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shawnmmcc
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Not wheat, corn, or soy beans. Oh, ye of little taste. The real plant that changed the world was Capsicum frutescens and C. annum, it's kissing cousin. The lowly pepper. What started as a tasty little nubbin of a fruit on a tropical plant now has changed cuisine the world over.
Yes potatoes feed more stomachs, as do bananas. The grain crops feed humanity. You can substitute one carobhydrate producer for another, within limits. But the pepper has hijacked cuisines the world over.
Find me an Asian, European, or African cuisine left untouched by this new world interloper. Everyone grows it, everyone eats it, and everyone has it in their cuisine in one way or another - even the British! (please note, some philistine will find some outlandish exception to this, like maybe the cuisine of Greenland - to which I intellectually reply -  ).
So find me a crop that has changed humanity more than this lowly plant, loving altered by local inhabitants the world over. I would not be surprised if there are more current cultivars of this shy plant than any other food species grown by man. Other candidates are welcome to compete with this wondrous mana, please list them and your reasons below.
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shawnmmcc
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Then post your alternative!
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shawnmmcc
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This thread is becoming un-beerable.
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chegitz guevara
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Ft. Lauderdale, FL Communist Party of Apolyton
Jun 2000
time: 00:32
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I have this cool book about American food plants: potatoes, new world beans, peppers, tomatoes, chocolate, vanilla, amaranth, qinoa, and maize.
Amaranth and qinoa are both extensively used in Latin America, but haven't made it out yet. qinoa is a grain that's extremely high in protein, and amaranth is a grain and leafy vegitable that's very nutricious.
Most of the beans we think of are actually from the New World. Only mung, fava, and soy are old world beans. Everything else, including green beans, are from or were developed from, new world beans.
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Proteus_MST
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quote:
Originally posted by Sandman
Coffee. |
Yep, IŽd go with this,
or with Nicotiana tabacum (although I donŽt smoke).
Both had throughout the world a very strong influence on Culture.
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shawnmmcc
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Actually, all peppper's used in modern cuisine come pretty much from those two root species I mention, which are very possible the same plant domesticated multiple times in the Americas. All those peppers in Asian quisine - since 1600. If you look at most if not all major cuisines throughout the world, the pepper plant has been incorporated in all of them.
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molly bloom
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Lundenwic
Oct 2001
time: 15:32
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quote:
Originally posted by shawnmmcc
Everyone grows it, everyone eats it, and everyone has it in their cuisine in one way or another - even the British! (please note, some philistine will find some outlandish exception to this, like maybe the cuisine of Greenland - to which I intellectually reply - ).
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Could I just point out shawn, that even in jest this continual denigration of the British cuisine and palate is rather tiresome... 
And may I also point out that the Venerable Bede thought so highly of peppercorns (and indeed they were so highly prized in England and Europe at the time) that they are specifically mentioned as being an item left in his will.
' Bede died in his cell at the monastery in the year 735. Cuthbert, a young monk who was with him later wrote an account of his death. He describes how Bede finished dictating a chapter of a book which he was composing. Then he said "I have a few treasures in my box, some pepper and napking and incense. Run quickly and fetch the priests of our monastery, and I will share among them such little presents as God has given me." '
from:
http://www.bedesworld.co.uk/academic-bede.php
May I also add my vote for the potato, which as the Spaniards found out through the Incas was both tasty, nutritious and filling, and could also be freeze dried and stored.
As Frederick the Great found, he could wage war across German territory and Central Europe and not cause famine (as had happened during earlier conflicts involving German states and territories) because the potato was relatively undamaged by the course of rampaging armies, as it lay underground.
It was also partly responsible for the explosive population growth in Ireland and the Great Britain (unlike other crops being relatively unaffected by the occasionally dreary climate in the north of the United Kingdom) and has penetrated the cuisines of countries as diverse as Ireland, Japan and Nepal, India, South Africa and Morocco. The potato blight resulted in the great Irish diaspora which did have an effect on American history as I recall....
It also fed the growing population of industrial workers in Belgium, the Netherlands, northern France and the Rhineland. It's even said, quel horreur! that some people make hard liquor out of it....
Wheat and oats also greatly effected the course of history in Western and Central Europe, but I too will plump for the humble spud and leave the cereals for breakfast.
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03-04-2005 00:20
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