[HN Gopher] Re-creating the complex cuisine of prehistoric Europ...
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Re-creating the complex cuisine of prehistoric Europeans
Author : apollinaire
Score : 52 points
Date : 2026-03-06 20:57 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| thisismyweakarm wrote:
| Article is mainly about the Baltics, but I always wondered what
| Italians ate before tomatoes came from the Americas.
| thih9 wrote:
| If you're interested in what ancient romans ate, that seems
| well documented.
|
| Bread, olives (and olive oil), cheese, meat, fish, fruit, nuts,
| wine.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_in_ancient_Rome
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apicius
| hedgehog wrote:
| I keep hoping I'll be able to get my hands on some silphium
| to see what it's like.
| recursivecaveat wrote:
| Their giant mound of 53 million olive oil amphorae has always
| fascinated me: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monte_Testaccio
| 20 liters of oil per person annually.
| throwaway110022 wrote:
| Pasta alla genovese is one such dish, it resembles modern ragu
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genovese_sauce
|
| That being said I think the ubiquitousness of tomato sauce even
| in modern Italian cuisine is overestimated.
| card_zero wrote:
| Onions, carrots, and celery, there you have it. I was trying
| to find out what renaissance celebrity chef Bartolomeo Scappi
| typically did for sauce, but I'm not sure. I think mostly
| meat broth. This tortellini here has a sort of Christmas
| spices stuffing with nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, and raisins
| ... and marjoram and mint and rosewater and saffron ... and
| sugar and parmesan on top. In meat broth.
|
| https://www.theeternaltable.com/historical-
| recipes/tortellin...
| analog31 wrote:
| Or Europeans before potatoes.
| zppln wrote:
| I heard turnips used to be all the rage.
| throwup238 wrote:
| Although it should be noted that modern turnip varieties
| are significantly more flavorful and sweet than pre-
| Columbian exchange era turnips. The old varieties were
| usually very bland so it didn't take much for another tuber
| to displace it.
| hedgehog wrote:
| Or peppers. Hungary without paprika!
| keiferski wrote:
| The majority of Italian food doesn't actually use tomatoes.
| That impression is mostly because internationally-known Italian
| foods tend to use tomatoes (pizza for example.)
| burgreblast wrote:
| melanzana aka Aubergine aka eggplant
| ginko wrote:
| Honestly I find the impact of the Columbian exchange on cuisine
| of the old world overblown. Tomatoes potatoes and corn a sure
| are great, but you can do without them. Italian cuisine was
| different but most of the modern elements were in place. I'd
| say the role of tomatoes in Italian cooking isn't as big as
| people make it out to be.
|
| On the other hand it's almost impossible to imagine what food
| was like in the Americas before Columbus. No wheat, no
| pork/beef/chicken, no dairy, no onions, no cabbage, no
| oranges/apples/figs, any citrus and much much more.
| lava_pidgeon wrote:
| Depends on the area. German speaking areas and Eastern Europe
| do use lots of potato. Even the collagial name for German is
| potato
| ginko wrote:
| I'm Austrian myself. There's plenty of potato dumplings
| etc., but they're just variants of other flour/cheese based
| dumplings. Potatoes are important but certainly not
| indispensable.
|
| Compare that to pork for instance. Remove that and you've
| removed like 50% of Austrian cuisine.
| mmooss wrote:
| > no dairy
|
| They couldn't find one mammal from which to obtain milk? It's
| a pretty obvious thing to try, for obvious reasons.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| The vast majority of the human population is lactose
| intolerant, both historically and today. Genetically
| intolerant populations in South and Central Asia have
| microbiotic help with their dairy-heavy diets, but for
| people who didn't spend thousands of years developing a
| culture around it, dairy is just a quick road to an upset
| stomach and/or food poisoning.
| hyperpape wrote:
| One of the most praised recent restaurants in the United
| States is based on an attempt to reconstruct pre-Colombian
| cuisine from the Americas: https://owamni.com/,
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/09/19/how-owamni-
| bec....
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| no beef? bison were ubiquitous, though.
| mmooss wrote:
| The paper on which the article is based:
|
| Gonzalez Carretero L, Lucquin A, Robson HK, McLaughlin TR,
| Dolbunova E, Lundy J, et al. (2026) Selective culinary uses of
| plant foods by Northern and Eastern European hunter-gatherer-
| fishers. PLoS One 21(3): e0342740.
|
| https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
| mmooss wrote:
| From the referenced research paper:
|
| https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...
|
| > The combined application of microscopy techniques and lipid
| residue analysis to the study of foodcrusts from HGF [hunter-
| gatherer-fisher] pottery vessels has proved a successful approach
| ...
|
| In academic research, what happens with unsuccessful approaches?
| I'm sure, like people in other fields, at some point you pull the
| plug and 'unsuccessful' is really defined as, 'stopped without
| success'. At some point the startup goes bankrupt, funders give
| up, the talent leaves, etc. ...
|
| Research is by definition about breaking new ground, so you can't
| really know what you'll get. But what kind of risk is accepted
| and for how long? And who are the decision-makers - the
| researcher (of course), but also the talent? The institution?
| Funders? Also, at what point does it damage your reputation to
| continue?
|
| One professor I know told me 'I submitted a title and abstract to
| this conference, and now I need to figure out how I'm going to do
| the research'. Maybe with enough experience, you have a good feel
| for it.
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