Rancid, air-cured shark meat. A pudding of sheep’s “pluck” (heart, liver and lungs). And “mountain chicken” — actually one of the world’s largest frog species — which apparently does taste like poultry.

These specialties, which may seem off-putting to outsiders, are just a few of the more unusual national dishes of the heaping global smorgasbord. And if they seem unpalatable to visitors, for locals they embody something essential and unique — not to mention delicious — about their homelands.

Not every country can lay claim to a singular meal, however. Some nations are simply too large, too ethnically diverse or too burdened by history to ever agree on one food. Would New Englanders forsake clam chowder for New Orleans seafood gumbo? Would Beijing reject its Peking duck for Hong Kong’s dim sum? Would Burgundy turn up its collective nose at beef bourguignon in favor of Provence’s ratatouille?

Not likely.

And while certain foods, like French foie gras or Russian beluga caviar, seem emblematic of their country’s culinary traditions, they can’t be considered the national food. They are costly, special-occasion delicacies to satisfy gourmets.

A national dish, on the other hand, is often a simple, hearty meal with a humble pedigree, such as El Salvador’s pupusa, a thick corn tortilla filled with ground pork, soft cheese and refried beans; or Vietnamese pho, a beef and rice noodle soup typically prepared by a street vendor and consumed for breakfast, lunch or dinner throughout the country. Connoisseurs consider the best pho to come from northern Vietnam, where soup bones are simmered for hours with spices such as ginger, cloves, star anise and cinnamon to create a rich, savory broth.

Speaking of street vendors, most Thai citizens would not consider eating som tam, a shredded green-papaya salad that is ubiquitous within the kingdom, except directly from a hawker who can add a range of condiments — tart lime juice, fiery bird’s-eye chili, salty fish sauce and sweet caramel-like palm sugar — to their preferred taste.

In Brazil, the go-to Saturday meal is feijoada, a stew of black beans slow-cooked with bacon, spicy chorico and linguica sausages, and salted and sun-dried beef served over white rice and followed by a well-deserved nap. The southern African nation of Botswana, which is one of the largest beef exporters to Europe, has an even simpler national dish. To make seswaa, simply boil beef for several hours in salted water, then fry and finally pound or shred it and serve over polenta or cornmeal porridge.

It’s no surprise that in Cambodia, home to the Tonlé Sap, Southeast Asia’s largest lake and one of the world’s most abundant freshwater fisheries, the national dish is amok trey, or steamed curried fish. The entrée, which can be found in almost any restaurant, is often a snakehead fish slathered in coconut milk with kroeung (a paste of Khmer spices such as lemongrass, turmeric, garlic, dried chili and shallots), then steamed in banana leaves until transformed into a fragrant mousse.

Hainanese chicken rice © Tae208 | Dreamstime.com

Singapore swears by its Hainanese chicken rice, which was introduced to the crossroads of global trade by Chinese immigrants and is served at every hawker center (food court) on the island nation. It’s a simple dish: poached chicken served with ginger-infused rice and, most importantly, chili and soy-sesame oil dipping sauces to kick the taste up a few notches. The flagship carrier, Singapore Airlines, even serves it as an in-flight meal.

Sometimes the meal even serves a political purpose. According to Edwin Frank, a tourism officer for the Caribbean island of Grenada and an accomplished cook, a Middle Eastern preparation called pelau, a pilaf-like mix of rice, peas and chicken that is popular in Trinidad and Tobago, another former British colony, was once regarded as the national dish.

But after Grenada’s independence from Britain in 1974, the tiny island nation determined to officially identify a new national dish. The Food and Nutrition Council and the Ministry of Culture designated the wonderfully named “Oil Down” for the honor. The hearty, one-pot meal features breadfruit, dasheen (the leaves of the taro plant), vegetables, salt beef, chicken, coconut milk, turmeric and other spices.

Oil Down — it takes its name from the oil released by the coconut milk during the hours-long cooking process — is best prepared in a large, three-legged pot over a wood fire, often at a beach party, cricket match, family reunion or even a funeral. Cooking is a communal activity, with everyone peeling vegetables or trimming meat, tending the fire or mixing up rum drinks.

“It brings out the best among our people,” observes Frank, “especially when done with relatives and friends who are visiting Grenada on vacation.”

Breadfruit is a lineal descendant of the specimens collected by William Bligh on his second voyage to Tahiti (the first ended with an infamous mutiny) and delivered in 1793 to the botanic garden in St. Vincent, less than 100 miles north of Grenada. Caribbean sugar planters imported most of the victuals for their slaves from North America until the American Revolution and were clamoring for a cheap substitute. Initially breadfruit was a failure, however; slaves preferred more familiar plantains or cassava.

Today, of course, the soccer ball-sized fruit can be found across the islands, especially former British colonies. In addition to Grenada’s Oil Down, it is part of St. Vincent’s national dish, roasted breadfruit and fried jackfish, and is a common side served in St. Kitts, Nevis and Jamaica.

Bligh returned to England with another exotic new fruit, the ackee, which arrived in Jamaica aboard an African slave ship. Botanists named the new plant Blighia sapida in the captain’s honor. Today the fruit, which is poisonous when unripe and resembles scrambled eggs when boiled, is sautéed with saltfish (usually salt-cured cod) and tomatoes to create Jamaica’s national meal.

Nearly every Caribbean island can claim a singular specialty. The Bahamas favors cracked conch with peas and rice, while Barbados is mad about cou-cou (cornmeal and sliced okra) and fried flying fish. On Dominica the locals have a taste for marinated and sautéed mountain chicken — actually Leptodactylus fallax, at two pounds one of the world’s largest frog species. Unfortunately, a fungal disease has nearly wiped out the critically endangered amphibian, which is found only on Dominica and nearby Montserrat, and hunting has been banned. Today, the only place you’re likely to find the frog is on Dominica’s official coat of arms.

One-time colonial superpowers also left their imprint on local tastes. Frango à Portuguesa, a stew of fried chicken, onions, garlic, tomatoes, crushed red pepper and sherry, remains a favorite in Mozambique, a Portuguese colony from 1500 until 1975. The Portuguese egg tart, or pastel de nata, is wildly popular in Macau, another former colonial outpost, and can now be found in fast-food franchises such as KFC throughout East Asia.

Cape Malay bobotie © Mikefoto | Dreamstime.com

Although the Dutch East India Company first settled South Africa’s Cape of Good Hope in the mid-1600s, the British supplanted them in the early 1800s. But bobotie endured, a flavorful Indonesian minced-meat casserole with a tang of curry and an egg-based topping — think of a Greek moussaka, but spicier — and garnished with nuts, chutney and fruit that was probably brought to Cape Town by Dutch colonists from Batavia (now Jakarta) or exiled Muslim political activists.

The Dutch also unwittingly left their culinary imprint in the New World. Keshi yena, the national dish of their former possessions Aruba and Curaçao, was developed by African slaves. After their Dutch masters feasted on Gouda and Edam cheese and discarded the cored-out wheels, cooks in the slave kitchens soaked the rinds in water; filled the centers with bits of chicken, vegetables, olives, raisins, capers and Scotch bonnet peppers; then baked them until the cheese melted. Nearly 400 years later, it remains the signature dish of the Dutch Antilles.

Scotland’s centuries-old favorite, haggis, seems poised to take advantage of gourmand interest in offal. Sheep’s “pluck” (heart, liver and lungs) is mixed with minced onion, oatmeal, suet and salt, stuffed in a sheep’s stomach and simmered for several hours. The resulting entrée is said to have a crunchy texture and rich flavor.

Haggis achieved most-favored food status in 1787 after publication of Robert Burns’ poem “Address to a Haggis” and is traditionally washed down with a dram or three of Scotch whisky.

Then there are the national foods that seem to have been created specifically as a dare or a fraternity hazing ritual. One of the chief offenders is lutefisk, a popular food in Norway and Sweden. Dried cod is soaked in cold water for five or six days, then soaked again in water and lye for two days, followed by four to six more days of water, and then finally baked. That’s nearly two weeks of prep work, an inordinate amount of effort for a fish Garrison Keillor says “looks like the desiccated cadavers of squirrels run over by trucks. … It can be tasty, but the statistics aren’t on your side. … Most lutefisk is not edible by normal people.”

But lutefisk may taste like trout amandine compared to hakarl (Icelandic for “shark”), which is not for the squeamish. The main ingredient is a Greenland shark, the flesh of which is poisonous because of high urea content and smells like an ammonia-based cleaning agent. That doesn’t deter hardy islanders, who behead and gut the shark carcass, then bury it on a gravelly beach and allow it to ferment for several months.

The shark is then excavated, cut into long strips and allowed to air cure for several more months, then cut into cubes and served with copious amounts of vodka-like akvavit. For Icelanders, hakarl honors their Viking ancestors, who were forced to endure the bleak winters by scrounging whatever they could from the sea.

No Reservations chef Anthony Bourdain called hakarl “the single worst, most disgusting and terrible-tasting thing” he has ever eaten. But one man’s plate of putrid seafood is another’s cultural touchstone.

Bon appétit!