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Comment by hef19898 | Hacker News Reader

hef19898

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)

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.

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

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