On food and cooking the science and lore of the kitchen ( PDFDrive ) 886

came in turn from an Indo-European root,
ker, that meant “to grow”; the same root
also led to “create,” “increase,” and
“crescent.”Bhares was the word for
“barley”andalsogaveus“barn”;wrughyo
meant“rye.”“Wheat”camefromthesame
root that gives us “white” (kweit),
apparently because its flour was light in
color;and“oat”camefromoid,“toswell.”
Ancient and Modern Wheats A handful of
different wheats have been grown from
prehistoric times to the present. Their
evolution is fascinating and still somewhat
mysterious, and is summarized in the box on
p.466.Thesimplestwheatandoneofthefirst
to be cultivated waseinkorn, which had the
standard genetic endowment of most plants
and animals: namely two sets of
chromosomes (a “diploid” species).
Somewhat less than a million years ago, a
chance mating of a wild wheat with a wild


goatgrassproducedawheatspecieswithfour
sets of chromosomes, and this “tetraploid”
species gave us the two most important
wheats of the ancient Mediterranean world,
emmeranddurum.Then,just8,000yearsago,
another unusual mating between a tetraploid
wheat species and a goatgrass gave an
offspring with six sets of chromosomes: and

this offspring gave us our modernbread
wheats.Theextrachromosomesarethoughtto
contribute to the agricultural and culinary
diversity found in modern wheats, most
importantly the elasticity of the gluten
proteins. Today 90% of the wheat grown in
the world is hexaploid bread wheat. Most of
the remaining 10% is durum wheat, whose
main purpose is making pasta (p. 571). The
other wheats are still cultivated on a small
scale.
Durum Wheat Durum wheat,T. turgidum
durum,isthemostimportantofthetetraploid