Chicken Kiev
Surely a dish called Chicken Kiev can’t be too hard to track down... but this favourite of the freezer section has been claimed by various countries.
The trail begins with the French, when a chef in the 1800s rustled up supreme de poulet – pounded chicken breast, rolled in herb butter, then fried.
The Americans took credit for its name after they started serving breaded chicken stuffed with garlic, “Kiev-style”, in the 1930s.
It has also been traced to St Petersburg in the early 20th century, before the recipe was revived by Soviet chefs for a banquet welcoming Ukrainian diplomats home to Kiev in the 1940s, renaming it Kotlety Po-Kievski – chicken Kiev.
It became the UK’s first supermarket ready meal in 1979 and was a staple of British teatime in the decades to follow, often served with crinkle cut chips.
Eat the real thing in Chicken Kyiv, a restaurant in the Ukranian capital with mahogany tables, patterned dinner plates and lace place mats – just like at your Aunty Val’s house in