On food and cooking the science and lore of the kitchen ( PDFDrive ) 484

availabletoanysingleculture.IntheWestern
world,fruithasbeeneatenasdessertatleast
sincetheGreeks;recognizablesaladsgoback
totheMiddleAges,andboiledvegetablesin
delicatesaucesto17th-centuryFrance.
Prehistory and Early Civilizations Many
plants came under human cultivation by the
unsophisticatedbutslowlyeffectivemeansof
gathering useful plants and leaving a few
seeds in fertile refuse heaps. Judging from
archaeological evidence, early Europeans
seem to have relied on wheat, fava beans,
peas, turnips, onions, radishes, and cabbage.
In Central America, corn, beans, hard
squashes, tomatoes, and avocados were
staples around 3500BCE, while Peruvian
settlements relied heavily on the potato.
Northern Asia started with millets, cabbage
relatives,soybeans,andtreefruitsintheapple
and peach families; southern Asia had rice,
bananas, coconuts, yams, cabbage relatives,


and citrus fruits. Indigenous African crops
includedrelatedbutdistinctmillets,sorghum,
rice, and bananas, as well as yams and
cowpeas. Mustard seed flavored foods in
Europe and in Asia, where ginger may also
havebeenused.Chilli“pepper”wasprobably
thechiefspiceintheAmericas.
Bythetimeoftheearliestcivilizationsin

SumerandEgyptabout5,000yearsago,most
oftheplantsnativetothatareaandeaten
todaywerealreadyinuse(seebox,p.250).
TradebetweentheMiddleEastandAsiais
alsoancient.Egyptianrecordsofaround1200
BCEdocumenthugeofferingsofcinnamon,a
productofSriLanka.
Greece, Rome, and the Middle Ages With
the Greeks and Romans we begin to see the
outlines of modern Western cuisine. The
Greeks were fond of lettuce, and habitually
atefruitattheendofmeals.Pepperfromthe
Far East was in use around 500BCE and