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Post 1550 as part of the Columbian interchange, the Old World owes these to the New: tomato, maize/corn, squash, peppers, chili pepper, cocoa, potato, sweet pot
by 1letterunixname 3y ago
Post 1550 as part of the Columbian interchange, the Old World owes these to the New: tomato, maize/corn, squash, peppers, chili pepper, cocoa, potato, sweet potato, avocado, vanilla, tobacco.[0]
It would seem that although most staples and dishes are hundreds-thousands of years old (bread c. 30k BCE), what would qualify as modern pizza couldn't exist before the 16th c., although it arrived c. 18th-19th c.
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World_crops https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_World_crops
- morkalork 3y agoIrish food with no potatoes, Italian without tomatoes and Indian without chili peppers. Sort of breaks a lot of people's preconceptions doesn't it?
- borroka 3y agoTraditions must begin at some point in time. Clearly, "traditions" that started 5 years ago are not considered traditions in the common usage of the word and concept. But assuming that in Italy the tomato began to be used in 1550 or so, I, and surely many others, can certainly consider the tomato a traditional food for Italy.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoAbsolutely. It should smash any preconceptions that traditions are either ancient or perpetual. PS: I'm drooling at the thought of growing some tomatoes on my balcony: San Marzano, cherry, and beefstake. I tried to grow some hydroponically but it failed spectacularly as the equipment isn't sized for the volume of roots.
- jsmith99 3y agoThey reached Italy by then but only became a common food ingredient mid 19th century.
- Mordisquitos 3y agoTo be fair, Italy only became a unified state mid 19th century too...
- Joker_vD 3y agoWhich makes it an actual national tradition. Nations only really started to appear at the end of the XVIII century.
- orwin 3y agoMy pet theory is that the beginning of the idea of a nation start with Louise de Savoie. The intrigues she ran harshly reduced the power of dukes while giving the royal domain and it's merchants a lot of power. The narratives the French crown drew around itself and its power helped, and the consolidated territories, removing a lot of enclaves and foreign vassals (things other crowns started to do too) was to me the beginning of the 'territorial integrity' idea. And it's only her second biggest achievement.
- NoRelToEmber 3y agoA modern falsehood. The concept of a nation is far older - it really should not come as a surprise that defining the in-group based on kinship is an ancient practice. That's what the word itself is derived from - the Latin word for birth, i.e. common birth. Only the scale has changed, and even that not as much as some like to claim: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nation Even groups such as the Navajo fit perfectly well under the 'nation' concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navajo_Nation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navajo_Nation In general, I'd advise more skepticism of such outlandish claims that fly in the face of common sense and instinct.
- hahaxdxd123 3y agoYour links don't support your claims. Can you really claim that nationalism existed among the majority of people when those people were illiterate, had never traveled more than 10 miles outside their place of birth, and had never met someone who they could place outside their concept of their nation?
- czDRZ-akk 3y ago“Indian food” itself is a major generalization given its variety of regional cuisines. You can say the same thing about Italian food. In this case, people’s preconceptions are typically just ill-informed.
- lastofthemojito 3y agoThere are even more recent examples - the ancient age ended relatively recently in Hawaii, but even though they were not present prior to European contact, outsiders expect "Hawaiian food" to include pineapple or coconut or macadamia nuts.
- jghn 3y agoOr for instance pad thai, which was created in the early-mid-1900s as part of an intentional effort to create a national dish.
- causi 3y agoPizza predates the use of the tomato. The oldest mention of pizza in text is from 997 C.E.
- MostlyStable 3y agoMillions of internet pedants will leap at you for calling various American styles of pizza "pizza", since only the "traditional" Neapolitan/Roman style is "real" pizza (or a different internet pedant might declaim that only NY pizza is pizza). That standard honestly applied would preclude anything much farther back than 100 years. Now, I tend to think those internet pedants are boring and obnoxious, but the entire reason we have to have a discussion about the "myth of the national dish" is because of people like them. Once you decide that these things don't matter and food should just be enjoyed without caring about "authenticity" and that every tradition is only traditional in a certain context and time period, the whole idea of fighting about it kind of gets silly.
- katbyte 3y agoolder, at least 2000 years now https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/27/world/europe/pizza-mural-pompeii.html https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/27/world/europe/pizza-mural-...
- anthk 3y agoDishes similar to pizza (bread with stuff on top) existed across all of the Mediterranean since forever. Back in the day people had no proper phyisical dishes (read: recipients) and they just ate food on top of bread slices.
- adrian_b 3y agoThere are many others, e.g. the common beans, peanuts, sunflower, the cultivated strawberries and, more recently, the cultivated blueberries. The European wild strawberries and wild bilberries are much tastier than the cultivated species brought from America, but unfortunately they are much less productive, being much smaller. Also cotton. While different species of cotton have been independently domesticated in America and in the Old World, most of the modern production of cotton is based on American cotton species.
- rex_gallorum2 3y agoWild strawberries and bilberries... I grew both for years. :) They are wonderful.
- taeric 3y agoIt is crazy to me how much our modern ideas on food and clothing are more modern than we realize. Always fun to point out that places that have what we call "spicy" food got there by import. Even bread, I suspect, is probably a lot different than we realize. There is a wide range in what that can cover, with many of the types of bread that last longer being popular for their longevity in older times. And that doesn't even get into the drastic shift in diet that came from rationing times. There are a lot of parts of the animal that we used to directly eat.
- nerdponx 3y agoThis seems to be a common thread throughout history. It's hard to distinguish old traditions from very old traditions from ancient ones, so they all become a blurred jumble, and the traditions just are whatever they are at any given time.
- bluGill 3y agoTradition is anything your grandparents did that you also do. Few people remember their great-grandparents well enough to know if they also did something, (with modern medicine this is somewhat more likely, but still not common) and thus few have any clue if it is something their grandparents started or not. Unless of course it was written down. Some religions have things written down as of a few thousand years ago. Just looking at them though we can see plenty of examples of things written down being ignored for a while and then some reformer comes and revives the tradition. Anything not written down is questionable in ability to survive for long.
- submain 3y agoBread is indeed different nowadays, specially in the americas. Modern wheat was "invented" by Norman Borlaug in the 60s. It was genetically modified (through breeding and other means) to provide higher yield. Some places, like Italy and France, still use the old low yield "original" wheat. I learned this painful lesson when I thought I had gluten allergy. I can't eat any kind of bread in the US. But when I went to France, I had no problems. Turns out (AFAIK), high yield wheat is also really hard to digest... I only use French flour now.
- scythe 3y agoThe sweet potato is an extremely unusual case in that it was transported across the Pacific by Polynesians before the Colombian exchange! In fact, this is some of the most reliable evidence that the preindustrial Polynesians reached South America. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_potato_cultivation_in_Polynesia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_potato_cultivation_in_Pol...