Europeans

On the other side of the Atlantic, especially in the northern tier of Europe, periods of starvation were commonplace. Wheat did not always mature in the summer's short growing season. Rye, the predominant grain, was often assailed by plant disease. Frequent drought caused devastating famine. An emaciated, malnourished population was plagued by illness, but disease was commonly attributed to sin, divine retribution, curses and astronomical phenomena.

Peasants and workers on farms or in crowded cities knew only vile, unhygienic conditions. Personal and household cleanliness and sanitary food were practically unknown. Diseases of epidemic proportions sapped the energy of the dejected European continent.

But Europe was already poised for change. Church domination had held the continent in superstitious servitude for centuries, but the church was increasingly being challenged. As far back as 1233 Pope Gregory had established a papal inquisition to investigate heresy in France. On October 11, 1517, Martin Luther nailed to the church door at Wittenberg his ninety-five theses calling for a reformation of church practices. A secular establishment, ripe for an era of exploration, inventiveness and creativity, had a new world to conquer across the wide Atlantic.

The Mediterranean rim of Europe had grown rich trading with the Orient. The Ports of Venice and Turin had a shipping monopoly on spices, silks and perfumes which came to the continent at exorbitantly inflated prices. Middlemen along the route all took huge profits. Merchant princes became fabulously wealthy and vied with each other as patrons of the arts. The Renaissance was unfolding and musicians, scholars and scientists from Germany, Austria and Russia flocked to Florence and Siena while the rest of Europe struggled to recover from years of war and famine.

The discovery of the Americas changed the center of economic gravity. The Atlantic Ocean became the focus of maritime activity with Spain, Portugal, Britain, France, Holland ready to grab their share of New World riches. The Portuguese 15th century design for a wooden caravel marked a great advance in shipbuilding. The caravel was a marvel of speed, maneuverability and seaworthiness. With its lateen sails, it could sail closer to the wind than any square-rigger. By hugging the west coast of Africa it could reach the Canaries and with favorable westerly trade winds sail across the ocean.

The frenzied activity of shipbuilding was hampered by shortages of wood. Forests had been denuded in much of Europe and deforestation had caused severe environmental damage. Paestum, a magnificent Grecian city and shrine, had become an uninhabitable malarial swamp when in Roman times tall, stately pines were cut for masts. The land, stripped of trees, became marshland. Only the buffalo with its tough hide could withstand the malarial mosquitoes. In 1943 when American soldiers landed in Italy during World War II, they found the ghost city of Paestum. The Medical Corps launched a pest-control campaign, killed off the mosquitoes, supplied personnel with quinine (an Andean Indian medicine), and Paestum's serene and stately temples emerged from hundreds of years of forgetfulness and neglect. Other areas of Europe suffered similar catastrophes because of reckless deforestation.

In its frantic search for timber, the British navy first turned to the Baltic region for trees, but when Atlantic sea routes were established, American oak forests supplied ship-builders in Spain, Portugal, Holland, as well as Britain. They all became major sea powers. This was an era of exploration that led to important advances in the sciences. Astronomy, magnetism and time-keeping were essential to successful navigation.

The Spanish disdain for the food of "savages" had an evolutionary base as well as an unreasoning bias. Human taste buds serve as signals, telling us what is safe to eat. As a fruit-eating species we love sweets and savor them. The craving for salt, common to all animals, also has a biological base. Acids that retard bacterial growth are sought by humans because they relieve blandness. Only bitter toxins offend our taste buds, they send warnings that the food may be poisonous and the natural reaction is to spit them out.

These characteristic taste sensations possess endless variations. Depending on geography and available food resources we learn what food is fit to eat. Likes and dislikes, established in childhood, stay with us throughout our lives. We set out to taste new foods as curiosities or as exotic experiences, and in times of famine people can be cajoled into trying unfamiliar food. We are most comfortable with foods we have known all our lives. With delicacies from every corner of the world now available to us, we have more sophisticated palates and are more venturesome in our diets; but in the time of Columbus, even the wealthy knew only beets, turnips, parsnips, cabbage, onions, leeks, cucumbers, peas, olives, mushrooms, asparagus and artichokes as vegetables. Wild herbs were occasionally used to add flavor to bland diets. Imported spices were luxuries, reserved for the wealthy. It took time for Europeans to learn to eat tomatoes, potatoes, squash, peppers and other American foods. It took much more time for American foods to gain acceptance. Once accepted, each American food found a distinct place in various different ethnic cuisines.

Without an understanding of nutrition, plant science and pharmacology were based on the "Doctrine of Signatures" which decreed that plants resembling human bodily parts were able to cure ailments associated with that part of the body. Hepatica was used as kidney medicine. Bloodroot was the cure for anemia. Mandrake, an herb whose split root resembled the lower limbs of a human figure, was endowed with supernatural sexual powers. Leeching, bleeding and other drastic and excruciating measures caused untold misery, but they all had scientific approval and were considered advances in medicine.

Foods were also endowed with miraculous properties; old wives' tales based on experiences with foods like garlic and onions often proved to be valid. Rumors that foods from the Americas were unsavory persisted, and plants from the Americas were too new to have accrued kitchen wisdom. In some cases it took extraordinary measures to make the new plants palatable to a suspicious population.

As early as 1577 a Spanish physician, Nicolas Monardes, said that the medicinal properties of the plants from America were more valuable than precious metals. This was not considered a scientific assessment, and although absolutely correct, it was not taken seriously. Eventually the vitamin-rich plants that Europe reluctantly accepted led to scientific research and technology, stimulated trade and industry, brought leisure, enjoyment and an explosion of artistic creativity.

Looking back we can see how New World foods became essential to cuisines throughout the world. They continue to be basic to a healthful diet. At the present time plant products constitute 90% of the food we eat, and of course animals are fed by plant-based food chains. We now look at the plants that prospered on the American continents and doff our caps to the pioneering agriculturists who became expert plant breeders.

All material on this site is copyright 2003-2005 by Vicki Oppenheimer and Milpah Press. For information on the availability of the printed version of The Taste Makers, please write to us.

This page was last updated on 24-Nov-2005.