So is the recipe, sweetened with honey since wartime rationing and never shown to anyone outside the bloodline. Many foods Americans now treat as common property have similarly exact points of origin. In Tucson, family lore traces the chimichanga to a burrito dropped into a fryer. The country consumes the descendants by the ton and rarely remembers who made the first one. A restaurant kept in one family, three, four, even five generations on, has turned down the offer that reaches every success—cash out, and let the name become a brand.