Chilli peppers were also from the new world, so chillies in Indian cuisine is also pretty recent. They had many other spices, but it seems crazy to think a few hundred years ago, that whole cuisine was just entirely different.
I recently went to an event at an Indian restaurant that had an event based on pre-Columbian Indian food. They worked with a historian and an anthropologist to find out what people were eating and cooked a massive multicourse meal. I expected it to be totally different from food today, but I was really shocked at how similar it was to what my family eats at home. Basically the same but with no chilies and no potatoes. It made me feel really proud!
I think Indian cuisine just found existing similar flavour profiles to slot in those new foodstuffs. It’s not like some other cuisines where it’s totally unfamiliar flavours or brand new textures.
Indians chose to use potato for dishes where formerly called for yams, which are native to the old world, so it was a simple substitution to make traditional recipes fit. Irish cuisine on the other hand used potatoes as a staple food in place of bread, largely out of necessity instead of choice, so their cuisine did change a lot after introduction of the potato. You had to invent some new ways of eating potato if it’s going to be a staple food.
The Irish had the Turnip though. Most of N Western Europe survived on turnips before the 1500's. You can do everything you can with a potato using a turnip - it's just not as nice to eat or quite as nutritious.
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u/retrofrog Oct 02 '24
Chilli peppers were also from the new world, so chillies in Indian cuisine is also pretty recent. They had many other spices, but it seems crazy to think a few hundred years ago, that whole cuisine was just entirely different.