A thin sausage wrapped in a slice of white bread with cooked onions on top shouldn’t work as well as it does. But walking past any school fair, open-air market or Bunnings on the weekend, if the bangers are frying, there will be a line.Sausage sizzles are a cherished part of Australian culture. Anni Turnbull, a Powerhouse collection curator specialising in the Australian culinary archive says democracy sausages – sold outside polling booths on election day – in particular are an edible manifestation of the idea of “a fair go”.The only snag? Sausage sizzles may not be an Australian creation. First reported in The Spinoff, the New Zealand publication argued the nation had not only held the world’s first sausage sizzle but also invented the humble snack.‘Often it’s not who did it first, it’s who wrote it down first,’ says Jacqui Newling, from the Museums of History NSW. Photograph: James Gourley/AAPThis isn’t the first time the two countries have clashed over claims of gastronomic appropriation. See: lamingtons, pavlovas and flat whites. The origins of the sausage sizzle may have legitimate roots in Aotearoa’s soil, based on archival New Zealand and Australian newspapers.The earliest documented use of the term “sausage sizzle” to refer to a charitable event in Australia was in 1946, where members of the Forbes Junior Country Women’s Association organised a “Full Moon Sausage Sizzle” to bring non-perishable supplies in exchange for a sausage. These were to be sent to England to help postwar recovery efforts.This was four years after New Zealand’s first use of the phrase. In 1942 Beryl Menzies threw a “Popular Girl sausage sizzle”, in an attempt to become “Hamilton’s most Popular Girl”. Popular Girl contests were community-run events used to raise funds for wartime charities.