/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>>14367040
lmmfao!

Post misleading food

There's going to be a lot of misinformation and bullshit conjecture in this thread.

Let's assume we're only talking about the US, since OP mention black people.

1. There isn't a lack of herbs in places where most white Americans have ethnic ancestry from: The Atlantic Isles, the Germanic nations, Italy, Spain, etc. Every herb we used today, and many many more were used all throughout Europe and the colonies.

How many of you have used savory or sorrel for example?

2. Colonial Americans weren't any more afraid of using spices than the people who lived in the old world.

Black pepper, lemon zest, cinnamon, clove, ginger, chili peppers, nutmeg/mace, allspice, dried garlic, dried onion, on and on and on. All of these have been used widely every since they were introduced in the west, or they were already here.

It's not like more spices than this were available to African slaves in the Western Hemisphere before whites - without whites, the spices we have in the Western hemisphere today would have never been imported. Europeans fought wars over these spices.

3. Herbs and spices aren't always listed in old recipes because they expected people to know what to use/use what was available.

4. Poor people historically didn't have much to cook with, poor access to herbs and even worse access to spices. Most people historically have been poor.

5. Poor people's recipes weren't written down nearly as often as they have been in the last 300 years. The poorest segments of societies couldn't afford what they can afford today, and the need to purchase so many cookbooks, enjoy prepared foods, etc. just wasn't available to the average person until the 1800s or so in the west.

6. The restaurant wasn't really a concept until the 1800s either. When people ate out, it was at taverns, inns, pubs, brew-pubs, etc. It wasn't fancy food, so things like herbs, sour flavors from fermentation/vinegar were far more common than using spices until spices became available.