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> To be honest, pretty much everywhere is post-Colombian now. Not only that. Post-Colombian food _is_ an integral part of many countries’ cuisine now. Italian
by gherkinnn 5y ago
> To be honest, pretty much everywhere is post-Colombian now.
Not only that. Post-Colombian food _is_ an integral part of many countries’ cuisine now.
Italian food without tomatoes is nigh unthinkable. And potatoes form the base for so, so many countries.
There are other influences too. The aubergine was first cultivated in South and East Asia but today it’s a staple in the Mediterranean and Middle East as well.
At some point one has to stop thinking of indigenous food sources as the only way to form a countries’ cuisine.
It is also interesting to realise just how little time has to pass in order to make a practice inseparable from a people. Some aspects of Italian coffee culture are quite recent, for example.
- frobozz 5y agoYes. To suggest otherwise is to insist that cuisine (or any other tradition) must be somehow frozen at a specific point in history in order to be "authentic". Even if that is an acceptable assertion, what would be that specific point? Does a British recipe have to predate the Romans to be traditional?
- gherkinnn 5y agoOne point is that the post-Colombian shift in native american cuisines is linked to cultural trauma. And in some cases it wasn’t that long ago. So I understand the desire to rediscover pre-contact food. Or so I would imagine. I know little about this topic.
- frobozz 5y agoAbsolutely. What I mean is that we can't declare something "inauthentic" just because it was invented after a certain time or event.
- toopok4k3 5y agoIt's always amazing to think that Pizza existed long before tomatoes were brought to Europe.
- amyjess 5y agoIt blew my mind when I realized 'pizza' was probably etymologically related to 'pita'.
- InitialLastName 5y agoI just discovered "pide" [0] from a local restaurant which is roughly the same thing from the next region over. There's a neat pattern around the eastern Mediterranean where lots of cultures eat roughly the same foods (because they have been exchanging cultural concepts along with their trade goods and humans for millennia) but because of parallel historical tensions, each culture is vitriolically convinced that they invented their foods. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%B0%C3%A7li_Pide https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C4%B0%C3%A7li_Pide
- RugnirViking 5y agonot only that, but pizza comes from a long tradition in many countries of making foods using bread that double as a plate! It's certainly come a long way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trencher_(tableware) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trencher_(tableware)