Hot answers tagged food
21
Here is one noting:
The European medieval diet was largely determined by social class. For the majority of the of the people, peasants, a large portion of their daily diet was made up of grains such as wheat, rye, oats or barley(carbohydrates). The grains were boiled whole in a soup or stew, ground into flour and made into bread, or malted and brewed ...
11
These did not have indigenous alcoholic beverages, aiming to be as exhaustive as possible:
Inuit (called "Eskimos" in Hornsey "Alcohol and Its Role in the Evolution of Human Society", p. 1)
peoples of Tierra del Fuego (South America) (ibid)
Australia (ibid)
most of the natives of the North America (ibid)
including Navajo (Hornsey, p. 554)
including Hopi ...
10
Wikipedia has a pretty decent write-up with references.
Specifically to tomatoes, it says:
Significant changes occurred with the discovery of the New World with the introduction of items such as potatoes, tomatoes, bell peppers and maize, now central to the cuisine but not introduced in quantity until the 18th century.
As far as not-in-quantity, the ...
8
A collection of 26 Babylonian recipe tablets written in Akkadian from 1700BC have been deciphered. Here is an interesting newspaper article on the translations by a chef-turned-antiquarian:
Recipe tablets from the Yale Babylonian Collection, previously thought to contain pharmaceutical formulas, have been decoded by French Assyriologist and gourmet chef ...
6
The big difference is geographic diversity. Wheat doesn't do very well in the tropics. Rice requires tropical and semi-tropical areas where lots and lots of water are available. However, corn can be grown nearly anywhere.
Corn kind of had a tough row to hoe (pardon the pun) in the Americas. It was first domesticated from the grass Tseosine in tropical areas ...
6
It is quite possible to examine diet through archeological means (composition of bones and teeth). However, I don't know that anybody has done a systematic study of such records with an eye towards looking for vegetarianism.
The one piece of similar information I am aware of is that teeth of hunter-gatherers are often discernible at a glance, due to the ...
5
According to this well sourced article, wine was diluted to reduce its strength, in order to avoid over-inebriation. Those who did not drink it diluted were seen as barbaric, uncultured, or besotted.
There are claims on wikipedia and other online sources that the ancients drank diluted wine or small-beer to avoid water-borne illness, but I can't seem to ...
5
A New York bar's website is one of a few sites which provide the following (seemingly) credible explanation for this practice:
No one is exactly sure of the reasons why larger format bottles were given biblical names. But, according to the Champagne expert Francois Bonal, winemakers in Bordeaux had been using the name Jeroboam for the four-bottle size ...
5
An archaeological evidence I think could be impossible: if they analyze the content of the digestive system like they did with Ötzi,even if they can find some bodies like this preserved under some special conditions, will be evidence for a few days of diet. If they analyze some lack of nutrients in the bones that lack might be also due to some other factors, ...
4
Corn is the most versatile of crops.
Rice needs a nearly tropical climate in which to grow, and also lots of water for paddies. These conditions are present mostly in Southeast Asia.
Wheat is a northern crop that does better in dry land. It grows best in Kansas, and areas to the north, and areas to the west of that state.
Corn can be grown in ...
4
What is known:
Buckwheat's yield strongly depends on pollination by insects.
Although it is not universally applicable, in eastern North America, honey bee seems to be the main and the most effective pollinator of buckwheat.
honey bee was not native to Americas, being first bought there from Europe in early 1600s
Sadly, I have no direct historical ...
4
The Wikipedia page has a bit of history for you. Remember that the freezer was invented first in the beginning of the 20th century, so before that, salt was a highly important (and expensive) commodity. Everything had to be salted in order to be transported inland. Cod is a good fish because it is lean – fat will get rancid. In the Northern Europe however, ...
4
Well alcohol does have a strong anti-bacterial effect,and adding water to wine was a way to create more drink as there was very little clean drinking water. During the fermentation process many microbes die, eventually the yeast too dies in the anaerobic environment. I think adding water to wine and letting the two mix for a while would kill a significant ...
3
http://www.oldbeers.com <- contacting the owners of the Pretty Things Brewery might be able to help. They have a project brewing old beer recipes.
Basing my answer off a single source (the 1945 beer recipe used by Pretty Things) it appears that there was limited variety in brewing materials as well as a lower alcohol content. It makes sense, as you ...
2
I believe I can answer my question. After some Google search I found this:
It is my understanding that it is difficult to fish on a sailing ship. Many fish won't bite a worm or other bait swimming 12-15 knots through the ocean - this isn't a natural mealtime option for them - the bigger fish may (marlins, tuna), but these are very large fish requiring a ...
2
I don't know whether this is example of people deliberately drinking beer rather than water for it's protective effects. But there is certainly an interesting case study to be had in the 1854 Broad Street cholera outbreak. Wikipedia quote:
"There was one significant anomaly - none of the monks in the adjacent monastery
contracted cholera. Investigation ...
2
Yes, they drank beer (and/or wine depending on the availability of the ingredients) so they'd not have to drink (as much) water.
For example http://www.thekeep.org/~kunoichi/kunoichi/themestream/egypt_alcohol.html#.UUb7yVfNhgg describes in detail ancient Egyptian beer, which has actually been reproduced from recipes found.
2
Alcohol was almost surely first produced by accident. Then people noticed its intoxicating effects. It was probably not until much later that its effects on bacteria were noticed, as these didn't become really important until the population density was high enough that infected water was problematic (a small tribe living near a stream would not have this ...
2
Wheat and rice are food that humans eat but humans also eat chicken, pork, beef, turkey, eggs, cheese, milk and many other animal products. So what do you think animals in cages and feedlots eat? Corn and more corn. Animals like cattle eat the whole corn plant. Also, the yield of corn plants is much higher and has more nutrients than wheat and rice.
2
The most important appears to be scientific discoveries related to nutrition that were being uncovered rapidly by the beginning of the twentieth century, from Chapter 2 of the Agriculture Health Bulletin No. (AIB 750) entitled "Dietary Restrictions and How They Have Changed Over Time",
When the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) published its first
...
2
I've heard before that the reason that many Native Americans are alcoholics is because they didn't have alcoholic beverages, and thus they didn't build up a resistance to it. I don't know how true that is.
As for people not knowing anything about alcohol, there was this one instance in New Guinea during WWII where a C-47 crashed into an unkown valley, ...
2
Wikipedia has a list, starting with:
The earliest collection of recipes that has survived in Europe is De re coquinaria, written in Latin. An early version was first compiled sometime in the 1st century and has often been attributed to the Roman gourmet Marcus Gavius Apicius, though this has been cast in doubt by modern research. An Apicius came to ...
2
Here's an interesting article on the topic, from the Santa Barbara Independent newspaper. It's titled, "What Did the Early Spanish Settlers Eat?" and should answer your questions:
The primary crop was wheat,
in addition to significant amounts of corn, beans, barley, and peas.
As the mission’s water system developed, more sophisticated irrigation
...
1
It appears the game involved trying to hit a target with wine lees (fermentation residue). So presumably the bowl in the other hand would hold more wine, with which to refill the drinking cup.
These days the lees is typically filtered out of the wine before the consumer ever sees it, denying us the excitement (not to mention sanitation issues) of this ...
1
I went on the NY times website, but unfortunately didn't have a subscription to view the articles. If you've got one, these might help.
http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10613FE385C16738DDDAB0894DF405B838FF1D3&scp=2&sq=panama%20disease&st=cse
...
1
For a moment let's ignore the meaning of "widely propagated".
Apple trees were the first trees to be cultivated. Their genetic diversity is incredible, with for example 2000 varieties allegedly found in Italy only. Other sources report that there are 7000 known apple varieties in the world.
I do not report the sources as I have serious doubts about methods ...
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