[Sca-cooks] Ottoman Foodstuffs was Plantains: Period for Old World?

[Terry Decker]

>I wrote:
>>  1. Most New World ingredients didn't enter the Ottoman Empire - which
>>  encompassed most of North Africa (including Algeria, Tunisia, and 
>> Egypt),
>>  the Levant (now Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel-Palestine, Iraq, and
>>  Anatolia) - or Persia and Central Asia until the ** 18th ** century.
>
> Bear puzzled:
>>  But they quickly adopted, maize, chili peppers, and squash, which leaves 
>> me
>>  wondering why those items and why not others?
>
> My comments are based on what i've read in books and essays by modern 
> Turkish and European scholars and writers on food, cuisine, and dining 
> culture (including an essay on McDonald's vs. traditional "fast" food).
>
> I guess it depended on when the plant arrived. I know chilis and squashes 
> entered pretty early. When was maize adopted? Since what i've read tends 
> to focus on courtly and on urban food, there's little mention of maize It 
> doesn't feature much in urban food of the "better" classes.
>
<clipped>> -- 
> Urtatim (that's err-tah-TEEM)

Leonard Fuchs refers to maize as Turkische Ko:rn in his herbal around 1543, 
but the best evidence is from Leonard Rauwolf who travelled between Tripoli 
and Baghdad in 1573-75.  Along the Euphrates, Rauwolf observed, "Indian 
millet (maize) six, seven or eight cubits high."

Bear