By coincidence I noticed this article while in the process of preparing lamb curry for dinner. The article quoted researchers studying ancient spice trade and usage: "Of the 40 tools we analyzed, 12 produced a range of spices including turmeric, ginger, fingerroot, sand ginger, galangal, clove, nutmeg and cinnamon."
Quite interesting that curries evidently haven't changed very much over 2K years. Indeed my curry contains 6 out of 8 of those ingredients. Of course many
present-day technologies contribute to making spices available in abundance in food markets or online. Compared to ancient times in some ways we have it pretty easy, in today's world making curries from scratch isn't really a high challenge.
The article shows that our predecessors were as perceptive as we are, they understood a lot more than we realize. Of course while everything changes over time, fundamental insights tend to retain their enduring value.
Yeah -- the fact that chili peppers only came to Asia a few hundred years ago isn't widely recognized for what a change it must have been to the cuisine. Just as the fact that Europe had no tomatoes or potatoes until around the same time a few hundred years ago.
Yup. In Sri Lanka we calls chilies "miris," and pepper "gam miris" (translation: village chilies).
I guess folks originally used pepper as the way to set their mouths on fire; and once introduced, happily jumped over to chilies as a much better way to do so.
Oh, interesting! In Thai, peppercorns are พริกไทย, literally “Thai chilli”, where I think most Westerners would think of (and indeed Wikipedia says that) Thai chillis as being bird chilli (พริกขี้หนู, lit “mouse shit chilli”)
Is the implication that chili displaced local peppers as the "default" spicy condiment assigned the basic vocabulary item, with the latter relegated to the status of a "rural"/"traditional" variant?
Other pertinent new world crops that drastically altered staple cuisines in Asia: potato, tomato, corn. Then of course there's tobacco / nicotine, and from more of an ornamental standpoint, the frangipani appears critically entwined with temples across numerous Asian countries and religious and philosophical traditions however is also a new-world Johnny come lately.
Some things that come to mind that spread in the other direction (Asia to Europe/Africa/America) in a little known and relatively late fashion were citrus and the chicken.
>That's why it was listed under "other direction".
That's why I quoted the Wikipedia link that you quoted - after reading the initial part of it,
it, although I had also read about chickens and junglefowl years before, being interested in such topics, and being an Indian who has also roamed about in such jungles in Central India
as a teenager:
Umm, the epicenter of wild chicken biodiversity is not within modern or historic Indian borders, as far as the science can tell. It is in Myanmar, well beyond the range of direct subcontinental rule (excepting perhaps the British period). What exactly are you arguing? It is unclear from your statements.
>What exactly are you arguing? It is unclear from your statements.
Jeez! What exactly makes you think that I am arguing anything at all, in the first place?
In my above comment, I had used words like:
>chicken is supposed to have come from
and
>as it says in the above Wikipedia article
Note the italicized words.
So that can't be considered an argument at all. It was just a casual observation, along the lines of saying "hey, I heard or read 'foo' statement somewhere".
Make of it what you will, but don't try to turn it into an argument when it is not one.
>Umm, the epicenter of wild chicken biodiversity is not within modern or historic Indian borders, as far as the science can tell. It is in Myanmar, well beyond the range of direct subcontinental rule (excepting perhaps the British period).
As I said, my words were not an argument, even though you interpreted them as such. But even if they were an argument, you may be taking a narrow view of what was considered "India". And this is not about political boundaries (referring to your word "rule"). It was meant in the ecological / geographical / biological region senses of the term, under which, BTW, Myanmar is fairly close to (distance-wise) and similar to India anyway (although I was not even thinking of Myanmar above, nor had I even mentioned it). In those senses, a much larger geographical area was considered as part of "India", even in pre-British times. You might want to look up your history / natural history / geography of the India subcontinent (and even South-East Asia) a bit.
To end, I think you might be one of confused, pedantic or trolling, none of which interests me, since as I said, mine was just a casual observation, not an argument. So I am exiting this discussion.
>Other pertinent new world crops that drastically altered staple cuisines in Asia: potato, tomato, corn. Then of course there's tobacco / nicotine, and from more of an ornamental standpoint, the frangipani appears critically entwined with temples across numerous Asian countries and religious and philosophical traditions however is also a new-world Johnny come lately.
Absolutely, what a great addition to all kinds of cuisine! I'd never intentionally minimize the merit of chilis. I use chilis a lot, couldn't imagine cooking without them. Your point is well-taken.
FWIW, along with chilis a number of other common curry spices weren't mentioned in the article: garlic, mustard seeds, fenugreek, saffron, black pepper, cardamom, among others. So it's quite possible curries were less tasty in the past, at least to our palates. OTOH seems likely enough that they employed a range of flavorings that don't show up on the tools the researchers examined.
> The article shows that our predecessors were as perceptive as we are, they understood a lot more than we realize
Who's we? Apart from distributed knowledge in scientific/geographic topics and technological tools who thinks that our generation is somehow more evolved? People have had a perfectly fine intelligence and a good insight for a very long time. And arguably in some topics like psychology, power dynamics or the search for pleasure nothing important has changed for thousands of years
It’s in part a philosophical question as well. In part because in the West we have a strong Protestant history we are tied to the myth of bettering through time. This has been expressed starkly by “providence” which eventually minimized (and then abandoned) the Christian aspect and turned into “progress”. This is our defining narrative myth today.
I suspect because the advancements in technology have been so distinct that we’ve generalized into everything. It’s all about getting positive recognition from future people because the people of the past embarrass us. This is why people don’t generally ask “what would the people of yesterday say about us people of today?”. Especially interesting since we owe a gratitude to them.
No one has taken the 5 second rule to the limit. What are the behaviors of bacteria at infinity? Once the party is over all the bacteria go home disappointed they never got to give someone an upset stomach. For science, I think it's important we test this behavior. We may be able to loosen the bound some. The 6.31e10 second rule could be very useful to physicists.
I doubt there is very much taste or smell left. It is well established that spices go stale in couple years, especially when grinded. And this has been around for much longer. Almost all components must have either oxidised or evaporated for volatiles.
"If you've ever prepared curry from scratch, you'll know it's not simple. It involves considerable time and effort, as well as a range of unique spices, and the use of grinding tools."
Except that today the ingredients are available at the neighborhood spice shop and the grinding tools are electric.
Eh, I use a stone mortar and pestle and it's not that hard. A few minutes' work at most. Many western recipes are more elaborate than having to grind up some spices.
This is so funny to read and really reflects how availability of ingredients and tacit knowledge really changes perception. Plus having a pressure cooker.
Western interpretations of curry are always elaborate affairs.
There are many varieties of extremely simple curries on the subcontinent. For example, the Maharashtrian amti. My mom or grand moms can make amti in less than 30 minutes and most of that time is waiting for things to cook and not active participation .
40 comments
[ 5.4 ms ] story [ 101 ms ] threadYou don't know who made that — it could be garbage!
Quite interesting that curries evidently haven't changed very much over 2K years. Indeed my curry contains 6 out of 8 of those ingredients. Of course many present-day technologies contribute to making spices available in abundance in food markets or online. Compared to ancient times in some ways we have it pretty easy, in today's world making curries from scratch isn't really a high challenge.
The article shows that our predecessors were as perceptive as we are, they understood a lot more than we realize. Of course while everything changes over time, fundamental insights tend to retain their enduring value.
The addition of chillis a few hundred years ago feels like a very large change
I guess folks originally used pepper as the way to set their mouths on fire; and once introduced, happily jumped over to chilies as a much better way to do so.
https://www.foodrepublic.com/1295447/what-are-different-thai...
Some things that come to mind that spread in the other direction (Asia to Europe/Africa/America) in a little known and relatively late fashion were citrus and the chicken.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citrus#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken
That's why I quoted the Wikipedia link that you quoted - after reading the initial part of it, it, although I had also read about chickens and junglefowl years before, being interested in such topics, and being an Indian who has also roamed about in such jungles in Central India as a teenager:
I had said, above:
>>as it says in the above Wikipedia article.
Jeez! What exactly makes you think that I am arguing anything at all, in the first place?
In my above comment, I had used words like:
>chicken is supposed to have come from
and
>as it says in the above Wikipedia article
Note the italicized words.
So that can't be considered an argument at all. It was just a casual observation, along the lines of saying "hey, I heard or read 'foo' statement somewhere".
Make of it what you will, but don't try to turn it into an argument when it is not one.
>Umm, the epicenter of wild chicken biodiversity is not within modern or historic Indian borders, as far as the science can tell. It is in Myanmar, well beyond the range of direct subcontinental rule (excepting perhaps the British period).
As I said, my words were not an argument, even though you interpreted them as such. But even if they were an argument, you may be taking a narrow view of what was considered "India". And this is not about political boundaries (referring to your word "rule"). It was meant in the ecological / geographical / biological region senses of the term, under which, BTW, Myanmar is fairly close to (distance-wise) and similar to India anyway (although I was not even thinking of Myanmar above, nor had I even mentioned it). In those senses, a much larger geographical area was considered as part of "India", even in pre-British times. You might want to look up your history / natural history / geography of the India subcontinent (and even South-East Asia) a bit.
To end, I think you might be one of confused, pedantic or trolling, none of which interests me, since as I said, mine was just a casual observation, not an argument. So I am exiting this discussion.
It is known as the Columbian exchange:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbian_exchange
FWIW, along with chilis a number of other common curry spices weren't mentioned in the article: garlic, mustard seeds, fenugreek, saffron, black pepper, cardamom, among others. So it's quite possible curries were less tasty in the past, at least to our palates. OTOH seems likely enough that they employed a range of flavorings that don't show up on the tools the researchers examined.
Who's we? Apart from distributed knowledge in scientific/geographic topics and technological tools who thinks that our generation is somehow more evolved? People have had a perfectly fine intelligence and a good insight for a very long time. And arguably in some topics like psychology, power dynamics or the search for pleasure nothing important has changed for thousands of years
I suspect because the advancements in technology have been so distinct that we’ve generalized into everything. It’s all about getting positive recognition from future people because the people of the past embarrass us. This is why people don’t generally ask “what would the people of yesterday say about us people of today?”. Especially interesting since we owe a gratitude to them.
Also curry is basically an orientalized term for a soup or stew. If Chorba or Borscht are soups, then most curries are as well.
What kind of food explorers are these! Dip your finger in and taste it or, at the least, smell it!
Except that today the ingredients are available at the neighborhood spice shop and the grinding tools are electric.
Western interpretations of curry are always elaborate affairs.
There are many varieties of extremely simple curries on the subcontinent. For example, the Maharashtrian amti. My mom or grand moms can make amti in less than 30 minutes and most of that time is waiting for things to cook and not active participation .