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Every great chef has a defining recipe — a signature dish that displays his or her taste, style, background and technique. Most commonly it is an inspired assembly of ingredients, often (but not always) unique, that becomes a chef’s calling card. In the best case, a signature dish boosts a chef’s star status.

Famous signature dishes include Paul Bocuse’s puff-pastry-topped truffle soup VGE, Ferran Adrià’s liquid olive and the Troisgros brothers’ saumon à l’oseille. Jean-Georges Vongerichten claims to have invented the molten chocolate cake, Thomas Keller’s Oysters and Pearls is considered his first masterpiece, and every time you eat a plate of black cod with miso, you should raise a glass to its inventor, Nobu Matsuhisa.

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A signature dish can be something other than an expression of a chef’s vision. Few would deny that the Big Mac is McDonald’s signature dish, or that rôtisserie chicken made St-Hubert’s name. Some restaurants remain famous for a signature dish long after the original chef is gone, such as Il Vero Alfredo in Rome, reputed to be the birthplace of fettuccine Alfredo, or Le Cirque in New York, where crème brûlée made its debut.