Paella is named after its pan: in Valencian, paella simply means 'frying pan'. The dish grew up among rice farmers around the Albufera lagoon near Valencia, and the classic version uses rabbit, chicken and beans rather than seafood.
📍 Jamaica
Jerk meat is rubbed with allspice and fiery Scotch bonnet peppers, then slow-smoked over pimento wood. The method grew in Jamaica's hills, where Maroons, escaped Africans, blended it with the Taíno way of smoking meat.
📍 Guangzhou (Canton), China
Dim sum, Cantonese for 'touch the heart', grew up in the teahouses of Guangzhou, where travellers stopped for tea with a few small bites. The custom, called yum cha ('drinking tea'), later flourished in Hong Kong.
📍 Queensland–New South Wales border, Australia
Cut a finger lime open and out spill tiny juicy pearls that chefs call 'lime caviar'. This wild citrus grows in the coastal rainforests between Brisbane and the Clarence River in eastern Australia, in colours from green to pink and red.
📍 Germany
Despite its name, the Great Dane is a German breed with no known link to Denmark. Germans call it the Deutsche Dogge; the 'Dane' comes from its French name, grand danois.
📍 Apolda, Thuringia, Germany
The Dobermann was first bred around 1890 in Apolda, in central Germany, by Louis Dobermann, a tax collector who also ran a dog pound. With dogs of many breeds at hand, he set out to create the ideal dog to protect him.
📍 Annonay, France
Paper-makers Joseph and Étienne Montgolfier first flew their hot-air balloon publicly in their hometown of Annonay, France, in June 1783. Chinese sky lanterns came first, but theirs carried the first passengers: a sheep, a duck and a rooster.