Famous European Food That Did Not Come From Europe
Food has been strongly used to establish the identity of most European countries. But if you come to think about it, most of these foods originated not in their prided land, but from the invaded tribes in the new world that they discovered.
Chocolate has to be everyone’s guilty pleasure. The texture of creamy bitter-sweetness melting in your mouth will definitely make you reach out for more. Spain has found countless ways to produce good chocolate since they were the first European country to use it. But they were not the first to use it in the whole world. Chocolate has been an important drink in Mayan and Aztec cultures in pre-colonial South America where the cacao plant is abundant. The Spanish, in their travels to the new world, introduced the much-loved chocolate to the rest of Europe, then the rest of the world.
Cheese is also big in Europe. The Dutch especially has embedded cheese-production in their national tradition and culture. Gouda, Edam, Alkmaar and Hoorn are the major cheeses from Holland. But legend, no matter how varied the versions are, says that cheese originated from Asia. Middle East back then made portable water containers out of animal stomach skin because it is water proof. A stomach enzyme from the container called rennet causes milk to curdle. So when the stomach was used to contain milk, it came out as cheese after some time.
Lastly and most surprisingly, pasta which gave Italians much pride and identity is not an indigenous produce. Same as with the origin of cheese, there are different versions of the story but they all come down to the same conclusion that Italian pasta that we enjoy today did not exactly come from Italy. Marco Polo is said to have brought pasta from China. But even before Marco Polo, Italy already had food similar to pasta, but it was baked rather than boiled so it really isn’t the same pasta that we enjoy now. It was during the Arab invasion that Italy learned about dried noodles. Since then, Italians widely produced pasta.
Years of voyages to and discoveries of the new world led to centuries of colonization. People usually perceive the colonized countries to be heavily influenced and molded by their European conquerors. But what people do not recognize is that there was cultural exchange between the conquistadors and the “savages” of the past. Though the explorers taught religion, systems of government and education, these Europeans also learned and took a lot from the cultures of the colonized. Asia and South America provided the rest of the world with timeless luxuries for the palate.
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