Falafel's name probably means peppercorns, and its chickpeas go in raw
Falafel most likely began in Egypt, where it is still usually made from fava beans and called taamiya, a small tasty morsel. The Arabic word itself traces back to pepper. The chickpea version familiar in the West relies on a counterintuitive trick: the beans are soaked but never cooked, or the balls crumble.
Nobody knows exactly where the fritter was born. Some speculate it goes back to the pharaohs, but the earliest Egyptian written references date only to the 19th century, and oil was probably too costly for deep frying in ancient times. Another theory holds that British soldiers from India, missing their own food, prompted substitutes in Egypt; the circumstantial evidence fits, but nothing proves it. The word falāfil is the plural of the Arabic for pepper, borrowed from Persian, or possibly from an Aramaic term for a small round thing. English first recorded it in 1936.
Alexandria's port helped it travel. After World War I it moved beyond Egypt, and by 1933 a falafel shop was trading in Beirut; from there it spread to Yemen, Libya and Turkey, changing as it went. In the Levant chickpeas replaced fava beans. Rationing in Israel from 1949 boosted its popularity as cheap protein, and the historian Gil Marks credits Yemeni Jewish refugees with popularising it in pita in the 1950s, though The Palestine Post described pita-wrapped falafel as street food on 19 October 1939. Its origin and ownership are still argued over across the region.
Its later journeys followed migrants. Turkish food stalls brought it to German diners in the early 1970s, and in North America it moved from immigrant neighbourhoods into the mainstream by the 1990s, becoming a favourite of vegetarians. Coptic Christians cook it in bulk for religious holidays, many Arab Christians eat it during Lent, and McDonald's in Egypt once sold a McFalafel at breakfast.
Soaked beans are ground with herbs such as parsley and green onion, which give many versions their green centre, plus garlic, cumin and coriander. The mix is shaped by hand or with a mould called an aleb falafel and deep-fried or baked. Homemade falafel supplies about 333 calories per 100 grams.
Source: Falafel
