The Unexpected Origins of Chinese Dumplings

In a delicious TED-Ed lesson written by Miranda Brown and animated by Na Na Na Studio, narrator Pen-Pen Chen describes the unexpected origins behind dumplings, a dish that is traditionally known to have come from China.

The relationship between Chinese dumplings and those in other areas is tricky to trace, but food historians have made their best guesses based on available clues.

Many scholars believed that dumplings were first introduced in what is now modern-day Turkey.

Turkic tribes spread and eventually established the Ottoman Empire around 1300 CE, bringing wrapped morsels west with them. …. Some scholars believe that the Mongol Empire also helped disseminate dumplings, perhaps introducing them to parts of Eastern Europe. These dumplings could have come by way of China or directly from some of the Turkic peoples the Mongols hired