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Comment by paxys | Hacker News Reader

Mexican cuisine in the USA is wayy past the point where people can criticize it for being inauthentic. Tex-Mex and Cal-Mex both have their own histories going back hundreds of years.

In general, whenever there are debates about the authenticity of a certain dish, I can guarantee that people of the native country are doing even crazier "non-traditional" things with it, and no one cares.

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Tomatoes originate from the americas. Italian food only relatively recently had access to the tomato.

After learning this fact, I stopped caring about a foods heritage. Who cares.

And wheat-based flour tortillas would have been unknown prior to Columbus. Similarly anything based on beef or chickens, both old-world animals.

Spicy food, as we know it today, also originated in the americas. Which similarly blows my mind.

I think India might have a word here as well. Reminds me of the origin story disputes of pasta.

I think the issue here is that the word "spicy" is overloaded, meaning both "hot" and "of or containing various spices". India has long used the sort of of spices that give its food the characteristic rich, interesting flavours. I guess the hotness part comes from chili peppers from the America (I hadn't heard that before, I'm taking another comment at face value)

To me what is more interesting is Korean food without chili peppers.

Korean food is notoriously spicy today, gochugaru and gochujang are fundamental condiments of modern Korean cooking, but pre-chili recipes for things like kimchi are not notably spicy.

This is interesting actually. I'd be curious to see what Korean food was like before the Americas were discovered. And you have now got me daydreaming about kimchi a full hour before lunchtime, thanks a lot :D

There’s a cookbook called the eumsik dimibang but I can’t find an English translation.

It’s noticeable for both being the first Korean cookbook and being authored by a woman in the 1600s. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eumsik_dimibang

> And you have now got me daydreaming about kimchi a full hour before lunchtime, thanks a lot :D

Just curious (and nosy), It is still early morning in the US but what did you end up having for lunch? :D

Haha no problem I didn't have anything with kimchi and ended up going for Poke instead (https://www.pokecz.cz)

India was the commercial source of (black) pepper; that's why Columbus' stated aim was to get to India.

Tomatoes, potatoes, and chili ("red pepper") are all New World plants foreign to India.

I believe the fact that Columbus thought he was in the Indies was why chiles derived the name of a “pepper” even though they are technically a different taxonomy, correct?

The names of foods are often... merely suggestive of there culinary use and fairly divorced from their scientific taxonomy. Consider that most of the "nuts" in a container of mixed nuts... aren't nuts.

Huh. I knew the common peanut was a legume but has no idea most of the other nuts are botanical fruits/drupes. In my container, the only real nut is the hazelnut

Exactly. And at least peanut has the word pea in the name. :)

Pretty sure the distinction of fruit is ignored often, as well. Coffee is my favorite example. Bean only in shape.

Pretty much exactly this. That rating level when you go to an Indian or Thai place is pretty much not possible without chili peppers.

> I think the issue here is that the word "spicy" is overloaded, meaning both "hot" and "of or containing various spices".

Do people actually use the word "spicy" for the latter?

Yep definitely. I've recently used it a couple of times when talking about alcoholic drinks - mulled wine when I've messed up the proportions (it was a little too spicy), and when trying to briefly summarise a difference between two particular whiskies (one being a bit more spicy than the other). I guess it's unambiguous in these contexts though.

Is the word "piquant" still relevant to this use case? What about "picante" in this context?

I've never encountered it in English, only in Czech ("pikantní")

India also used a lot of black pepper in its cuisine (which is local) before chili arrives on the scene. I looked into the pre chilli cuisine of south India a few years ago and it was very interesting and pepper heavy.

As I understand it, chilis were brought (first to Goa) from the Americas by Portuguese traders. Similar to tomatoes in Italy these are hundreds of years ago shortly after Columbus failed to find the spice route (to Asia) he was looking for... but finding another spice, silver, and tobacco route.

Indian food traditionally was not red hot spicy the way it is now but instead relied on the unique flavor of Asafoetida (Hing) which is still a key ingredient in legit Indian cooking

> Spicy food, as we know it today, also originated in the americas

Chili peppers did, but chili peppers aren't the only source of spiciness.

I've seen very few things where spiciness isn't code for added capsaicin. To be sure, spiced things can still be black pepper (or other classic spice) based. But largely that is referred to as seasoned, nowadays.

Hmmm, the Szechuan region of China says hold my beer

I do like Szechuan food. Most of it that I can get, though, is accompanied with capsaicin, as well.

This is basically the trap of what spicy means. There are other spices than chili peppers, true. But if I say I'm getting spicy food, I'd wager most folks don't think of seasoned foods.

Edit: easy way to consider it. Spiced rum is not considered spicy. Nor is KFC, even though it famously has spices.

Another modern day European staple, potatoes, are indigenous to the Americas, thus were unknown in pre-Columbian times.

Just to be fair, tomatoes arrived in Italy more or less 500 years ago. The concept of a unified Italy wasn’t even a thing at that time! That’s lot of time to develop it’s own “authentic” cultural use of tomatoes.

I bet there are some incredible taboo versions of foods out there. Middle-eastern recipes with pork, for example.

And chocolate, which several European countries adopted as a tradition!

What was Italian food like before then? It’s all very interesting, I definitely care.

Mexican cuisine is also a derivative cuisine itself like every other cuisine ever - chefs borrow techniques all the time and mexico, as we know it, has only existed for about 500 years (503 years ago is about when Cortez first started interacting with the region). Authentic is an extremely hard thing to define - one of the more celebrated "authentic" native north american dishes is fry-bread which was innovated when America relocated a whole bunch of Navajo and basically just handed them bags of flour and lard to sustain themselves on during the march - it's spread across reservations to be a pretty common offering even in haudenosaunee gatherings (though "more authentic" things like strawberry water and venison stews are still more prevalent).

Except that corn tortillas and enchiladas predate Cortez, going back to the Mayans and before, perhaps 2000 years.

Don't forget the tamale. The origin of the tamale dates back 7k - 11k years. They were eaten by the Aztec and Maya civilizations and previously as well by the Olmec and Toltec. And tamales were sacred, food of the gods. I've always loved tamales. They're a treat and good for you, too.

> Don't forget the tamale. The origin of the tamale dates back 7k - 11k years.

This doesn't sound like a claim for which there could be good evidence.

> Mexican cuisine is also a derivative cuisine

Yes, and just as it would be ridiculous to call items that originated through culinary fusion in Mexico “authentic” cuisine of the cultures from whence the various influences came, it is ridiculous to try to call American fusion dishes whose influences include, among others, Mexican cuisine authentic Mexican cuisine.

on that note, if tomatoes were taken to europe only after Colon's famous trips... how come Italian cuisine is famously known for it's tomato-based pasta sauces?

also, what did they irish eat before potatos were taken over there from south america??

If you would like more information on what the Irish ate before the potato, I would recommend these two books to start:

* Early Irish Farming by Fergus Kelly (http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/462769441) * Early Medieval Ireland, AD 400-1100 by Aidan O'Sullivan, Finbar McCormick, Thomas Kerr, Lorcan Harney (http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/1257790078)

They mostly ate a few different grains and dairy, along with some occasional eggs, fish, and meat. Just like everyone else in northern and western Europe.

The Irish ate a huge amount of dairy apparently.

https://www.bonappetit.com/trends/article/what-the-irish-ate...

Other root vegetables too. Turnips and so on. Quite common in Northern Europe and kept well during winter.

Also - how come Italian cuisine is famously known for its spaghetti when that innovation was quite probably brought by Marco Polo back from China... well, because food innovations constantly mingle.

> if tomatoes were taken to europe only after Colon's famous trips... how come Italian cuisine is famously known for it's tomato-based pasta sauces?

What's your question? Why are Canadians known for speaking English?

> also, what did they irish eat before potatos

Lots of dairy and grains

And turnips, who were the staple food potatoes replaced.

Haha, yeah many don't realize that TexMex isn't "knock off" Mexican food. It's "Truly Texas Mexican" food.

Most of what's available outside south Texas (and here and there through southwest) is knock off TexMex though lol.

Not to mention it’s very similar to Mexican food in northern Mexico (which is culturally very connected to Texas!)

And don't forget New Mexican food, which refers to the state... not the age of the food.

Agreed, and not only on that point. Al pastor for example came from Lebanese immigrants. Almost all food was fusion at some point, and that's what's great. I was making tacos one day and didn't have any tomatillos. I did have gooseberries, and they're the same genus and work fine. Another time I used kiwis because they're both sweet and tart and brings similar things to a salsa.

I won't make any claims about my abilities, but I do really love trying to understand the basic concepts of food, so that I can figure out with why certain components are used, and what you can play around with to mix it up (both literally and figuratively).

> I did have gooseberries, and they're the same genus and work fine.

Did you mean family? Gooseberries and tomatillos are different genuses, though the same solanaceae family. With that said, this is an interesting observation, and now I want to do a side-by-side comparison between tomatillos and gooseberries.

You are of course correct. And to straighten another record, it was specifically cape gooseberries I used (they're not called either here), which might be relevant to your future comparisons.

Ah, yes, cape gooseberries are indeed closer, so I can see the comparison better now.

Gooseberries are basically glorified cherry tomatoes. Nothing really fancy about them.

I had a slightly heated discussion with a family member recently over gooseberries and oh boy she didn't take it very well when I mentioned that these fruits are related to tomatoes more than the other fancy berries you're accustomed to see in an upscale supermarket fresh produce aisle.

Well I don't think lebanese made pork dishes though.

Indeed, it was originally lamb, but that's another point for fusion, I'd say.

Most of the first wave of the Lebanese diaspora in Mexico were Christians. So, I don't see any dietary religious restrictions to their choice of going kosher and presumably forgoing pork in their commercial recipes for that dish.

Authenticity is always a point in time authenticity anyway, as everything is changing constantly.

And even when scoped to a specific place and time, definitions get fuzzy and the whole discussion gets a bit too navel gaze-ey for my tastes.

I mean it always boils down to “what I like is good and authentic and better than what you like which is fake and bad and you should feel bad.”

And if you can’t argue it as authentic just call it fusion.

It really doesn’t. American-style tacos can be wonderful food. (The mass-market commercial ones aren’t, though the mass-market commercial shells themselves–basically, U-shaped tostadas, are a fine starting point.) They just aren’t authentically Mexican food. Good, and authentically <national origin> are orthogonal concerns.

> Authenticity is always a point in time authenticity anyway

American-style tacos are not authentically cuisine of Mexican origin of any time. They are authentically American food, developed in America, by Americans.

authentic food is what my grandparents made.

I remember once hearing a critic describe “food like grandma made” as not necessarily a good thing, since grandparents of people alive now would’ve been making food during the initial popularity of microwaved and canned foods. Not to mention the weird things from previous eras like aspics and jello salads.

> grandparents of people alive now would’ve been making food during the initial popularity of microwaved and canned foods.

Those two things weren't even roughly contemporary.

You can make a pretty good argument that the popularity of canned foods really came post-WWII.

Canning was invented in 1809. One plausible reason British food was legendarily bad for such a long time is that it was the ground zero for processed food. It got the first, worst version of everything and people got used to eating it.

> The main market for the food at this stage was the British Army and Royal Navy. By 1817, Donkin recorded that he had sold £3000 worth of canned meat in six months. In 1824, Sir William Edward Parry took canned beef and pea soup with him on his voyage to the Arctic in HMS Fury, during his search for a northwestern passage to India. In 1829, Admiral Sir James Ross also took canned food to the Arctic, as did Sir John Franklin in 1845.[7] Some of his stores were found by the search expedition led by Captain (later Admiral Sir) Leopold McClintock in 1857. One of these cans was opened in 1939 and was edible and nutritious, though it was not analysed for contamination by the lead solder used in its manufacture.

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

> The main market for the food at this stage was the British Army and Royal Navy.

That doesn't sound popular to me.

In 1817, almost a hundred years before WW1, the period you mentioned, less than nine years after the invention of canning, one of the biggest employers in the world was using canning. I trust you can look at the rest of the article to see it got a lot now popular well before WW1.

> Large-scale wars in the nineteenth century, such as the Crimean War, American Civil War, and Franco-Prussian War, introduced increasing numbers of working-class men to canned food, and allowed canning companies to expand their businesses to meet military demands for non-perishable food, enabling companies to manufacture in bulk and sell to wider civilian markets after wars ended. Urban populations in Victorian Britain demanded ever-increasing quantities of cheap, varied, quality food that they could keep at home without having to go shopping daily. In response, companies such as Underwood, Nestlé, Heinz, and others provided quality canned food for sale to working class city-dwellers.

> Mexican cuisine in the USA is wayy past the point where people can criticize it for being inauthentic.

American-origin Mexican-inspired food is authentic American-origin Mexican-inspired food (or, simply, authentic American food.)

Its not authentic Mexican food. (Tex-Mex and Cal-Mex encompass some things that are Mexican in origin and some things that are not, just as Mexican food includes some things that are of Aztec origin and some things that are not.)

>Mexican cuisine in the USA is wayy past the point where people can criticize it for being inauthentic. Tex-Mex and Cal-Mex both have their own histories going back hundreds of years.

The classic Taco Bell taco is genuine southern California Cal-Mex cuisine. <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/02/dining/north-of-the-border...>

At this point California has distinct regional styles. I’m guessing Texas too.

I mean, look at how much pork is included in true Mexican cuisine. But pigs are Eurasian species. Would we claim none of those dishes are truly Mexican? At some point, it’s all an arbitrary classification of convenience.

> going back hundreds of years.

Really? Hundreds?

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