I have been thinking … potatoes, tomatoes, corn, pepers, vanilla, pumpkins, beans, sunflower, strowberries, pineapple, avocado, sweet potatos … all of it originates from Americas.
I am wondering what Europeans ate prior to discovering Americas. Do we know anything about European cusines before that times.
I imagine our ancestors ate a lot of cereals and dumplings. Do you know any dishes/recipies?
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Hello, trained historian here, who worked extensively with the medieval era. So, what did old-timey people eat?
In Denmark, we’re mainly talking about a diet without much meat. Only the richest nobles could afford to eat meat dishes every day, and for the vast majority of the population, meat-focused dishes was a luxury, largely reserved the major holidays, such as Christmas and Easter. Ofc. meat was eaten, but not in the same style and context as today. It was mainly dried, smoked, or preserved in other ways. It wasn’t a fresh roast or piece of steak. Contrary to nowadays, beef and mutton was, for a long time, the main eating animal in Denmark, before pork took over, pork being regarded as a luxury in medieval times. Poultry wasn’t really viable, not even for the richest, outside of special occasions. The only widely available meat, was fish. Particularly herring, which the Danish belts floweth over with, so much so that the main income for the Danish state for a long time, was taxing the Scanian herring-markets. It was crazy how much herring was pulled from the debts. When the small silver suckers stupidly migrated through Øresund, you could practically pick them out of the water with your bare hands.
So, if meat was off the table, bar at holidays, what else did people eat? Ofc. fish, but also porridge from barley, or oats if you were fancy.
The first price however, was cabbage. Cabbage was so important in medieval Danish cuisine, that the oldest Danish word for garden is _kålgård_, meaning “cabbage plot.” Peas were also extremely important to Danish cuisine, in multiple forms, but not the modern green ones, most people think of… Mainly the hard yellow and grey ones, that were dried and needed to be boiled or stewed for a long time to be edible.
Ofc. there was also things like bread and such.
Onion and garlic were known to be used as sources of flavour, since spices weren’t a thing most people had access to.
Various fruits, apples and plums and such, were also popular, particularly the apple, with many of even the poorest farms having an apple tree.
I think that in Finland they ate a lot of porridge and rye bread and turnips were super important. They also apparently ate a lot of salted herring, at least in more coastal areas. At least according to what I remember about a book of Finnish food history. Porridge is useful for soaking the herring so that it becomes softer.
We (Turkish people) ate lots and lots legumes, wheat, and rice. Of course, some vegetables which are important now came later, but generally vegetables and fruits (cultivated and foraged) were widely eaten. Drying fruits and vegetables, as well as pickling them was (still is) very common. Bread/flatbreads as well as bulgur (cracked wheat) are and have always been a staple. Fish was probably only available to people who lived near water bodies, we don’t have a huge tradition of preserving fish. Sheep and goats were kept widely. Yogurt and cheese would have been made. In the Mediterranean areas, olives were (still are) widely cultivated.
I am speaking generally, of course, how much of what you can afford depended on your income and social status.
Strawberries are actually native to Europe. The modern variaties are based on hybrids from South America. The native European species were edible though and were eaten. Many fruits were present in Europe. The Romans spread grapes and likely apples and pears. Brambles and raspberries, currants and many more are naturally found in European woods. Quinces, medlars etc. also grew. Many of these can be stored or dried quite well.
Cabbage, onions, peas and broadbeans, beets, many radish like plants, other greens, carrots and relatives of them are also all native and were eaten in some capacity. Many common garden weeds are native to Europe and edible. Dandelions, stinging nettles etc.
So here are two cookbooks from the Late Mediaeval Period:
[Le Viandier de Taillevent](https://jpnet.ca/data/viandier/viandier1.html), c 1300
[The Forme of Curry](https://gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8102/pg8102.html), c 1390
Now of course this would have been the food of the well-to-do, but it is, as you might expect, heavy on the spices (particularly Saffron). Also note the constant use of verjuice, which is basically absent from western european cuisine today. This was a highly religious society, so abstinence from “rich” foods was common. From this, you get lots of substituting meat for fish or almonds, and milk for almond milk.
Some examples of recipes include:
>73. Fish cumin dish.
>
>Cook it in water or fry it in oil. Grind almonds, [soak] in your broth, puree of peas or boiled water, and make [almond] milk. Grind ginger and some cumin steeped in wine and verjuice, and boil with your milk. For invalids, you need some sugar in it.
>
>90. Hulled barley gruel
>
>If it is not hulled, prepare it. Pound it well (like wheat) in a mortar, cook it,drain it, and boil it with almond milk, salt and sugar. Some crush and sieve it. It should not be too thick.
As for those who were not well-to-do, they would eat whatever was on hand. Meat was rare, bread was made mostly from barley, oats, rye etc. Pottages and perpetual stew made from split peas and lentils were common.
The Colombian exchange actually brought more food to the Americas than the other way around. Apples, wheat, sheep, cattle, bananas, honey bees, rice, etc…
Before the discovery of America, the Italian diet had not changed much since Roman times, people ate mainly bread, soups and polenta (made with cereals and logically not with corn). The staple foods were vegetables and legumes. New plants were introduced by the Arabs in the Middle Ages: cane sugar, almonds, rice, mulberries, aubergines and citrus fruits. Pasta was already widespread. Fish was a poor food, or limited to the period of Lent. Meat was very expensive, there was chicken, but the most consumed was always pork. In inland areas, olive oil was not used for frying (available only in warmer areas) but lard was used (and this has remained until recent times). Eggs, milk, dairy products and herbs were also common.
However, many of the best-known dishes of Italian cuisine already existed. I add below the text and translation of a passage from Boccaccio’s Decameron in which he speaks of the fantastic land of “Bengodi”:
*Maso rispose che le più si trovavano in Berlinzone, terra de’ Baschi, in una contrada che si chiamava Bengodi, nella quale si legano le vigne con le salsicce e avevasi un’oca a denaio e un papero giunta; ed eravi una montagna tutta di formaggio parmigiano grattugiato, sopra la quale stavan genti che niuna altra cosa facevan che far maccheroni e raviuoli e cuocergli in brodo di capponi, e poi gli gittavan quindi giù, e chi più ne pigliava più se n’aveva; e ivi presso correva un fiumicel di vernaccia, della migliore che mai si bevve, senza avervi entro gocciola d’acqua.*
*Maso replied that the most were in Berlinzone, the land of the Basques, in a district called Bengodi, in which the vines are tied with sausages and there is a goose for one money and a duck joined; and there was a mountain full of grated Parmesan cheese, on top of which there were people who did nothing else but make macaroni and ravioli and cook them in capon broth, and then they threw them down, and whoever took the most, had the most; and there was a river of Vernaccia near there, the best ever drunk, without having a drop of water in it.*
Wheat, cabbage, parsnips, carrots, turnips, apples, blackberries and strawberries and other stuff.
The original Jack O’ lanterns were carved from turnips in Ireland before emigrants to North America found Pumpkins were in season at Halloween and were much easier to carve. Turnips are really not easy to carve.
Peas, apples, pears, plums, cherries, grapes, raspberries, blackberries, olives, root vegetables, brassicas, herbs…
Quite a variety. Hard to imagine life without beans, tomatoes or potatoes!
Turnip was the root vegetable of choise before potato
In southern Europe dry meat and fish, desiccated with salt. *Jamón, chorizo, bacallau*, are typical in Spain and Portugal. You had a slaughter (*matanza*) once a year and preserve the meat until next year.
Salt was then a very important commodity, hence the name *salary* (payment in salt).
Poultry and eggs available all year. Eggs are so important to trade that English took the name from the Danes they traded with. Originally it should be equal as “eye” (like the ones in your head) as in Dutch.
Not only engineering came from the Middle East, mostly Persia, but also plenty of fruits and legumes, which were first cultivated in Persian gardens (*paradaisos*): apples, appricots, melons,… all taken by the Romans and spread to Europe.
In remote “uncivilized” areas, less quantity of fruits was compensated with nuts, specially chestnuts, also introduced by the Romans to feed their legions in Western Europe (except some tiny areas where it was already present).
And then of course, the mother of all food, wheat/bread, with other cereals and vegetables.
A lot of it was bread and vegetable based. Carrots, beans, cabbage, leeks, mushrooms, peas, onions and shallots etc.
Also more rare but still relatively common were eggs, cheese and butter.
That really was probably 95% of what the peasantry and lower middle class ate.
Oats, barley, soups & broths, porridge, had root veg, meats, fish, fruits such as various berries & some dairy too
[Historical Italian cooking](https://www.youtube.com/c/HistoricalItalianCooking/videos) showcases recipes from the Italian Peninsula dating from the ancient Roman times to the Medieval times.
What I found interesting is that before potatoes became popular and widely available, chestnuts were used as a side dish in the Hungarian kingdom. I don’t remember the book I read on this topic so don’t take me for granted but nowadays chestnuts are being only sold for the purpose of roasting them or as a puree for desert. Before this, they were much more popular.
They actually had beans. Nowadays we eat mostly genus phaseolus, which comes from America. However the romans and even the egyptians ate beans. there are plenty of old world species.
I don’t know much about the topic, but in comparison with the rest of Europe i would say beef was less common in Spain, in favour of sheep, goat and pig. Salted fish was extremely common, even in the interior (which has carried to our love of fish today). Legumes and cereals played a vital role in the diet, be it in the form of bread or porridge.
If someone knows more about the topic i would be delighted to know more about the specifics of Spain.
We know a lot about cuisines before that. People ate lots of bread and grain porridges and vegetables that people today have barely heard of, like turnips, which are very tasty but potatoes give more energy, so they’ve become a fringe vegetable.
And btw, think about what native Americans ate before Europeans came.
Pigs, cows, chickens… all of them came from Europe. They had no milk, no cheese, no eggs and practically no domestic animals for meat.
> beans
There are tons of beans native to Eurasia. Peas (pisum sativum), chickpeas (cicer arietinum), broad bean (vicia faba), lentil (lens culinaris), lupin (lupinus albus). These are european/middle eastern/north african ones, and still eaten today. I am not counting plants from China.
Of course gruels from barley, oats, rye, emmer, millet, spelt were a staple food for poor people. Cereals provide carbs, beans provide proteins. For fats, flax, hemp, sesame, olive (whenever possible) was used.
And of course genus Brassica was widely used: not only cabbage, but also turnip (brassica rapa) and rutabaga (brassica napobrassica).
Beer, bread, porridge, and bread with sawdust if you were the average guy.
Obligatory not Europe but still part of the old world:
There’s a really cool piece of history – lots of documents recently rediscovered, originating in a Jewish community in Cairo during the 11th century BC.
Those ([one](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FHExBxVWUAYoRbu?format=jpg&name=900×900), [two](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FGDZXvEX0AE3KYx?format=jpg&name=360×360)) are grocery shopping lists dating May 1042 BC, written in Judeo-Arabic (basically a dialect of Egyptian Arabic in Hebrew script). From what I can decipher, they include:
* Fresh almonds
* Cucumbers
* Zucchini
* a lot of Eggplants 🙂
* Apples
* Malukhiya (some kind of salty green fresh herb)
* Eggs
* Flour
* Sugar
* Hazelnuts
* Pomegranate Seeds
* Sumac (the spice)
* Raisins
* Pistachios
So over all, a pretty good selection 🙂 I’d be happy to eat that nowadays.
Various herbs, nuts, berries, fish, meat, mushrooms with limited success. After settling on land, wheat products including bread, beer, kvass.
Cabbage, beets, carrots and of course wheat, buckwheat and meat
Most people ate porridge made from barley and/or rye. Three times a day.
This is probably a better question for /r/AskHistorians but for reading some medieval literature I get that legumes were pretty common staple food in Spain, specially chickpeas and lentils, as were cheeses, bread and chicken as the most commonly eaten meat.
I think a lot of people already told you what was there before the discovery of America. So I’m going to give you also another point of view. What was there in America before the discovery. Not much! All of those veggies you mention are from America, most of them were not used by natives or they were on really different form. Not until the Europeans came along some of them started to have the shape, flavor and importance they have today. Old World 🌍 was much more rich on food than it was the New World 🌎.
If you want to know more about this you can read the “Germs, guns and steel” book from Jared Diamond
Domesticate plants and animals are quite difficult and you need some tech and natives lack at the time, mainly for the lack of easy to domesticate animals and diversity of staple food.
In Estonia, before potatoes were widespread, the main items were
* milk and milk products,
* rye (or barley) [bread](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rye_bread) and [groats](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groat_(grain)),
* legumes like [broad beans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicia_faba), [peas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pea), [lentils](https://et-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/L%C3%A4%C3%A4ts_(kaunvili)?_x_tr_sl=et&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=et&_x_tr_pto=wapp),
* vegetables like [turnip](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turnip), [cabbage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cabbage), and their mix (!) [rutabaga](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rutabaga),
* fish, mainly [baltic herring](https://et-m-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/R%C3%A4im?_x_tr_sl=et&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=et&_x_tr_pto=wapp)
* apples, berries, hazelnuts
* eggs, a lot of it from wild birds.
Oat, wheat and buckwheat were only introduced in the 16th century. Potatoes were not common until the 19th century. As for meat, it was rarely eaten, most common was sheep, but also pig, cattle, chicken, goose and seal. The animals were eaten whole, all parts had their use, and fresh meat was probably had only one to three times a year – immediately after slaughtering the animal.
Our ancestors did eat a lot of cereal and that didn’t change despite the discovery of the Americas. In the Nordics, porridge and bread was the staple food until the 1900s for the majority of people. It changed due to the change from agriculture to income based economy.
Also:
Before tomatoes => no direct equivalent
Before peppers => no direct equivalent
Before potatoes, sweet potatoes => turnips, beets, rutabaga, parsnip, artichoke, cabbage
Before corn, beans => peas
Before vanilla => rose water, orange flower water
Before pumpkins => Calabash
Before sunflower => other seeds, other oils
Before pineapple, avocado => we just didn’t have pizza and hipsters.
If i am not wrong, we eat the same meats as now, but instead of potatos and rice, that are much used now as a condiment, we would eat a local condiment, called castanha.
This is a fruit that falls from its trees, has spikes like a hedgehog, and has a soft texture after the 1st bite, and is kinda sweet, like a potato.
[here is a picture of a meat dish with castanhas](https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-61JSKYdNso4/XjADU9rNWcI/AAAAAAAAeq8/k15-3NJn_fYBmBWhaoXH3T-z1be80cH4gCLcBGAsYHQ/s1600/carne_de_porco_com_castanhas.jpg)
[Apicius Recipe Book (From Roman Empire)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apicius) it have a recompilation about lot of food at that time.
Sand, sometimes saltwater if they wanted to get fancy
That is a really interesting question.
From Portugal, we had rice, eventually sugar also, cabbages and lettuces and a lot of turnips, radish, some beans (favas, some thick beans, I think black eyed beans, peas, chick peas, lentils, though some specific beans are from the new world), onions, garlic, spinach.
Fish as usual (fishing cod off new foundland was previous to the official discovery of the new world), meat as after apart from Turkey (which is not an important meat here).
Chestnuts were a very important starch, dried and turned into a kind of flour, later replaced by potatoes and maize. Traditional breads were wheat if available or rye (more traditional, corn later came to replace it a lot) and some kind of bread was the important starch, the calorie mainstay of meals. Lots of soups with vegetables and eggs or beans.
Fruits, a lot of what we already eat, apples, pears, citrus, apricots, peaches, melon, figs, cherries, bramble blackberries, quinces..
The colombian exchange was probably more visible and important in Portugal than in many other places in Europe. Maize, potatoes, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, beans, peppers, pumpkins of many kinds all became important very fast (sweet potatoes are a novelty kind of in most of europe, lots of places in europe got no tradition of cultivating corn), we grew pineapple in the azores.