SC - Food migration

[Elysant at aol.com]

>I'm deeply interested in food migration also; there are foods commonly
>eaten in New York State that just perplex me. For example there's an
>entire sub-cuisine of seafood dishes that is very common all across the
>state, and most of the state has no oceanfront. It occurred to me to
>wonder just why you can get raw oysters on the half-shell in half the
>bars and restaurants in, say, Binghamton, New York. I think it's the
>result of railroad expansion and the use of refrigerated cars in the
>nineteenth century that has led to some interesting culinary
>cross-pollination.  

This is so interesting Master A.  I like this food migration topic also, and 
we've talked about this in various contexts before on the list (the Celtic 
foods, the Greek dish that also is eaten in Iceland etc).  

A couple of things.
Do you think it's the expansion of the ability to travel and carry the food 
and dishes etc (refrigerated or whatever) further and further is the main 
(modern anyway) way that foods migrated?  Or is re-location and migration of 
peoples more the thing?  And what about trade?  I know Nanna has expressed 
the view also that some of the dishes we in Wales have in common with 
Icelanders might have well just developed independently in parallel because 
of resource similarity etc. rather than to have  travelled from one of the 
two countries to the other.

The other thing is can, (and how can) we prove by this migration concept that 
certain peoples existed in a certain location by dishes still made and eaten 
there? 
 
Elysant  
 
============================================================================

To be removed from the SCA-Cooks mailing list, please send a message to
Majordomo at Ansteorra.ORG with the message body of "unsubscribe SCA-Cooks".

============================================================================