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Comment by bushbaba | Hacker News Reader

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.

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.

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)

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.

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

> 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)

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

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.

> 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")

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

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.

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