Humble origins

Plenty of loved dishes began as making do: a ration tin, a ship's stores, yesterday's bread. These are their histories, each sourced, and each leading to something to cook. For the wider pattern, see how scarcity made dishes people love.

• Salt cod: one fish, three histories

  Salted and dried, cod kept for years and crossed oceans. Newfoundland fishermen ate it at sea, plantation owners fed it to enslaved people, and a dictatorship made it a national duty. All three still cook it.

• Spam: how a ration became a favourite

  One tin of luncheon meat, four places that took it in during and after the Second World War, and the different reasons each one kept it.