Which “new world” fruit or vegetable has had the biggest impact on your countries cuisine?

36 comments

1. Potatoes, definitely. Simply because they grow even in regions not suitable for farming.

2. The potato, probably. It’s cheap calories that grow easily even in less ideal soil. In some villages, you couldn’t buy potatoes in the supermarket even just forty years ago, because it was assumed that everybody had a little potato field in their garden anyway.

   Corn is very common as a stable food in southern Switzerland, and as animal food elsewhere.

   And chocolate.

3. Potato definitely, its products are German cuisine’s staple side dishes. Boiled, mashed, stir fried, baked, grated and fried as patties or boiled as dumplings, the list goes on and on.

4. Definitely potatoes. It’s a staple. An integral part of our cuisine (though to a somewhat lesser extent on the coast)

   Corn is pretty important too, one of the most common traditional meals in northern Croatia is žganci (same thing as polenta or Sterz). Pumpkin seed oil is pretty popular here as well (fun fact, I’ve found there’s somewhat of a pumpkin seed oil belt in Europe, consisting of continental Croatia, eastern Slovenia, eastern Austria, Hungary, Transylvania and northern Serbia, basically corresponding to the Pannonian basin).

   Chocolate is used for many traditional desserts, too many to count.

   Tomatoes are used in some traditional dishes on the coast as well.

5. Fries are our most sacred of foods. Definitely the potato.

6. There’s are these maps which divide Europe into potato country (North and east) and tomato country (south and West). Those are the 2 big dogs.

   Bavaria is firmly in the potato camp.

7. In general, Italian cuisine owes much to the introduction of American vegetables, but the one that has probably had the greatest impact is maize for northern Italy. This was (and still is) used to make polenta, traditionally a very poor dish, not very nutritious but filling. It is made by cooking a mixture of water and corn flour in a pot. Corn became widespread from the 16th century onwards, supplanting other crops such as spelt, rye and buckwheat (from which polenta was previously made). Today it still ~~survives~~ exists, but it is a traditional dish, often eaten as a side dish or seasoned.

   [La Polenta by Pietro Longhi](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Ca%27_Rezzonico_-_La_Polenta_-_Pietro_Longhi.jpg)

   [Polenta in the pot](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/82/Polenta_in_Paiolo.jpg)

8. I’m gonna stray from the path here and say sunflower. We use sunflower oil in significantly more dishes than potato.

9. Probably tomato? There is hardly a Turkish dish without tomatoes or tomato paste. Many people even straight out refuse to eat “white food”.

10. Definitely potatoes. Potatoes can be eaten in Poland daily, in many different ways. The most common way is just boiled potatoes as a side when you eat meat for lunch. You can find parts of boiled potatoes in some soups, you can eat placki ziemniaczane, there are French fries (obviously) and many more. There isn’t a single person in Poland who never ate a potato. Tomatoes are very common as well, corn is quite common, but pumpkins are not really popular here.

11. Potato is so ingrained in Finnish cuisine (and idea of healthy diet) that it’s nearly unbelievable that it’s not originally from here. Piece of fatty meat, few potatoes, dry rye bread, some butter, and a glass of milk is all a Finn needs haha!

12. Both potatoes and tomatoes are found _everywhere_ in Spanish cuisine. Corn is seldom used, mostly in corn flour form. Pumpkin is eaten in season, but not particularly typical.

    Another food that is now super commonplace in Spanish food and comes from the americas is the pepper. You could also make the case for chocolate, but honestly, despite being commonplace, is not really part of “spanish cuisine”.

13. We’re firmly in “Potato Europe” here. We even had our own (far less severe than the Irish) potato famine.

14. I am not an expert in the field, but I would say that corn had the biggest impact in Romania. Today, cornfields are more common than wheatfields.

15. Tomato for sure on Spain, is used very often. Altough potatoes are very common too.

16. Okay hear me out, I’m from a region in Austria called Steiermark which basically made pumpkin seeds and pumpkin seed oil it’s culinary identity. So for my home region I’d say pumpkin.

17. Red peppers or Paprika, we put it in everything, and we also made growing it into an art form.

18. As someone said, in the North is maize. In the South are both potato and tomato. Many say that there is a North-Potato vs South-Tomato split, but actually the South uses *just* more tomatoes than the North, and not less potatoes. In my region for example all the most important dishes use potatoes, maize and secondly tomatoes.

19. Potatoes, tomatoes… those are now basic elements of Hungarian cuisine. But as for cultural impact, it’s definitely peppers (Capsicum, that is).

20. Potato. We literally made it our staple food within like 100 years of it arriving in the country.

21. Potatoes definitely. Our most famous cuisine is meatballs, potatoes, lingon berry jam and “brown gravy”.

    During the biggest holidays; midsommar, easter and yule (Christmas) we eat herring and potatoes.

    Growing up during WW2 my grandpa ate potatoes every day because of food shortage, he also had to cook his rabbits but that’s another story.

22. To quite my grandfather when served tacos, “where are the potatoes?”
    Back in the day, probably every single dinner contained potatoes.

23. Not a vegetable, but one could also argue that tobacco had a pretty strong impact on European societies.

24. Potato. But only boiled. No fancy “making it taste good by doing literally anything else” for us.

25. peppers?

    I mean, I am german, so yes, we do it potatoes. But not everywhere. peppers, however… well, there’s even chocolate with chili.

26. I’m not gonna lie.
    I didn’t even know potatoes and tomatoes were a new world things.

    I know everyone is saying europe is divided between potato and tomato countries.

    But here in Portugal, I don’t think we could choose one. It’s both. We love both.
    (I personally am not a fan of tomato, but, there’s a lot of use for it, specially in pulp form, in our cuisine)

27. We eat potatoes to almost every meal, but corn is quite popular too

28. Tomatos, potatos and corn, definitely. So many people, especially in northern Italy, would have starved to death without the introduction of corn.

29. Bulgaria and the Balkans: all of them! But especially tomatoes, cucumber, zucchini, eggplant, peppers. Potatoes are everywhere, too.

30. 100% potatoes. It’s in every dish.
    Also our “French Fries” Which are actually Belgian are made of potatoes and it has a super huge cultural importance.

    Other wise i’d say corn is produced a ton here as well but that’s mainly to feed the cattle

    Potatoes, Tomatoes and corn I grow myself though and I don’t consider them as outsiders anymore (although they are)

    But fruit that is grown elsewhere and can’t grow here which has a big impact on Belgium is probably cacoa beans (because of our chocolate)

    And for me personally, I enjoy a kiwi every noon with my lunch as desert. Super tasty

31. Beans have also had a huge impact (more than corn and pumpkin) and were eaten in grain during all the year and fresh(green bean) when they are seasonal

32. Potatoes, no doubt. I literally can’t imagine Polish cuisine without the potato.

33. Here’s a funny story about the introduction of potatoes to Greece:

    “After 400 years of Islamic Turkish occupation,Greeks revolted and in 1821 liberated a portion of the Greek empire which eventually became what we now know of as Greece. In 1828, when the first true national government was formed, it was under the direction of Ioannis Kapodistrias, who as “Governor of Greece” was head of the state and the government.
    The way Kapodistrias introduced the cultivation of the potato remains famously anecdotal today. Having ordered a shipment of potatoes, at first he ordered that they be offered to anyone interested. However the potatoes were met with indifference by the population and the whole scheme seemed to be failing. Therefore Kapodistrias, knowing of the contemporary Greek attitudes, ordered that the whole shipment of potatoes be unloaded in public display on the docks of Nafplion, and placed severe-looking guards guarding it. Soon, rumors circulated that for the potatoes to be so well guarded they had to be of great importance. People would gather to look at the so-important potatoes and soon some tried to steal them. The guards had been ordered in advance to turn a blind eye to such behavior, and soon the potatoes had all been “stolen” and Kapodistrias’ plan to introduce them to Greece had succeeded.
    Greek cuisine is filled with potato recipes with perhaps the most common cooking method being drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled with oregano and lemon juice then open roasted.”

    The potato definitely became the most popular in Greece and Cyprus, followed by tomatoes.

34. My joke answer would be alcohol, because, you know, Denmark.

    A serious answer: there’s a lot of sweet fruits in a lot of Danish recipes, but mostly potatos. As the man once said, “Cook ’em, mash ’em, stick ’em in the stew,” but the thing that Danish people do that what’s-his-name didn’t mention is we use it as bread toppings. When I mention this, the Americans give me weird looks, but it’s true.

35. Potato: 10/10 (probably the reason famines ended in the 1860’s)

    Corn/maize: 2/10 (popcorn became a popular snack post WW2)

    Pumpkin: 1/10 (basically introduced with Halloween 20 years ago)

    Tomatoes: 6/10 (used in everyday cooking since a long time)

36. If tomatoes were to go extinct, we ‘d have to reinvent the Greek cuisine.