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I think what is so interesting is also, if you peel back the curtain, most recipes have standardized at a fairly recent point in their national mythos, dependin

I think what is so interesting is also, if you peel back the curtain, most recipes have standardized at a fairly recent point in their national mythos, depending on how long that is. Recipes are a snapshot of economic and technological advances of the time, and whole classes of recipe are not available until certain technological watersheds, like * precise temperature controls for ovens and stoves in the early 20th century * cheap and health(ier) chemical leaveners in the late 19th century * discovery of consistent vanilla pollination in the 19th century * exchanges of ingredients in the Columbian exchange (tomatoes in Italy, potatoes in Russia, chilis in India and Korea, etc.) Also our modern supply chain is very good at magicking away the seasonality and perishability of ingredients, so for example you had early Scottish shortbread primarily using rice flour because it was cheaper at that time.

rsynnott 4mo ago
The reference carbonara, for instance, appears to have existed in ~its current form for _under a century_.
foolfoolz 4mo ago
i think there’s another component to this that most food sucked. your daily food was probably bad because it had few seasonings. it was likely starch (rice/bread), and stew. you don’t need a recipe for soup, it’s boil water and throw in whatever vegetables you have on hand. maybe meat if you had it
- MeetingsBrowser 4mo ago
  Recipes go back millennia, and seasonings were also common, but varied by region. It’s easy to grow your own herbs a, or even forage for some things. I don’t think it’s true that most food sucked at any point, except for people in exceptional circumstances.
  - mjhay 4mo ago
    Recipes were the province of the wealthy. The average person would have had a very repetitive, bland, and potentially malnourishing diet. They might have had some herbs or even foraged like you say, that still is very bland and boring compared to what we’re used to.
    - retrac 4mo ago
      From what I have read the diet of people in classical antiquity was only terrible for the very poor. Most people in ancient Rome got to, at least rarely, eat honey cakes and fresh fruit and dried fish and maybe once a year at festivals even a small chunk of meat. They grew chives, dill, garlic, asparagus, radish, parsley, thyme, mustard, cumin and many other spices. And they made vinegar and olive oil and garum (fermented fish sauce) on an industrial scale. Mostly these would be used as sparing garnish to the grain-centric diet. But usually present.
      - grebc 4mo ago
        The very poor far outnumber the wealthy.
        IAmBroom 4mo ago
        False dichotomy. There exist the somewhat-poor through middle class.
      - bobthepanda 4mo ago
        one thing to note is that while they may have consumed it they probably weren't making it. Particularly for urban dwellers, kitchens were very rudimentary if you even had one.
        IAmBroom 4mo ago
        Pretty much every castle, house, and hovel had a firesource, and cooking was centered around it.
  - deleted 4mo ago
    [deleted]
  - red-iron-pine 4mo ago
    up until maybe 200 years ago famines were a genuine and consistent threat even to places like Europe. food wouldn't just have sucked, in many cases all you could eat would be some dried grain boiled to porridge, or the handful of semi-mouldy veggies that made it through winter months -- and many would often be lucky to even have that
- IAmBroom 4mo ago
  You're buying into the "everyone else was drab misery" image of the past. Even the poor wore colored clothing, not the uniform drab depicted in movies. Dyeing cloth with common weeds is a worldwide custom. All but the truly poor lived indoors with a fire, either in a fireplace or centrally located beneath a peak smoke hole in the roof. In all but the leanest times, chickens were easily raised by most people. Hogs were also common - there are even laws about raising them inside cities! That being said, its possible many meals were meatless, but the prevalence of meatless fasting rules suggest most people had access to meat - you can't "prove your faith through deprivation" if you're always deprived. Furthermore, serfs had access to the low-grade meats from butchering, and could keep it fresh with fat preservation, salting, or smoking.
zahlman 4mo ago
> or example you had early Scottish shortbread primarily using rice flour because it was cheaper at that time. What era of history are we talking about here? Would it have been transported as flour, or ground locally?
- bobthepanda 4mo ago
  While I don't have the exact details of transport and whatnot, much of that rice came from the Carolinas https://inlandrice.charlestoncounty.org/economics.html https://inlandrice.charlestoncounty.org/economics.html Generally speaking, rice is a lot higher yield per acre, and also, the east coast doesn't have particularly good wheat growing.
pratik661 4mo ago
Also, motorized blades and grinders were revolutionary for the categories of recipes they unlocked
mc32 4mo ago
Pad Thai was an invention to unite the country and forge an identity in the face of Chinese influence. After WWII it was popularized because it was cheap and thus able to feed a post war population.
throw0101a 4mo ago
> exchanges of ingredients in the Columbian exchange (tomatoes in Italy, potatoes in Russia, chilis in India and Korea, etc.) For more on this see the book 1493: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1493:_Uncovering_the_New_World_Columbus_Created https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1493:_Uncovering_the_New_World... Many folks are probably familiar with what happened in Europe post-1492, but there's a whole bunch of stuff on the Pacific side of the Americas as well.
basch 4mo ago
Beer purity 1516

rsynnott 4mo ago

The reference carbonara, for instance, appears to have existed in ~its current form for _under a century_.

foolfoolz 4mo ago

i think there’s another component to this that most food sucked. your daily food was probably bad because it had few seasonings. it was likely starch (rice/bread), and stew. you don’t need a recipe for soup, it’s boil water and throw in whatever vegetables you have on hand. maybe meat if you had it

MeetingsBrowser 4mo ago
Recipes go back millennia, and seasonings were also common, but varied by region. It’s easy to grow your own herbs a, or even forage for some things. I don’t think it’s true that most food sucked at any point, except for people in exceptional circumstances.
- mjhay 4mo ago
  Recipes were the province of the wealthy. The average person would have had a very repetitive, bland, and potentially malnourishing diet. They might have had some herbs or even foraged like you say, that still is very bland and boring compared to what we’re used to.
  - retrac 4mo ago
    From what I have read the diet of people in classical antiquity was only terrible for the very poor. Most people in ancient Rome got to, at least rarely, eat honey cakes and fresh fruit and dried fish and maybe once a year at festivals even a small chunk of meat. They grew chives, dill, garlic, asparagus, radish, parsley, thyme, mustard, cumin and many other spices. And they made vinegar and olive oil and garum (fermented fish sauce) on an industrial scale. Mostly these would be used as sparing garnish to the grain-centric diet. But usually present.
    - grebc 4mo ago
      The very poor far outnumber the wealthy.
      - IAmBroom 4mo ago
        False dichotomy. There exist the somewhat-poor through middle class.
    - bobthepanda 4mo ago
      one thing to note is that while they may have consumed it they probably weren't making it. Particularly for urban dwellers, kitchens were very rudimentary if you even had one.
      - IAmBroom 4mo ago
        Pretty much every castle, house, and hovel had a firesource, and cooking was centered around it.
- deleted 4mo ago
  [deleted]
- red-iron-pine 4mo ago
  up until maybe 200 years ago famines were a genuine and consistent threat even to places like Europe. food wouldn't just have sucked, in many cases all you could eat would be some dried grain boiled to porridge, or the handful of semi-mouldy veggies that made it through winter months -- and many would often be lucky to even have that
IAmBroom 4mo ago
You're buying into the "everyone else was drab misery" image of the past. Even the poor wore colored clothing, not the uniform drab depicted in movies. Dyeing cloth with common weeds is a worldwide custom. All but the truly poor lived indoors with a fire, either in a fireplace or centrally located beneath a peak smoke hole in the roof. In all but the leanest times, chickens were easily raised by most people. Hogs were also common - there are even laws about raising them inside cities! That being said, its possible many meals were meatless, but the prevalence of meatless fasting rules suggest most people had access to meat - you can't "prove your faith through deprivation" if you're always deprived. Furthermore, serfs had access to the low-grade meats from butchering, and could keep it fresh with fat preservation, salting, or smoking.

zahlman 4mo ago

> or example you had early Scottish shortbread primarily using rice flour because it was cheaper at that time. What era of history are we talking about here? Would it have been transported as flour, or ground locally?

bobthepanda 4mo ago
While I don't have the exact details of transport and whatnot, much of that rice came from the Carolinas https://inlandrice.charlestoncounty.org/economics.html https://inlandrice.charlestoncounty.org/economics.html Generally speaking, rice is a lot higher yield per acre, and also, the east coast doesn't have particularly good wheat growing.

pratik661 4mo ago

Also, motorized blades and grinders were revolutionary for the categories of recipes they unlocked

mc32 4mo ago

Pad Thai was an invention to unite the country and forge an identity in the face of Chinese influence. After WWII it was popularized because it was cheap and thus able to feed a post war population.

throw0101a 4mo ago

> exchanges of ingredients in the Columbian exchange (tomatoes in Italy, potatoes in Russia, chilis in India and Korea, etc.) For more on this see the book 1493: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1493:_Uncovering_the_New_World_Columbus_Created https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1493:_Uncovering_the_New_World... Many folks are probably familiar with what happened in Europe post-1492, but there's a whole bunch of stuff on the Pacific side of the Americas as well.

basch 4mo ago

Beer purity 1516