[Sca-cooks] New World Foods in the Old World

[Terry Decker]

Check the Florilegium.  There are a number of period citations for New World
foods.

>One poster pointed out that plants brought back from the New World
>were planted in the Old World and that poster concluded that because
>they were planted, the food stuffs they produced would have been
>sought out by the wealthy and powerful and would have been among the
>foods served at feasts, not necessarily with great frequency, but
>somewhat often.
>

A lot would depend on how the plants came into use.  Maize, peppers and
squash may have come into general use through the Ottoman incursions which
put it into the hands of the general populace rather than as delicacies for
the noble's table.

The turkey replaced other large birds in European cooking and were actively
being raised and purchased by the nobility and were moving down the economic
ladder by the end of the 16th Century.

The little we know about tomatoes suggest they were peasant food when eaten.

The sweet potato was popular with New World sailors and we have enough
recipes to suggest they were popular in Spain and England with a market in
them established in England in the 17th Century.  White potatoes didn't get
to Europe until the 1540's and were only recently arrived in Northern Europe
in the last 20 years of the 16th Century.  White potatoes were horticultural
garden curiosities and a letter between two German princes containing a
recipe for them suggests they may be one of the few foodstuffs to fit the
above opinion (pineapple is another).

>For those who aren't on that list, my stance is:
>-- Of food stuffs brought back to Europe from the New World, few were
>adopted into the diet rapidly (within 2 or 3 years), and many were
>viewed with skepticism for some time (up to 150 years or possibly
>more).
>-- Some things may have been adopted more quickly if they were
>similar to or reminded people of foods they already ate (turkey).
>-- Additionally, i implied that some foods were adopted more quickly
>in some countries than in others, although i may not have pointed
>this out explicitly (i mentioned the tomato in Spain and Italy).

>Anahita

Might it also be that things were adopted quickly if they tasted good and
more slowly if an acquired taste (given some of the tomatoes I've eaten, I
think tomatoes are an acquired taste).

It is worth noting that white potatoes, which aren't as flavorful as sweet
potatoes, were adopted more slowly but more widely primarily to meet the
need for low cost, high calorie, and high yield food in the late 17th and
early 18th Centuries.

Bear