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If you can't consider Chillies local for Asian food then we can't consider tomatoes authentic Italian food either, but then at that point what exactly are you e

If you can't consider Chillies local for Asian food then we can't consider tomatoes authentic Italian food either, but then at that point what exactly are you even talking about?

huffmsa 5y ago
I actually don't remember eating that many tomatoes last time I was in Italy. I did go to the North, which has a bit more butter eater influence, but even in Rome there weren't that many tomatoes. Olives, cheeses, cured meats abound, but not tomatoes.
- elondaits 5y ago
  I live in South America and buy premium Italian tomatoes for my pizza sauce because they’re that good.
bostik 5y ago
Tomatoes are associated with Italy, but they are not a traditional Italian ingredient. The plant was introduced from Americas in mid-1500's, and became a staple only during the 1700's. 0: https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/noodles/2018/07/03/history-of-the-tomato-in-italy-and-china-tracing-the-role-of-tomatoes-in-italian-and-chinese-cooking/ https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/noodles/2018/07/03/history-of...
- adrianN 5y ago
  Many other things that I consider integral parts of Italian culture are not much older.
- spacechild1 5y ago
  That's a bit ridiculous. 300 years is not old enough to be considered “traditional“?
- axlee 5y ago
  What is your cutoff in terms of time for what is traditional or not? I would wager that 300+ years is more than enough for any custom to be qualified as traditional.
  - thechao 5y ago
    According to most Europeans I talk to, the cutoff is whatever makes European culture authentic, and American culture shallow. My favorite conversation was between myself, an Austrian, my best friend from China, and a friend from Tyre: > Austrian: America doesn’t have a culture — it’s only really been around for a few hundred years: my family has chairs older than that! We date back to the 1100s! > (Best friend from China): my village’s local temple (the core) was more than 500 years old in the 1100s; your culture is still getting started! > (Friend from Tyre): my house is in the new part of the city built by Alexander in 330 … BC. The old city was established further back in the past from the new city, than the new city is from now. Until your people have lived in a place for at least 2000 years, how can you really say you “own” it? Then we got a beer & watched “Dancing With the Stars”.
    - mensetmanusman 5y ago
      The interesting thing about China now is that they have been actively destroying their remnants of ancient culture to try to speed economic development. As a consequence their culture is converging somewhat towards the cultural revolution which is only about 70 years old. So they are a young political culture in that regards, and politics dominates due to its military force.
  - bostik 5y ago
    Something that would have been known as age-old by the time the enlightenment started to set in. So that's what, 1300's as the cutoff? 300 years is barely enough to establish a town pub. For the record, I'm a Finn. By my own definition, there are maybe only three traditional Finnish foods that have survived that long. Carelian stew, särä, and maybe robber's roast (clay-pit mutton). Whereas something like wine leaf rolls from Greece, Turkey and Lebanon - now those can be properly traditional.
- jrochkind1 5y ago
  How old does something have to be in order to be "tradition"? The idea that before some certain point a culture was "frozen" is usually ahistorical. Certainly true for cultures of the Italian penninsula, on the Mediteranean providing easy access to wide swaths of land and peoples, part of a former empire that spanned continents.
  - dsr_ 5y ago
    How old does something have to be in order to be "tradition"? Easy: as soon as the people who adopted it into the current form are dead and the adoption forgotten. My grandmother's cherry island cake was almost certainly copied off the back of a package sometime in the 1920s or 30s; maybe it's an adaptation of a German or Hungarian recipe. Now it's a tradition in my family.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

If you can't consider Chillies local for Asian food then we can't consider tomatoes authentic Italian food either, but then at that point what exactly are you even talking about?

huffmsa 5y ago

I actually don't remember eating that many tomatoes last time I was in Italy. I did go to the North, which has a bit more butter eater influence, but even in Rome there weren't that many tomatoes. Olives, cheeses, cured meats abound, but not tomatoes.

elondaits 5y ago
I live in South America and buy premium Italian tomatoes for my pizza sauce because they’re that good.

bostik 5y ago

Tomatoes are associated with Italy, but they are not a traditional Italian ingredient. The plant was introduced from Americas in mid-1500's, and became a staple only during the 1700's. 0: https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/noodles/2018/07/03/history-of-the-tomato-in-italy-and-china-tracing-the-role-of-tomatoes-in-italian-and-chinese-cooking/ https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/noodles/2018/07/03/history-of...

adrianN 5y ago
Many other things that I consider integral parts of Italian culture are not much older.
spacechild1 5y ago
That's a bit ridiculous. 300 years is not old enough to be considered “traditional“?
axlee 5y ago
What is your cutoff in terms of time for what is traditional or not? I would wager that 300+ years is more than enough for any custom to be qualified as traditional.
- thechao 5y ago
  According to most Europeans I talk to, the cutoff is whatever makes European culture authentic, and American culture shallow. My favorite conversation was between myself, an Austrian, my best friend from China, and a friend from Tyre: > Austrian: America doesn’t have a culture — it’s only really been around for a few hundred years: my family has chairs older than that! We date back to the 1100s! > (Best friend from China): my village’s local temple (the core) was more than 500 years old in the 1100s; your culture is still getting started! > (Friend from Tyre): my house is in the new part of the city built by Alexander in 330 … BC. The old city was established further back in the past from the new city, than the new city is from now. Until your people have lived in a place for at least 2000 years, how can you really say you “own” it? Then we got a beer & watched “Dancing With the Stars”.
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    The interesting thing about China now is that they have been actively destroying their remnants of ancient culture to try to speed economic development. As a consequence their culture is converging somewhat towards the cultural revolution which is only about 70 years old. So they are a young political culture in that regards, and politics dominates due to its military force.
- bostik 5y ago
  Something that would have been known as age-old by the time the enlightenment started to set in. So that's what, 1300's as the cutoff? 300 years is barely enough to establish a town pub. For the record, I'm a Finn. By my own definition, there are maybe only three traditional Finnish foods that have survived that long. Carelian stew, särä, and maybe robber's roast (clay-pit mutton). Whereas something like wine leaf rolls from Greece, Turkey and Lebanon - now those can be properly traditional.
jrochkind1 5y ago
How old does something have to be in order to be "tradition"? The idea that before some certain point a culture was "frozen" is usually ahistorical. Certainly true for cultures of the Italian penninsula, on the Mediteranean providing easy access to wide swaths of land and peoples, part of a former empire that spanned continents.
- dsr_ 5y ago
  How old does something have to be in order to be "tradition"? Easy: as soon as the people who adopted it into the current form are dead and the adoption forgotten. My grandmother's cherry island cake was almost certainly copied off the back of a package sometime in the 1920s or 30s; maybe it's an adaptation of a German or Hungarian recipe. Now it's a tradition in my family.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]