Food Fight

Rice stirred so its starch comes out and thickens its own broth. Stop stirring and it is just rice.

A ragu from Bologna is served with flat pasta there, not spaghetti. The pairing is a foreign habit that stuck.

Water with dissolved carbon dioxide. The bite people taste is mild acidity, not the bubbles themselves.

Cheese baked inside the rim, so the part people used to leave becomes the part they finish.

Coffee-soaked sponge layered with mascarpone. The name means pick-me-up, which is the coffee talking.

No tomato at all: cheese, olive oil and garlic, sometimes with ricotta for the base instead of sauce.

Caffeine plus sugar, sold on branding and taurine rather than on the caffeine that is doing the work.

Not one dish. The word comes from Tamil, and the British turned it into a catch-all for hundreds of unrelated spiced dishes across South Asia.

Named after Hamburg, not after ham. German emigrants took the city's minced beef steak to America with them.

Began in Southeast Asia as a way of preserving fish: rice was fermented around it and then thrown away. Eating the rice came much later.

Started as a fermented fish sauce in Asia and only became a tomato product much later.

Coffee over ice, which dilutes as it melts. Cold brew avoids that by never being hot to begin with.

Soft cheese set with eggs over a crumb base. Baked and no-bake versions are effectively two different desserts.

Not rationed in Britain during the Second World War: the government kept fish and potatoes off the ration to protect morale.

No cream in the Roman version: egg yolk and cheese thickened by the pasta's own heat. Food historians place the dish itself after the Second World War.

American cured sausage that curls into cups as it cooks and collects its own rendered fat.

Valencian, and the original is a land dish: rabbit, chicken and beans, no seafood. Never stirred, because the crust that forms underneath is the point.