Ever wondered when your favourite dish was invented, or what foods came into being the year you were born? We've found recipes and branded treats invented every year from 1946 to 2000, including chicken tikka masala – invented by Ali Ahmed Aslam, who recently passed away – and famous foods from the delicious to the bizarre.

This early celebrity chef was actually a fictional character, but she was pretty prolific. Betty Crocker cake mixes emerged post-Second World War, and were part of a trend towards pimping up convenience foods. Recipes included this “perfect double-quick cake” with three types of icing (chocolate, orange and plain), which was published in Good Housekeeping magazine in October 1949.

We reckon this wobbly wonder is worth reviving for the name alone (it’s also known as broken glass cake, which is less appetising, somehow). It’s made by cutting fruit jelly into cubes and folding them into thick, lemon-laced cream – a recipe that featured in the brilliantly niche cookbook, Joys of Jell-O.

The rich, hearty beef stew is believed to be a peasant dish from Burgundy, with the first recipe published in the early 20th century. But it was the fabulously flamboyant Julia Child who introduced the meaty marvel to home kitchens across the US and UK through her seminal cookbooks and TV show, The French Chef, which debuted in 1963.

Read more: Julia Child's best-ever tips for cooking perfect chicken

Burger King may have been the first to bring big burgers to the table, but the Big Mac is McDonald’s most famous icon – and perhaps the most well-known fast food item in the world. Yet its inception didn’t come from McDonald’s HQ. It was invented by Jim Delligatti, who ran several branches in Pennsylvania, and rolled out across the US the following year.

Read more: The incredible story of how McDonald's conquered the world

Minced beef, chicken, shredded lettuce, grated cheese, tomatoes, sour cream, strips of tortilla... You can pretty much throw anything you might wrap in a tortilla into a taco salad, which is often eaten from an edible bowl. But it certainly isn’t an authentic Mexican dish. The first known recipe was printed in California-based Sunset magazine in 1968.

This ad in Canadian Living was one of three “quick and economical” recipes from pasta company Catelli aimed at families looking to save money during the recession. Serrated lasagne strips layered with cooked chicken, ready-made tomato sauce and cottage cheese.

This Italian restaurant staple probably predates the 1980s, though it was the New York Times’ 1985 recipe that launched dinner party hosts everywhere into a frenzy of cold coffee and soggy sponge fingers. It’s still a hugely popular dessert. Hardly surprising since it contains coffee, chocolate and cream.

Fans of 2014 film Chef might know it as the “molten” chocolate lava cake that helped ruin the career of Jon Favreau’s title character, while MasterChef viewers have likely witnessed many contestants fall with a failed fondant. And it was, appropriately, a mistake that created it. Jean-Georges Vongerichten undercooked a sponge at his New York restaurant JoJo and his error proved so popular he now serves more than 1,000 every day.

Discover more foods invented by accident here

Few fast food items have caused as much controversy as McDonald’s foray into cheese-topped dough. After several years in the planning, it was first offered in a handful of US restaurants before rolling out nationwide – much to the chagrin of Pizza Hut. It didn’t last long, mainly because the prep time was at odds with the idea of fast food. But many still remember it wistfully.

Pioneering British TV chef Keith Floyd helped millions of home cooks add a new recipe to their roster when he included a Thai green curry, made with a shop-bought paste, in his cookbook Guide to Southeast-Asia Cooking.

Or maybe you know them as bagel pizzas. Either way, these snacks – whose history may stretch back to 1959, when it’s claimed an Ohio-based baker invented them – are a chewy, cheesy combination made in comfort-food heaven. And they were the post-school munch of choice for many kids in the mid-1990s.

Check out more incredible food fusions here

As the world prepared for millennium celebrations – and everyone wondered whether the world would stop as the clocks struck midnight – there was only one thing to serve. Recipes featuring the orange-fleshed melon were everywhere this year. Want to party like it’s 1999? Try this chilled, sweet soup.

Read more: Avocado stones and other surprising things you didn't realise you could eat

The last 12 months of the millennia was also the year a certain mop-topped cockney chef rose to fame. Jamie Oliver’s TV show, The Naked Chef, debuted in 1999 and a cookbook quickly followed in 2000. It introduced us to the delights of homemade focaccia, pancetta, sun-dried tomatoes and whole fish baked in sea salt, which seals in the steam and results in tender, flaky flesh.

Now discover more foods we fell in love with when we were growing up