It is often assumed that this dish is named for the Duke of Wellington, either in honor of his victory over the French at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 or because he liked to eat it before going into battle. Neither seems to be true.

However, culinary history amply demonstrates that beef was wrapped in pastry, for instance, the French specialty, filet de bœuf en croûte, long before the early 19th century. In fact, meat was often baked in pastry because oven temperatures were hard to regulate; protecting the meat with a layer of pastry kept it moist.

This article by Leah Hyslop in The Telegraph traces the history; she searched high and low for a 19th-century reference to Beef Wellington in British cookery books, and could not find one. Although Beef Wellington is considered a quintessentially British recipe, the name Wellington applied to beef wrapped in pastry with foie gras and mushrooms doesn’t appear until 1903, and it’s in the Los Angeles Times, of all places.

How the dish so well-known and long associated with British culinary history made it to the United States is still unclear. There is another reliable reference, from Diana Ashley’s 1939 guide to New York City restaurants Where to dine in ’39, and found in The Oxford English Dictionary: “Tenderloin of Beef Wellington. Larded tenderloin of beef. Roast very rare. Allow to cool and roll into pie crust. Slice in portions and serve with sauce Madire.”

The 1960s was the heyday of Beef Wellington in the U.S., so as usual, all eyes turn to Julia Child. She devoted 5 pages in Mastering the Art of French Cooking to the recipe, with illustrations of the intricate process (and used brioche rather than puff pastry). She prepared the recipe for her TV show The French Chef in an episode that aired on New Year’s Day of 1965 and called it Filet of Beef Wellington. Can you imagine all the New Year’s resolutions made to cook this dish? It wasn’t long before Wellington became the “it” recipe for aspirational housewives looking to impress at dinner parties.