy, beef stroganoff is almost fancy, but because it's arguably much more famous than who it was named for ... and things get tricky almost immediately. Sources agree that it was named for someone in Russia's Stroganov family, but there's a bit of debate as to the specifics. Some sources point to Alexander Grigorievich Storganov, who was born in 1795 and who was known for hosting spur-of-the-moment dinners. It was said that one of the staple dishes he served was what we know as beef stroganoff, but he's not the only one that's been connected to the dish.

Another contender is the similarly named Grigory Alexandrovich Stroganov. That story says that the dish was created as something that would be easy for him to eat, but there's a third player here, too: Pavel Alexandrovich Stroganov (pictured). He gets a minor mention in summaries of Russian history as one of the 18th and 19th-century aristocrats who spoke up in favor of giving the tsar unlimited authority, and once you learn that the family really came to power alongside Ivan the Terrible, that kind of makes sense. The claim here is that the French-born member of the Russian noble family was responsible for combining the two cuisines into the dish that still bears his name — or, at least, his family's name.

Countless classic dishes have gotten modern makeovers and upgrades, but some are classics for a reason — and that's why it's brilliant that you can still eat the world's first fettuccine Alfredo in the same place it was created, in the way that it was originally meant to be. The original version of the dish was incredibly straightforward, and the story behind its creation is absolutely heartwarming.

The pasta was named for chef Alfredo Di Lelio, who had first made a version of it using noodles, Parmesan, and butter for his wife when she was in the midst of a difficult pregnancy and as she continued to regain her strength post-childbirth. After he served the same thing to Hollywood couple Douglas Fairbanks and Mary Pickford while they were in Rome, they were so enamored with the dish that they raved about it to all their famous friends. Hollywood stars were the trendsetters in the 1920s, just as they are today, so it's not surprising that when they recreated the spirit of the dish, added cream, and renamed it after the chef, it turned into the classic we know and love today.

A dish doesn't have to be complicated to be delicious, and that's definitely the case of a classic Cobb salad. Sure, there are some staple ingredients like hard-boiled eggs, avocado, and sliced meats, but this salad is easy to dress up with whatever you might happen to have in the fridge. Skeptical? You shouldn't be, because that's exactly how the salad was created.

Like many foodie origin stories, there are a few different versions of this. Some credit the actual making of the salad to Brown Derby co-owner Robert Cobb, who, of course, is the one it's named for. Others say that it was the iconic restaurant's chef who put it together, but either way, it was the result of a hungry restaurant professional rummaging through the fridge, finding what looked like it would go on a salad, and putting it on the plate. It just goes to show that you never can tell when genius is going to strike, and this was a case of the right place and the right time. According to the story, it became famous because Sid Grauman happened to be at the Hollywood hotspot in time to see Cobb's salad, try it, and declare it delicious. And that's another name you should know: He's the Hollywood legend who promoted stars and built several theaters, including Grauman's Chinese Theatre.

New Orleans is famous for its seafood, so it's not surprising that it's also the home of oysters Bienville. Several restaurants claim to have been the place to invent this dish, but one thing that isn't debated is the fact that this classy appetizer was given an equally classy-sounding name as a tribute to Jean-Baptiste Le Moyne de Bienville.

Born in Montreal sometime around 1680, he has an absolutely wild life story that begins with the fact that when he was 12, he headed out to fight with the French navy. From there, he went on to become an explorer along the Mississippi River, fought against both the Native Americans in the area and the Spanish, and along the way, somehow found time to found New Orleans in 1718. He served a few terms as a governor, and he's largely credited with ensuring the success of the Louisiana colony. He died in Paris in 1767, and strangely, no one is sure where his remains actually ended up.

Chicken Tetrazzini is a creamy noodle dish that's a brilliant way to add some variety to pasta nights, and turkey Tetrazzini is a wonderful way to turn that leftover Thanksgiving turkey into something that your family is actually going to want to eat. The word "Tetrazzini" might make it sound as though this is an Italian dish, but it's not. It's American, but the name is, indeed, Italian. 

If you were to close your eyes and imagine the most famous opera singer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the mental image you conjure is precisely what Luisa Tetrazzini was. Classically trained since the age of 10, she was touring the world by the time she was 19, and she was so wildly popular that rival singers lauded her voice, and her recordings are still unrivaled. She first performed in the U.S. in 1905, and here's where there's a bit of a debate. Some say the dish that was named after her was created at the McAlpin Hotel in New York, while others say it was created at the city's Knickerbocker Hotel. Still, others say it was actually created in San Francisco after she performed in a public Christmas Eve concert that saw around 300,000 people gather to hear her.