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by thisismyweakarm6 hours ago |
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upvoteby thih95 hours ago|
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If you’re interested in what ancient romans ate, that seems well documented.

Bread, olives (and olive oil), cheese, meat, fish, fruit, nuts, wine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_in_ancient_Rome

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apicius

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upvoteby recursivecaveat2 hours ago|
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Their giant mound of 53 million olive oil amphorae has always fascinated me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Testaccio 20 liters of oil per person annually.
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upvoteby hedgehog3 hours ago|
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I keep hoping I'll be able to get my hands on some silphium to see what it's like.
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upvoteby keiferski5 hours ago|
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The majority of Italian food doesn’t actually use tomatoes. That impression is mostly because internationally-known Italian foods tend to use tomatoes (pizza for example.)
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upvoteby throwaway1100225 hours ago|
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Pasta alla genovese is one such dish, it resembles modern ragu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genovese_sauce

That being said I think the ubiquitousness of tomato sauce even in modern Italian cuisine is overestimated.

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upvoteby card_zero5 hours ago|
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Onions, carrots, and celery, there you have it. I was trying to find out what renaissance celebrity chef Bartolomeo Scappi typically did for sauce, but I'm not sure. I think mostly meat broth. This tortellini here has a sort of Christmas spices stuffing with nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, and raisins ... and marjoram and mint and rosewater and saffron ... and sugar and parmesan on top. In meat broth.

https://www.theeternaltable.com/historical-recipes/tortellin...

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upvoteby Renaud1 hours ago|
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> Onions, carrots, and celery

This is also a major base of French cuisine and called Mirepoix.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirepoix?wprov=sfti1

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upvoteby analog315 hours ago|
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Or Europeans before potatoes.
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upvoteby hedgehog3 hours ago|
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Or peppers. Hungary without paprika!
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upvoteby zppln4 hours ago|
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I heard turnips used to be all the rage.
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upvoteby throwup2383 hours ago|
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Although it should be noted that modern turnip varieties are significantly more flavorful and sweet than pre-Columbian exchange era turnips. The old varieties were usually very bland so it didn’t take much for another tuber to displace it.
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upvoteby burgreblast4 hours ago|
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melanzana aka Aubergine aka eggplant
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upvoteby ginko4 hours ago|
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Honestly I find the impact of the Columbian exchange on cuisine of the old world overblown. Tomatoes potatoes and corn a sure are great, but you can do without them. Italian cuisine was different but most of the modern elements were in place. I'd say the role of tomatoes in Italian cooking isn't as big as people make it out to be.

On the other hand it's almost impossible to imagine what food was like in the Americas before Columbus. No wheat, no pork/beef/chicken, no dairy, no onions, no cabbage, no oranges/apples/figs, any citrus and much much more.

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upvoteby hyperpape2 hours ago|
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One of the most praised recent restaurants in the United States is based on an attempt to reconstruct pre-Colombian cuisine from the Americas: https://owamni.com/, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/09/19/how-owamni-bec....
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upvoteby bee_rider53 minutes ago|
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In that list, I think I’d only really miss apples and dairy (really just cheese) by their own virtue. Pork/beef/meat due to familiarity (which is to say, they had other meat sources, which I’m sure were just a good, if I’d grown up on venison I’m sure it would just taste like cow to me).

Potatoes and corn, losing though would be absolutely tragic. Also avocados.

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upvoteby lava_pidgeon3 hours ago|
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Depends on the area. German speaking areas and Eastern Europe do use lots of potato. Even the collagial name for German is potato
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upvoteby ginko3 hours ago|
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I'm Austrian myself. There's plenty of potato dumplings etc., but they're just variants of other flour/cheese based dumplings. Potatoes are important but certainly not indispensable.

Compare that to pork for instance. Remove that and you've removed like 50% of Austrian cuisine.

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upvoteby jjtheblunt1 hours ago|
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no beef? bison were ubiquitous, though.
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upvoteby mmooss3 hours ago|
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> no dairy

They couldn't find one mammal from which to obtain milk? It's a pretty obvious thing to try, for obvious reasons.

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upvoteby AlotOfReading3 hours ago|
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The vast majority of the human population is lactose intolerant, both historically and today. Genetically intolerant populations in South and Central Asia have microbiotic help with their dairy-heavy diets, but for people who didn't spend thousands of years developing a culture around it, dairy is just a quick road to an upset stomach and/or food poisoning.
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