Can you imagine a diet with no Italian red sauce, or tomato sandwiches? What about no French fries, guacamole, corn on the cob, or sweet potato pie? That’s what food in Europe was like before the Europeans found the Americas. The Europeans did have cabbage, onions, peas, broad beans, greens and carrots, grapes, apples, pears, raspberries, and currents, but the addition of New World foods would be perhaps the biggest change in European diets ever, in fact, it was a culinary revolution.
The First Americas had been on the continent for unknown thousands of years, a topic still hotly debated. It was thought for many years that the Clovis point, which was dated to10,000 to 13,000 years ago, represented the oldest evidence of human habitation in the Americas, but recent discoveries in South America may push that date back by many years.
Native Americans developed a cornucopia of new and delicious foods that would literally change the diet of the Western world when introduced by European explores. Peppers, pineapples, tomatoes, beans, corn, peanuts, potatoes, squash, avocado, sweet potatoes, and sunflowers all came to the western world from North and South America and were unknown in Europe. In fact, the foundation of the native American diet, “the three sisters,” corn, beans and squash, grew well when planted together in a garden, (a classic example of companion planting) and was another gift to the starving Europeans who had made the treacherous two month passage to cross the north Atlantic. That first Thanksgiving was about a lot more than just roasted turkeys.
Of course, the exchange was a two way street, and Europeans introduced livestock, grains and many fruits and vegetables to the Americas. Unfortunately, they also introduced small pox, for which the Native Americans had no resistance, and resulted in the death of tens of thousands. When D’Iberville landed on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in 1699, he found villages that had been abandoned due to disease spread by DeSoto’s men.
The other significant part of that culinary revolution was the spice trade between Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Cinnamon, pepper, cloves, and nutmeg made a significant impact on the European diet, not to mention other cultural exchanges.
It’s hard to imagine how dull the diet of the Europeans was before these foods and spices were exchanged. They did have lots of grains and vegetables for the poor, but meat was too expensive for the common family. 1492 was one heck of a year for future foodies!