It turns out that Swedish meatballs are not from Sweden
If you thought the news that Swedish meatballs aren’t originally Swedish was shocking, get this: The earliest meatballs weren’t even shaped like balls. According to Atlantic, it is widely believed that all the world’s meatballs evolved from a Persian dish called kofta. Kofta are made by mixing ground or ground meat (usually beef, chicken, pork or lamb) with a grain such as rice, bulgur or lentils, and they are shaped like a cylinder. The first to adopt the meatball concept from Persia were the Arabs, who perhaps deserve credit for the “ball” aspect of the dish. Versions of kofta appear in some of the earliest known Arabic cookbooks, which instruct cooks to shape ground lamb into spheres the size of oranges and glaze them with egg yolk and saffron.
Meatballs spread to other ancient societies in Greece, Spain and North Africa along trade routes from the Arab world. Today, the Spanish still enjoy their own version, known as albondigas Moroccan kefta remain a hallmark of North African cuisine. However, few people had more love for the dish than the Turks.
Serious eats reports that there are over 200 different varieties of köfte made throughout Turkey, with a wide variety of ingredients and cooking methods (one version: cigg köfte, is even served raw). Being a bridge between continents, Turkey seems to have been the gateway to Europe for meatballs. That is certainly true in Sweden’s case.