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Pies, pasties and Yorkshire puddings – there's a lot of grub out there that the Brits can lay claim to. 4Food dusts off the history books to unearth the unexpected dishes Britain can take credit for.

Lasagne is British!

Italians might hold their layered pasta masterpiece up as a symbol of patriotic pride, but some historians have caused a stir by suggesting that Mamma's famous dish might actually be, well, Mum's.

In 2003, researchers at the British Museum noted that 14th Century cookbook The Forme of Cury, popular during the time of Richard III, features a dish called 'Loseyn', made up of sheets of pasta topped with cheese.

Chicken tikka masala is British!

We all know that Brits love their curry, but did you know that the nation's favourite Friday night takeaway is allegedly a Scottish invention?

The legend has it that the dish was invented at the Shish Mahal in Glasgow, when a diner with traditional tastes asked for some 'gravy' to go with his chicken tikka. The chef improvised a sauce with a can of tomato soup, cream and spices, and hey presto, the tikka masala was born.

But don't expect to be seeing deep-fried satay anytime soon – Indian chefs have hotly denied the story, claiming that chicken tikka masala is a Punjabi dish with a recipe that has been passed down through many generations.

Apple pie is British!

Apple pie is American, right? That's where we get the saying "as American as apple pie" from, surely? Well, 4Food is here to don our authoritative Stetson and say a resounding 'No M'am!' to that.

Our friends across the pond may have become the defining consumers of the apple pie, but its origins go back beyond that first Pilgrim voyage to, you guessed it, Blighty. One of its earliest mentions is in The Forme of Cury (1390) as 'Tartys in Applis', where the filling sat in a pastry 'cofyn' that wasn't meant to be eaten.

Thankfully now, the news that pastry is delicious has been accepted worldwide.

Haggis is English!

The Scots hold many distinctions over the English – their dramatic scenery, their fetching kilts, the recording career of the Proclaimers – but their national dish might not be quite the patriotic plateful that Robert Burns once thought.

Haggis, 'the great chieftain of the puddin' race', is sheep's heart, liver and lungs, mixed with oatmeal, suet, onion and spices, traditionally eaten by Scots every January on Burns' Night. But in 2009, food historian Catherine Brown found reference to haggis in English cookery book The English Hus-wife, from 1615, which is a whole 132 years before the first Scottish reference to the delicacy. Sorry Nessie.

Cornish pasties are from Devon!

So proud are the Cornish of their meat and pastry creations that in 2011 the pasty was given protected EU status. But a few years ago historians threatened to rock the South West boat by declaring that it may actually have been invented by the county's neighbours in Devon.

The earliest mention of a pasty was found in Plymouth city records dating from 1509, while the first Cornish mention comes in much later, in 1746. Cornish experts hit back though, saying that there are cave paintings featuring pasties that prove their existence in Cornwall in primitive times. Whether there was a branch of Gregg's on the site in 8,000 BC, we have yet to confirm.

And fish and chips aren't English at all!

They may be a symbol of our national identity, but in fact the fish and chips dish is a union of several culinary traditions – and would you Adam and Eve it, none of them are British. The chips are a descendent of their skinnier Gallic cousin, the French fry, while deep-fried, battered fish was first popularised by Jewish refugees from Portugal and Spain in the 1800s.

Still, the Brits were the first ones to recognise the brilliance of bringing together both dishes. In newspaper. With mushy peas on the side.