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AFAIK India didn't have corn either. Like chilies and potatoes and a few other plants, it came from the Americas.
by fuzztester 2y ago
AFAIK India didn't have corn either. Like chilies and potatoes and a few other plants, it came from the Americas.
- steveoscaro 2y agoAnd the list goes on of the food products that only existed in the Americas - chocolate, coffee, hot peppers. But of course it goes both ways. I just had traditional breakfast in an isolated Zapotec village in Mexico. But of course the cheese wasn’t part of it until the Spaniards arrived.
- wincy 2y agoYou’re off on coffee, a few months ago I too assumed it came from the Americas because it grows so well here, but was surprised to learn it’s actually an old world thing. https://www.ncausa.org/About-Coffee/History-of-Coffee https://www.ncausa.org/About-Coffee/History-of-Coffee
- asveikau 2y agoThe name coming from Arabic is a big hint. And then the species called C. arabica.
- fuzztester 2y agoCoffee came from Ethiopian highlands, according to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coffee
- umeshunni 2y agoArticle on Indian food before modern European contact: https://contingentmagazine.org/2020/06/25/curry-before-columbus/ https://contingentmagazine.org/2020/06/25/curry-before-colum...
- triceratops 2y agoThe article focuses quite a bit on asfoetida, but makes no mention of peppercorns which are native to India. When Europeans sailed to India for spices, they weren't going an asfoetida or turmeric run. It was pepper they sought (and I guess cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves too - though some of those might be from Indonesia idk). I always assumed pre-Columbian Indian food had fieriness and heat from pepper (bite into a whole peppercorn - it's plenty fiery), so there was a pre-existing cultural affinity for that flavor. This to me explained the rapid assimilation of chilli peppers into virtually every regional Indian cuisine.
- fuzztester 2y agoalso long pepper, which is supposed to be hotter than pepper. called piper longum. some of the spices you mention were originally from the Malacca area, but were later grown in South India as well.
- gavindean90 2y agoCinnamon sugar was a bigger deal than anyone gives a credit for now.
- Affric 2y agoMace and cloves only grew in the southern moluccas and when the Dutch took over from the Portuguese they genocide the local Melanesian population with the help of some peoples of the western islands.
- fuzztester 2y agoAnd interestingly, many of them are from the nightshade family, the https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solanaceae https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solanaceae .
- throwup238 2y agoWhats interesting is why nightshades diversified and selectively bred into so many staple plants in the new world but the nightshades in the old world did not. Black nightshade berries native to Europe are easily mistaken for the latter stages of potato plant development, for example.
- pixelatedindex 2y agoAs an Indian I definitely find corn out of place in our cuisine. But the others are pretty essential.
- teractiveodular 2y agoReally? Makki ki roti is a pretty key part of Punjabi cuisine.
- pixelatedindex 2y agoHuh, didn’t know. Maybe because I’m from South India and the cuisine is pretty different there?
- dyauspitr 2y agoI can’t think of any Indian dishes that use corn.
- fuzztester 2y agoI can think of two, or at least, one dish and one snack: dish: makki ki roti (roti made from corn flour) with sarson kaa saag (mustard greens, cooked). this is a very common, even iconic, Punjabi dish. I've only tried it once myself. didn't like the corn roti much. the mustard greens were fine. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makki_ki_roti https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Makki_ki_roti https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarson_ka_saag https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarson_ka_saag snack: whole corn roasted on a fire, i.e. corn on the cob. bhutta in hindi. ubiquitous in india.
- dyauspitr 2y agoYep bhutta is everywhere but I was referring to corn in dishes. I had no idea makke di roti was corn.