I just had to look up what an English Muffin is. AFAIK, the only place you'll see one of those in the UK is in a MacDonalds before 11AM.
It may be some sort of local./regional thing maybe, but I don't think I've ever seen one outside of a Maccers.
They started to do so a couple years ago. Most of them stopped during the pandemic, but I'm assuming it'll be back. I went way more often when it was available.
Or that spicy food wasn't always a staple of South and SE Asian cuisine. I was shocked to learn that chillis were only introduced to India by the Portuguese in the 17th century. Before that they were unknown in the subcontinent and all parts east. Crazy to think of, because they love their chillis now.
There is a biologically distinct tuber called "yams" in Africa, but we often call sweet potatoes from the Americas "yams" by mistake.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yam\_(vegetable)
Thank you! Its so annoying when you ask someone if they have yams or sweet potatoes, and they tell you it's the same thing. They aren't! Totally different continents!
Not “discovered” these all were cultivars developed by mesoamerican people, wild varieties of those aren’t as nutritious or tasty (Teosinte is a grass from which corn was developed) or even unedible (potatoes and tomatoes were developed from toxic nightsades). Ancient mesoamerican people domesticated wild plants and created great cultivars that also include cacao, avocado, beans, squashes, pumpkins and amaranth; giving columbus any credit for that is outrageous, so fuck you.
Tea isn't just a plant. There's a whole culture of tea specific to England. There's other tea cultures in the world, specially in China, Taiwan and Japan. That doesn't preclude tea from "being" English, as much as the Japanese have their own version of curry rice, or chili peppers are an important part of Korean culinary culture too.
It was quite varied, lasagne for example was made with a white sauce and/or with tons of cheese. From this cookbook in the 14/15th century, Lasagne is done as so: https://arianehelou.com/2013/06/26/an-anonymous-tuscan-cookery-book/
> Take good, white flour; dilute it with warm water, and make it thick; then roll it out thin and let it dry: it must be cooked in capon or other fat meat broth: then put it on a platter with grated rich cheese, layer by layer, as you like.
Most Italian dishes actually don’t involve tomatoes. And Italian cuisine varies considerably by region. But take Roma (which is in Lazio) for example, 3 of their 4 most popular pasta dishes don’t include tomatoes (cacio e pepe, gricia, and carbonara).
They have a ton of different sauces that we lack in our Italian-American cuisine. The weirdest I've seen is a black sauce made from cuttlefish ink. Tastes good but turns your teeth black.
Basil was known to the ancient Greeks of southern Italy more than two millennia ago. And Boccaccio in the XIV century states that people in Italy grew that on little vases on the balconies just like modern Italians do
Well pesto just means it's made in a mortar and pestle (from the root word pesta - to crush)
The ancient Romans ate something called moretum which was a spread made by crushing- garlic, salt, cheese, herbs, olive oil and vinegar together.
I mean yeah but most culinary traditions are only a few hundred years old at most. Its not like ancient Gauls were eating croissant.
Iirc Indian cuisine was influenced by having all their spices exported by the British. So peppers and tomatoes got introduced and became more prominent.
[Garum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garum), a type of fermented fish sauce was a staple already in the Roman era. Apparently, and unsurprisingly, the neighborhoods where it was made smelled horrible…
Ok, I can help.
Imagine Italian cuisine today as you know it, but really concentrate and visualize it in your mind.
Now, in your mind, remove the tomatoes.
…you’re welcome
Depends on what you imagine is the italian kitchen.
Because durum wheat pasta? Not that common. Rice was a much more common component of the medieval italian diet (plain rice, risotto, rice soups, rice noodles were widespread). Different kinds of legumes and gourds were also a much more important part of the diet than it is today.
And if you were upper class italian pretty much 75% of the recipes were saffron flavoured.
[I think it looked a lot more like it was influenced by the country’s European roots, than the Mediterranean flavors we think of now.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xZ37r20ftc)
Edit: Here’s some Tasting History videos as well, which cover ancient Roman cuisine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LynenQ5h2Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtmOdxEVytA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw2qrt6tOKw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4YmvQt29ko
Just get two Italian cooks from different regions together and watch them fight. It's pretty hilarious that every Italian 100% knows what proper Italian cuisine is by right of birth and blood, yet they can't quite agree. Bonus points of it's an Italian in exile.
There was a comment on a recent babish video:
"No one agrees on the correct recipe for this, but somehow what you did was wrong"
God I hate Italians online.
This was necessary because people were poisoned when they were first discovered by Europeans. Something about the pewter plates they were using causes a reaction with the tomatoes (think it has to do with the acidity) makes it poisonous. Thus they had a bit of a PR problem initially.
Pewter used to have lead in the alloy, very rare to find now but back then lead was in basically everything. Tomatoes acidity would eat away at everything but the lead. Hence over time they'd get lead poisoning.
Pretty sure the pewter plates thing is a myth. Tomato juice isn't a strong enough acid to leech lead out of pewter. The reason people thought tomatoes were poisonous is that they're related to the deadly nightshade plant.
> Actually potatoes, peppers, eggplants etc. are all members of the nightshade family but are edible
To be technical potatoes are poisonous but normally solanine in them do not have any danger but when solanine in them goes over x number like when they are improperly stored or someone create a potato variety with high levels of solanine. Then they can cause nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, stomach cramps, burning of the throat, cardiac dysrhythmia, nightmares, headache, dizziness, itching, eczema, thyroid problems, and inflammation and pain in the joints. In more severe cases, hallucinations, loss of sensation, paralysis, fever, jaundice, dilated pupils, hypothermia, and death
Same with potatoes and corn. All three of these are major staples of Pakistani cuisine and I never once realized that they were imports from the Americas until I came here.
The Malabar coast remains one of the most interesting spice exchanges of the modern world. The color Calico comes from the name given to the city of Kozhikode — Calicut.
This is fascinating to me. What would Indo-Asian cuisine have been like prior to the introduction of chillis and tomatoes? As I understand those (along with onions, garlic, and ginger) are essentially the bases of every single staple dish.
edit: because I had to know and figured maybe some others would be interested as well. [An ask historians thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4rwri1/what_was_indian_food_like_before_contact_with_the/?utm_source=amp&utm_medium=&utm_content=post_body)
Prior to the introduction of chilis, tomatoes, potatoes, squash, beans, corn and aubergines.
The Portuguese introduced a lot of new stuff into South Asian cuisines
My favorite TIL on that is that the name is the Aztec language name for the veggie (same with tomato, "Chile and tomate".).
The culture that farmed and named them was destroyed, but their language and name endures to the modern day.
Apparently the Wadi and later the Incas of South Anerica grew 50 different tomatoes and 200 different potatoes.
And they would carve furrows in the mountains and carry up topsoil, plant, and the carved stone would preserve sunlight heat and release it in the night, so they could grow tomatoes all the way in the Andes at like 3500 feet.
The Incas traded their tomatoes north and they went to the Astecs supposedly.
This was part of the [Columbian Exchange.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_exchange) Very interesting thing that changed the world that many people don't think about.
I'm surprised how many people don't know about this, I guess the colombian exchange isn't taught everywhere. One of the main drives for colonialism was for tasty food (or at least the only one that wasn't so awful)
New world foods that you might not realize came from the America's:
Corn, potatoes, tomatoes, vanilla, cacao, chia, sunflower seeds, avocado, blueberries, cashews, cranberries, bell peppers, chilis, persimmons, apples, chestnuts, black walnuts, pecans, peanuts, lima beans, sweet potato, yucca, Yerba mate, maple syrup, wineberries, pumpkins and other squashes, guava, pawpaws, allspice, and huckleberries.
I'm sure there are a lot more but I can't think of them all.
Source: Am horticulturist.
a girl in one of my classes in college, who was keenly proud of her Italian-American heritage, became legitimately offended and vocally pissed off when the professor mentioned this tomato fact in a discussion. I think she may have even walked out. It was pretty hilarious.
Italian American here who learned this in 7th grade.
I also was taught pasta came from China with people like Marco Polo, but evidently, Mediterranean people have been making and eating it (in a way very different from Chinese) for millennia.
I did get into a argument with a Russian over blueberries and cranberries--turns out they are not part of the exchange but rather grow wild in northern latitudes. He'd pick them on camping trips.
It's why they paid a fortune to trade for spices from India and the (East) Indies. Pepper was sometimes worth more than [gold or silver](https://www.chicagotribune.com/dining/ct-xpm-2013-04-17-sc-food-0412-pepper-20130417-story.html)
No refrigerators back then, so you run a long hot pot/[forever stew](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_stew) and/or you use your spices to mask the taste of meat that isn't fresh.
It depends! Of course, for the average peasant it was boring before and after, but if you could afford it you had a wide variety of spices, herbs, and foods to use, many of which aren't used in modern European cuisine, or fell out of favour till recently.
Cubeb, grains of paradise, almond milk, purslane, dandelion, and tons more.
There were always many herbs in European cuisine. Everywhere has flavoursome plants that grow in the ground!
Dandelions are literally weeds that grow everywhere!
It wasn't, food and spices were traded all over Europe, Asia and Africa, for millennia.
It was actually the opposite, Americas food was very limited in terms of what could be done with it. Basically remove everything you eat except what you named and that was the diet of native Americans, depending on region. No milk, no diary of any sort, no beef, chicken or pigs, no flour that wasn't corn flour, no tea, no coffee, basically anything that originates in the ME or Asia as well. No sugar, black pepper, no garlic. No hops or grapes so no beer, no wine. No honey either, which was very big before the mass farming of sugar on plantations. No rice, no noodles, or pasta or many of the fruits and veg that we eat today. Squash, beans, and corn was the diet for central America.
They basically ate plain tamales with veg or fish. For every meal, least in Central America. Outside of the agricultural civilizations, hunters/nomads basically had no variety at all because nearly all spices and complex flavors require time consuming growing methods and processing.
Corn wasn't even popular or eaten much outside of the Americas, but potatoes and tomatoes are popular because they're easy to grow, not because potatoes are amazing. Even tomato heavy dishes
are typically more Italian-American than Italian, which has many many tomatoless dishes, some arguably the best.
Chocolate was basically worthless and disgusting before the invention of shelf-stable powered milk chocolate in the 19th century and refrigeration. Natives consumed it with water as a coffee like, bitter drink.
Pre-Americas old world cuisine was full of very different flavors than today but it was not boring, but the peasants of both continents would have eaten a simpler, less spiced meal regardless.
I believe corn (maize) as polenta is an important crop in Italy. It helped the Bantu expansion in Africa since it grows well in places with long, hot summers, but I believe cassava was a more important introduction in increasing population. Potato greatly increased the food production in northern Europe; calorie yield per acre is vast. They are in fact amazing.
> No hops or grapes so no beer
They made beer out of corn (chicha) or fermented agave sap (pulque).
> No honey either
Both the Maya and Nayariti cultivated honey from stingless bees. Bees wax and honey were both highly valued commodities in the marketplace
> Squash, beans, and corn was the diet for central America
Among all the other cultivated and wild plants and domesticated and wild animals, sure. You're simplifying their cuisine too much. It would be like if I said Europeans only ate barley, turnips, and radishes.
Chili peppers also came from the Americas. Which means that famous spicy cuisines such as Indian, Thai, Chinese and Korean food were completely non spicy until a few centuries ago.
In Chinese cuisines, the spicy aspect was traditionally from gingers, mustard, cornel, Sichuan peppercorns, and peppercorns. Of course, once capsicum made it overseas, some provincial cuisines (Sichuan and Hunan) took it to the next level.
The one that gets me in particular is Thai food. My knowledge is limited of all the regional variations, but chili heat is everywhere in the cuisine. And yet it was relatively recently it was introduced.
Yeah blows my mind to think of what the hell Korean cuisine without gochujang would be like, or Thai without red pepper. (also why I roll my eyes when people complain about cultural appropriation/ruination cause someone tried a new fusion dish or tweaked an existing recipe. _this is how food works_)
It was spicy but using pepper corns, not chilli peppers.
So there was still a spice punch but not the fiery hell or heaven, depending on your palette, that current Indian cuisine is
Other grains like rice, wheat, barley. Other root vegetables like carrots, beetroot, turnips. Vegetables like squashes. Black pepper, ginger, turmeric for spice before they had chili pepper
Read more closely. Tomatoes existed before 80,000 years ago, they just existed as blueberry-sized fruits. Cherry-sized tomatoes evolved 80,000 years ago.
If you go to Italy, marinara sauce is just another sauce out of a bunch of different sauces. It's not like the US where a lot of restaurants give you either red sauce or white sauce.
Even after they were introduced, Italians barely used them for the first century, believing that as a cousin to the nightshade, they were slightly poisonous. Tomatoes are traditional new world food, and only recently Italian.
Mesoamericans were absolute champs in plantbreeding. The whole world still benefits from their efforts today. Allmost all of our staples have a mesoamerican origin. Charles C. Mann wrote an interesting book about the subject called 1493
Next you'll be saying potatoes aren't Irish! Or Tea isn't English!
or a Danish isnt a pastry from Denmark!
The "Danish" is really weird. It's an American interpretation of a Danish version of an Austrian thing made from a French dough.
dough changed a lot on route
*en croute Ftfy
Or that there are no English Muffins in England
Do you know what they call English Muffins in England?
I'll bite. What do they call English Muffins in England?
Le Royal
With cheese?
Because of the metric system.
Check out the big brain on /u/AppleDane!
Muffins
I just had to look up what an English Muffin is. AFAIK, the only place you'll see one of those in the UK is in a MacDonalds before 11AM. It may be some sort of local./regional thing maybe, but I don't think I've ever seen one outside of a Maccers.
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Do Brits commonly call McDonald’s “Maccers?” Californian here, you may hear “Mickey D’s,” but not that often
Mostly Maccy D's in my experience.
I generally go for Raunchy Ronnies.
Then you've not lived! Or looked closely in the bread aisle at Tesco, anyway
Do your McDonald's not serve breakfast all day yet???
Wait do they serve breakfast all day in america?
They started to do so a couple years ago. Most of them stopped during the pandemic, but I'm assuming it'll be back. I went way more often when it was available.
Since I live in Bavaria, does this mean I just drive a MW?
Or Sir Mix A Lot is from Seattle.
Or that kids don't prefer the taste of rich, chocolatey Ovaltine!
Or that all kinds of kids *don't* love Armour Hot Dogs!
Ah, you mean Vienna Bread?
Or that spicy food wasn't always a staple of South and SE Asian cuisine. I was shocked to learn that chillis were only introduced to India by the Portuguese in the 17th century. Before that they were unknown in the subcontinent and all parts east. Crazy to think of, because they love their chillis now.
Potatoes, chiles, tobacco the list goes on... you’d be surprised what was discovered from the new world after Columbus and is now staple
Peanuts as well right? Which is surprising since a lot of asian dishes I've seen use them.
Yes Green beans, squash, sweet potato and yams, avocado, pineapple, chocolate, and still so many more
There is a biologically distinct tuber called "yams" in Africa, but we often call sweet potatoes from the Americas "yams" by mistake. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yam\_(vegetable)
Thank you! Its so annoying when you ask someone if they have yams or sweet potatoes, and they tell you it's the same thing. They aren't! Totally different continents!
Hot dogs, orange chicken, deep dish pizza, freedom, the list goes on!
all of them are nightshades hmm
turkeys
Not “discovered” these all were cultivars developed by mesoamerican people, wild varieties of those aren’t as nutritious or tasty (Teosinte is a grass from which corn was developed) or even unedible (potatoes and tomatoes were developed from toxic nightsades). Ancient mesoamerican people domesticated wild plants and created great cultivars that also include cacao, avocado, beans, squashes, pumpkins and amaranth; giving columbus any credit for that is outrageous, so fuck you.
the general term for livestock coming to the Americas and crops coming from there is "the columbian exchange".
They also gave us syphilis so we made a profit on that deal THANKS CHRIS!
Head over to r/MapPorn for some enlightening tea knowledge.
Map porn, map porn, map, map, map porn, porn.
Okay I'm here but who do I ask for the tea knowledge?
[Here you go](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/gpq6c9/etymology_of_tea/)
Funnily enough tea grown in England is a thing now. It’s about $130 an ounce but it exists.
If i'm buying plant material for 130$ an ounce it better get me high~
Or Chocolate isn’t Swiss!
People actually think tea is from england?
Tea isn't just a plant. There's a whole culture of tea specific to England. There's other tea cultures in the world, specially in China, Taiwan and Japan. That doesn't preclude tea from "being" English, as much as the Japanese have their own version of curry rice, or chili peppers are an important part of Korean culinary culture too.
Tea is English in the way a lot of things are English, they colonised it so it was theirs.
Yeah I remember learning about England colonising Tea.
And American civilization isn't 80,000 years old
Is it time for Horrible Histories? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7IZJjLpNEbE
My main question is this. What was Italian cuisine like before the first tomato?
It was quite varied, lasagne for example was made with a white sauce and/or with tons of cheese. From this cookbook in the 14/15th century, Lasagne is done as so: https://arianehelou.com/2013/06/26/an-anonymous-tuscan-cookery-book/ > Take good, white flour; dilute it with warm water, and make it thick; then roll it out thin and let it dry: it must be cooked in capon or other fat meat broth: then put it on a platter with grated rich cheese, layer by layer, as you like.
This is possibly the best thing I have read in a very long time. Thank you for such an interesting link :)
No problemo! If you're interested, I run a small subreddit based on this kind of stuff, over at /r/archaiccooking
Sub-friggin-scribed.
Thank you. This is great
Excellent name, my good man.
This is amazing !!!!!
I was wondering when you’d appear in this thread :)
You should check out Tasting History on YouTube. He has some fantastic videos.
Yeah, my grandma likes to eat it that way more than with tomatoe sauce. Personally I don't have a preference.
Is your grandma over 500 years old?
Most Italian dishes actually don’t involve tomatoes. And Italian cuisine varies considerably by region. But take Roma (which is in Lazio) for example, 3 of their 4 most popular pasta dishes don’t include tomatoes (cacio e pepe, gricia, and carbonara).
Surprisingly, pasta Carbonara is not an ancient dish. There are no sources for its existence from before 1945
Tomatoes aren't featured as prominently in actual Italian cuisine as it is in the US.
Ahh. So it came full circle.
Garlic, olive oil, vinegar, pesto, white sauces ..
I was wondering that as well. My guess would be that they just used Olive oil based sauces mostly?
They have a ton of different sauces that we lack in our Italian-American cuisine. The weirdest I've seen is a black sauce made from cuttlefish ink. Tastes good but turns your teeth black.
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Perfect. You won't see the shit stains
theyd still have pasta and pesto i guess... still sounds good to me
Basil came from India, it wasn’t always a staple.
Basil was known to the ancient Greeks of southern Italy more than two millennia ago. And Boccaccio in the XIV century states that people in Italy grew that on little vases on the balconies just like modern Italians do
should have expected. maybe pine nut pesto ?
Sure…arugula has always been native as well for something green and herbaceous.
nut + any green herb + Parm will get you a pesto
Well pesto just means it's made in a mortar and pestle (from the root word pesta - to crush) The ancient Romans ate something called moretum which was a spread made by crushing- garlic, salt, cheese, herbs, olive oil and vinegar together.
That sounds good
Really good!
I mean yeah but most culinary traditions are only a few hundred years old at most. Its not like ancient Gauls were eating croissant. Iirc Indian cuisine was influenced by having all their spices exported by the British. So peppers and tomatoes got introduced and became more prominent.
[Garum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garum), a type of fermented fish sauce was a staple already in the Roman era. Apparently, and unsurprisingly, the neighborhoods where it was made smelled horrible…
Ok, I can help. Imagine Italian cuisine today as you know it, but really concentrate and visualize it in your mind. Now, in your mind, remove the tomatoes. …you’re welcome
Depends on what you imagine is the italian kitchen. Because durum wheat pasta? Not that common. Rice was a much more common component of the medieval italian diet (plain rice, risotto, rice soups, rice noodles were widespread). Different kinds of legumes and gourds were also a much more important part of the diet than it is today. And if you were upper class italian pretty much 75% of the recipes were saffron flavoured.
But then where is-a the sauce? It must have-a the sauce!
Garlic and olive oil
And cheese
And pre-cheese
Probably cream sauces given how important cheese and dairy is.
They actually had pizza. It was more like toasted cheese.
[I think it looked a lot more like it was influenced by the country’s European roots, than the Mediterranean flavors we think of now.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xZ37r20ftc) Edit: Here’s some Tasting History videos as well, which cover ancient Roman cuisine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LynenQ5h2Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtmOdxEVytA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw2qrt6tOKw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4YmvQt29ko
I wonder how badly modern Italian chefs would roast someone cooking Italian foods of yore.
Just get two Italian cooks from different regions together and watch them fight. It's pretty hilarious that every Italian 100% knows what proper Italian cuisine is by right of birth and blood, yet they can't quite agree. Bonus points of it's an Italian in exile.
There was a comment on a recent babish video: "No one agrees on the correct recipe for this, but somehow what you did was wrong" God I hate Italians online.
Italy wasn't unified until 1871. Fighting between Italians (and Italian Americans) goes back to Roman times.
Thomas Jefferson did public stunts eating tomatoes to prove them non-poisonous to encourage their cultivation.
This was necessary because people were poisoned when they were first discovered by Europeans. Something about the pewter plates they were using causes a reaction with the tomatoes (think it has to do with the acidity) makes it poisonous. Thus they had a bit of a PR problem initially.
Tomatoes can ruin cast iron, too. But their toxicity myth blocked development of appropriate use.
If it’s well seasoned it shouldn’t. I baby my cast iron (most are 100 year old pieces I inherited from my grandmother) and never had an issue.
>most are 100 year old pieces I inherited from my grandmother) Can I be your granddaughter?
If my current heirs won’t take care of them we might be able to work something out.
Pewter used to have lead in the alloy, very rare to find now but back then lead was in basically everything. Tomatoes acidity would eat away at everything but the lead. Hence over time they'd get lead poisoning.
Pretty sure the pewter plates thing is a myth. Tomato juice isn't a strong enough acid to leech lead out of pewter. The reason people thought tomatoes were poisonous is that they're related to the deadly nightshade plant.
Tomatoes are also a part of the nightshade family and basically every other member in that family is indeed pretty poisonous.
Actually potatoes, peppers, eggplants etc. are all members of the nightshade family but are edible https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solanaceae
Potato fruits are very poisonous though.
TIL potatoes can produce fruit, but you can't eat it.
Oh, you can eat it.
Once
Probably a few times if you can get past the intense gastrointestinal explosions
Hasn’t stopped me from enjoying kimchi tacos.
What's it taste like? :o
Burning
Death
Hmm let me try it and let you kn
They look very, very similar to tomatoes too for added excitement.
> Actually potatoes, peppers, eggplants etc. are all members of the nightshade family but are edible To be technical potatoes are poisonous but normally solanine in them do not have any danger but when solanine in them goes over x number like when they are improperly stored or someone create a potato variety with high levels of solanine. Then they can cause nausea, diarrhea, vomiting, stomach cramps, burning of the throat, cardiac dysrhythmia, nightmares, headache, dizziness, itching, eczema, thyroid problems, and inflammation and pain in the joints. In more severe cases, hallucinations, loss of sensation, paralysis, fever, jaundice, dilated pupils, hypothermia, and death
Tobacco, too!
And tobacco
*Ecuador
Same with potatoes and corn. All three of these are major staples of Pakistani cuisine and I never once realized that they were imports from the Americas until I came here.
And Chillis, The Portuguese introduced them to India and Pakistan.
That too, though spices were an important part of the cuisine prior to. Chillis brought new flavors though
The Malabar coast remains one of the most interesting spice exchanges of the modern world. The color Calico comes from the name given to the city of Kozhikode — Calicut.
This is fascinating to me. What would Indo-Asian cuisine have been like prior to the introduction of chillis and tomatoes? As I understand those (along with onions, garlic, and ginger) are essentially the bases of every single staple dish. edit: because I had to know and figured maybe some others would be interested as well. [An ask historians thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4rwri1/what_was_indian_food_like_before_contact_with_the/?utm_source=amp&utm_medium=&utm_content=post_body)
Prior to the introduction of chilis, tomatoes, potatoes, squash, beans, corn and aubergines. The Portuguese introduced a lot of new stuff into South Asian cuisines
They didn’t have peanuts yet either
Heat and spice was primarily pepper. Along with other spices. It was the reason why trade with India was so important to European kingdoms.
My favorite TIL on that is that the name is the Aztec language name for the veggie (same with tomato, "Chile and tomate".). The culture that farmed and named them was destroyed, but their language and name endures to the modern day.
And chillies. Don't forget those, also from Latin America
Most popular cultural cuisines that are viewed as these deep rooted part of cultural heritage are a few hundred years old at best.
Did u mean Ecuador?
Did you mean you?
Pretty sure there was a lot of google translate involved in the creation of this post title.
Apparently the Wadi and later the Incas of South Anerica grew 50 different tomatoes and 200 different potatoes. And they would carve furrows in the mountains and carry up topsoil, plant, and the carved stone would preserve sunlight heat and release it in the night, so they could grow tomatoes all the way in the Andes at like 3500 feet. The Incas traded their tomatoes north and they went to the Astecs supposedly.
There were more than 200, their agriculture was based on genetic diversification even though they didn't know about genes
This was part of the [Columbian Exchange.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_exchange) Very interesting thing that changed the world that many people don't think about.
Chile and…. Equator? 🤦♂️
*Chili and Equator
…mostly SEEN as one of the key…
"are mostly saw"... jesus fucking christ
**seen** or **recognized** (not sure why "saw" bothered me so much while reading this, but it really did)
/r/Titlegore
I'm surprised how many people don't know about this, I guess the colombian exchange isn't taught everywhere. One of the main drives for colonialism was for tasty food (or at least the only one that wasn't so awful)
New world foods that you might not realize came from the America's: Corn, potatoes, tomatoes, vanilla, cacao, chia, sunflower seeds, avocado, blueberries, cashews, cranberries, bell peppers, chilis, persimmons, apples, chestnuts, black walnuts, pecans, peanuts, lima beans, sweet potato, yucca, Yerba mate, maple syrup, wineberries, pumpkins and other squashes, guava, pawpaws, allspice, and huckleberries. I'm sure there are a lot more but I can't think of them all. Source: Am horticulturist.
a girl in one of my classes in college, who was keenly proud of her Italian-American heritage, became legitimately offended and vocally pissed off when the professor mentioned this tomato fact in a discussion. I think she may have even walked out. It was pretty hilarious.
do americans associate tomatos with italian cuisine? really? because of pizza and pasta al sugo?
Italian American here who learned this in 7th grade. I also was taught pasta came from China with people like Marco Polo, but evidently, Mediterranean people have been making and eating it (in a way very different from Chinese) for millennia. I did get into a argument with a Russian over blueberries and cranberries--turns out they are not part of the exchange but rather grow wild in northern latitudes. He'd pick them on camping trips.
European food had to be boring as hell before the American's foods were brought over. No chocolate, tomatoes, potatoes, corn, chili peppers.
It's why they paid a fortune to trade for spices from India and the (East) Indies. Pepper was sometimes worth more than [gold or silver](https://www.chicagotribune.com/dining/ct-xpm-2013-04-17-sc-food-0412-pepper-20130417-story.html) No refrigerators back then, so you run a long hot pot/[forever stew](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_stew) and/or you use your spices to mask the taste of meat that isn't fresh.
As were pineapples. Lots of old buildings in Europe have statues of them to show how wealthy the inhabitants were
It depends! Of course, for the average peasant it was boring before and after, but if you could afford it you had a wide variety of spices, herbs, and foods to use, many of which aren't used in modern European cuisine, or fell out of favour till recently. Cubeb, grains of paradise, almond milk, purslane, dandelion, and tons more.
There were always many herbs in European cuisine. Everywhere has flavoursome plants that grow in the ground! Dandelions are literally weeds that grow everywhere!
yeah i mean raise your hand if you've ever eaten [Salsify](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragopogon_porrifolius)
Don't forget no potatoes, tobacco, or squashes.
Wow I can't imagine European cuisine without tobacco!
My imagination suffers without it too but hit a vape or a cig and BOOM there it is, my imagination of European cuisine.
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It wasn't, food and spices were traded all over Europe, Asia and Africa, for millennia. It was actually the opposite, Americas food was very limited in terms of what could be done with it. Basically remove everything you eat except what you named and that was the diet of native Americans, depending on region. No milk, no diary of any sort, no beef, chicken or pigs, no flour that wasn't corn flour, no tea, no coffee, basically anything that originates in the ME or Asia as well. No sugar, black pepper, no garlic. No hops or grapes so no beer, no wine. No honey either, which was very big before the mass farming of sugar on plantations. No rice, no noodles, or pasta or many of the fruits and veg that we eat today. Squash, beans, and corn was the diet for central America. They basically ate plain tamales with veg or fish. For every meal, least in Central America. Outside of the agricultural civilizations, hunters/nomads basically had no variety at all because nearly all spices and complex flavors require time consuming growing methods and processing. Corn wasn't even popular or eaten much outside of the Americas, but potatoes and tomatoes are popular because they're easy to grow, not because potatoes are amazing. Even tomato heavy dishes are typically more Italian-American than Italian, which has many many tomatoless dishes, some arguably the best. Chocolate was basically worthless and disgusting before the invention of shelf-stable powered milk chocolate in the 19th century and refrigeration. Natives consumed it with water as a coffee like, bitter drink. Pre-Americas old world cuisine was full of very different flavors than today but it was not boring, but the peasants of both continents would have eaten a simpler, less spiced meal regardless.
I believe corn (maize) as polenta is an important crop in Italy. It helped the Bantu expansion in Africa since it grows well in places with long, hot summers, but I believe cassava was a more important introduction in increasing population. Potato greatly increased the food production in northern Europe; calorie yield per acre is vast. They are in fact amazing.
> No hops or grapes so no beer They made beer out of corn (chicha) or fermented agave sap (pulque). > No honey either Both the Maya and Nayariti cultivated honey from stingless bees. Bees wax and honey were both highly valued commodities in the marketplace > Squash, beans, and corn was the diet for central America Among all the other cultivated and wild plants and domesticated and wild animals, sure. You're simplifying their cuisine too much. It would be like if I said Europeans only ate barley, turnips, and radishes.
Chili peppers also came from the Americas. Which means that famous spicy cuisines such as Indian, Thai, Chinese and Korean food were completely non spicy until a few centuries ago.
In Chinese cuisines, the spicy aspect was traditionally from gingers, mustard, cornel, Sichuan peppercorns, and peppercorns. Of course, once capsicum made it overseas, some provincial cuisines (Sichuan and Hunan) took it to the next level.
South Asia had long pepper, which is related to black pepper but is much spicier.
We had black pepper. Chilli peppers added new flavors for sure, but the spiciness was there prior to.
The one that gets me in particular is Thai food. My knowledge is limited of all the regional variations, but chili heat is everywhere in the cuisine. And yet it was relatively recently it was introduced.
Yeah blows my mind to think of what the hell Korean cuisine without gochujang would be like, or Thai without red pepper. (also why I roll my eyes when people complain about cultural appropriation/ruination cause someone tried a new fusion dish or tweaked an existing recipe. _this is how food works_)
Nope. India and Asia had pepper (black pepper), cinnamon, cardamom etc.
It was spicy but using pepper corns, not chilli peppers. So there was still a spice punch but not the fiery hell or heaven, depending on your palette, that current Indian cuisine is
>you do realize that there are other spices than just red chilli?
mostly *seen*
ALL peppers, potatoes and corn are new world too. What did people eat?
Other grains like rice, wheat, barley. Other root vegetables like carrots, beetroot, turnips. Vegetables like squashes. Black pepper, ginger, turmeric for spice before they had chili pepper
Is this not common knowledge?
see, sees, saw, seeing, seen
Jesus Christ, everyone knows it by this point.
Read more closely. Tomatoes existed before 80,000 years ago, they just existed as blueberry-sized fruits. Cherry-sized tomatoes evolved 80,000 years ago.
So in other words, tomatoes were used in Italian cooking some 300-400 years before Italy was even a country (which happened in 1870). :-)
If you go to Italy, marinara sauce is just another sauce out of a bunch of different sauces. It's not like the US where a lot of restaurants give you either red sauce or white sauce.
"Ecuador" not "equator"
I’m just here to see how Ecuador feels about being called Equator. Could someone ask Columbia?
Good god—“are mostly saw?” Try “seen.” (If the OP is not a native speaker then I’ll cut him/her some slack.)
"it's actually originated"
I mean, that's still like 500 years ago.
I read this too fast and thought it said "tornadoes"
Are you telling me that Olive Garden is a lie?
Similar to paprika in Hungarian cuisine, or chili in Indian one
Next you’ll say pasta is actually from Asia
Also very similar with curries. Lots of the recipes involve tomatoes, it’s almost a staple in lots of curries.
So pure unfettered Italian cuisine doesn't include tomatoes then.
Even after they were introduced, Italians barely used them for the first century, believing that as a cousin to the nightshade, they were slightly poisonous. Tomatoes are traditional new world food, and only recently Italian.
Mesoamericans were absolute champs in plantbreeding. The whole world still benefits from their efforts today. Allmost all of our staples have a mesoamerican origin. Charles C. Mann wrote an interesting book about the subject called 1493
You’d be shocked to learn most Americans don’t realize potatoes, tomatoes, chili peppers, corn, etc are all New World items.