What made someone "back then" think that this would taste good?
Seriously. Hominy's my biggest. It was a good idea to soak corn in lye - um, poison- rinse it and now, yum?
Olives. Bitter off the tree. Crack em, brine em, age em, yummy. Why did they think of that.
Mushrooms. People died. They kept on eating. (not the dead people)
I can think of a million. Which ones do you question? Do you have special way of cooking some of them?
Oh, what about cheese or yogurt?
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30 Comments:
Cheese and yogurt actually make some sense to me, because it's a naturally occurring process. And if food is scarce, you eat what's there. At some point, you learn how to control the process and make tasty cheese more often than you make wretched milk.
As far as the lye soak for the corn, doesn't that have something to do with wood ash which would have been plentiful?
I'm sure that a lot of it was just mistakes that worked well. Like finding out that if you dry meat and turn it into jerky, it lasts a lot longer. Someone noticed that when a carcass was left out in the sun with strips of meat still on it, and it didn't rot.
Or capturing wild yeasts to make bread or beer, or fermenting fruits to make wine. At some point, all of those probably seemed like foods that had gone bad, but it ended up being edible and it also increased the storage life of the products. You can't keep fresh fruit around forever, but that wine can be stored without it going bad for a longer time.
And ideas probably came from watching what animals ate. If the neighborhood hyena doesn't die, then it might be good to eat. Also, a lot of toxic plants are bitter, so the taste test probably worked fairly well for many things.
What's also interesting are the things that one culture would consider edible and another wouldn't. But I guess that didn't happen until there was enough to eat, because if you're truly hungry, you aren't going to be too picky.
dbcurrie at 2:34AM on 12/06/08
Classic Calvin and Hobbes:
http://picayune.uclick.com/comics/ch/1993/ch930611.gif
renzata at 3:14AM on 12/06/08
@currie bear~ I knew that was you when I started reading (and before I could see your name). See, you think about all these things too. Yes it makes sense, but it has to START somewhere. Mmmmm, rotten milk... oh wait, it's yogurt!
Watching what animals ate is a really good observation.
I am constantly fascinated by the food s of other cultures because everyone will eat a larger variety than we do. Do you watch Andrew Zimmer?
carolrsfMISSESTEXAS at 3:25AM on 12/06/08
The reason that hominy is soaked in lye is that corn, like all whole grains, contains phytic acid, which inhibits the body's ability to absorb nutrients, specifically niacin. Unfortunately, refining the grain not only eliminates the phytic acid, but also most of the nutrition. The process by which hominy is made forces the nutrients from the bran into the kernel; the phytic-acid-containing bran can then be safely removed without any nutrient loss. Other ways that phytic acids can be eliminated (which you see in many traditional recipes) are long, slow cooking, fermenting (as in sourdough bread), or soaking grains.
When corn was brought from the New World to Europe, the traditional methods for corn preparation were not brought along - the whole grain was eaten. Because corn was cheap, it quickly became a dietary staple for the poor, and the resulting pellagra (niacin deficiency) epidemic resulted in over 1 million deaths.
producestories at 8:10AM on 12/06/08
How about artichokes? My dad says the first person to eat an artichoke wasn't hungry, he was trying to get high.
SSMom at 8:59AM on 12/06/08
haggis.
pjracz10 at 10:07AM on 12/06/08
I find it amazing, as you do. When I read that people thought tomatoes were poisonous, I wondered about who decided to check out that theory. Were they suicidal, or did they have premeditated assassination in mind? No wonder royalty had "tasters". Great job until it's over!
And, how did the word spread? Oh yeah, they must have posted their findings on the internet. ;-D
PerkyMac at 10:20AM on 12/06/08
I have been rolling this topic around my brain since I saw Andrew Zimmern's episode in Maine when he asked the same question about a lobster!
mayoxqueen at 10:36AM on 12/06/08
oysters. they require an immense amount of work to get at and then they look like a pool of phlegm. who thought, "yum! gotta get me some of that!"
KTempesta at 11:14AM on 12/06/08
Coq au Vin, escargots, durian, tomatoes ARE a nightshade.
Keight at 11:47AM on 12/06/08
Seriously, who thought to eat crustaceans? They're underwater cockroaches, except pinchier!
charm city cupcake at 12:08PM on 12/06/08
@charm city cupcake ~ where have you been????? Haven't seen much of you lately. I adore shellfish and I'm aware that makes me a bottom feeder. Shouldn't those "foods" at least be affordable? Unfortunately, the demand is great from my fellow bottom feeders. Can't you just see the cavepeople at the ocean's edge............"I'M not gonna pick that thing up. There's Mikey. Hey, Mikey......."
PerkyMac at 12:19PM on 12/06/08
lol. i love mikey
dearrie at 12:22PM on 12/06/08
@producestories: I couldn't have said it better myself. Wasn't it the Aztecs who developed nichstamalization (sp?)? They were incredibly intelligent and also bred the potato plant, which started out poisonous, into something edible and delicious. How they came up with these things, I don't know.
What I wonder is, who had the idea that something that came out of a chicken's rear end might be good to eat.
buffy at 1:03PM on 12/06/08
Lobster, crab, shrimp, etc...who looked at these hard-shelled crustaceans and thought "FOOD"??? Although I'm glad they did, I'm also glad I wasn't around when they were first experimenting...LOL!
SloeWyne at 3:42PM on 12/06/08
@Perk ~ That was funny!
izatryt at 3:46PM on 12/06/08
Totally with you KT on the oysters...uggghhh.
As mentioned earlier, when I'm eating it, I wonder what made people want to eat moldy cheese, aka roquefort or blue. And what about awful smelling cheeses?? Thank goodness, my parents introduced my sisters and me to them early on, and now, in my book the stinkier, the better.
Probably need to read up on some cheese making history.
Kimc54 at 4:09PM on 12/06/08
Artichokes were first eaten for the stems, which would be a little less work than fighting with the whole thistle head if you were looking for the easiest part of the plant to eat.
Think about honey, though. I can understand the appeal. It's sweet, tasty, nutritiously dense, doesn't rot. But who was the first guy who decided it would be good to invade a beehive to see if they had anything to eat? What's next? Go visit the wasp family? And how did the family/clan/tribe choose who was the lucky person who got honey-gathering duty? There's something to think about next time going grocery shopping seems like a chore.
And what about the edible cactuses? Paddles and those sweet red ones? Now we've got gloves we can wear and tweezers to use when the spines get us anyway. But I can just imagine that first taste-test. "Mmmmm, these are good, but what am I supposed to do about the spines stuck in my tongue?"
Some foods are so obvious. Like some fruits. You pick them from the plant and you eat them. But the things that need to be peeled or plucked or skinned or scaled or cracked open, or things that needed to be mixed with specific other things...that's where it gets interesting.
And then consider how many similar foods arose in different areas. Like all of the flatbreads, from tortillas to naan.
Yeah, I think about this stuff. Caveman gourmet, the natural diet. (May include some rocks and twigs.)
dbcurrie at 5:11PM on 12/06/08
@ SSmom: your dad is hilarious.
mmmm...who wants to try this sea cucumber first?
oh look-sandra made a kwanzaa cake....wait, wtf?
gastronomeg at 5:22PM on 12/06/08
This has to be my favorite thread ever! Kudos @carolrsfMISSESTEXAS. I think about this subject all the time and it boggles the mind.
@Madame Currie ~ I thought about the bees, but hadn't considered that once honey was discovered, they'd also have to at least investigate what wasps, yellow jackets and hornets had to offer. OMG. Hope they had their EpiPen at the ready.
PerkyMac at 5:40PM on 12/06/08
@Perky, I think waaaaay too much about food. Picture them sitting around the campfire divvying up the jobs for tomorrow. You go snare some saber-toothed bunnies, you go dig for roots over by the plants with stinging spikes, you go climb a tree and poke at a beehive, and when the bees are chasing after you, the NEXT guy goes for the honey. Oh yeah, and you go wading in the water and see if you can catch any of the fish with the nasty spines or the ones that sting, or the ones with claws.
Hmmm....I think I'll stay home, start a fire, and boil some water. Yeah, the chef job sounds so much better than the hunting or the gathering.
dbcurrie at 6:04PM on 12/06/08
@db ~ yeah, I'm glad I was born with boobs, too! No freakin' wonder we live longer.
In my home, we had a couple of invisible family members. Nobody and Mikey. Who did that??? Always nobody. No one wants to do it - Let's get Mikey, he'll do anything. ;-D
PerkyMac at 6:14PM on 12/06/08
Fugu (pufferfish). It can kill you. Even when you take away all the poisonous parts, it still numbs your mouth a bit. And it's a horrible death.
From Wikipedia:
The symptoms from ingesting a lethal dose of tetrodotoxin may include dizziness, exhaustion, headache, nausea, or difficulty breathing. For 50% to 80% of the victims, death follows within four to 24 hours. The victim remains fully conscious throughout most of the ordeal, but cannot speak or move due to paralysis, and soon also cannot breathe and subsequently asphyxiates.
I mean, honestly, who looked at it and say, "Yeah, I want me some of that?"!!!
chisai at 11:20PM on 12/06/08
Eggs! Who thought of cracking them open?
ag3208 at 11:31PM on 12/06/08
@Perky--That "Mikey" comment reminds me of a joke about what to get an 80-year-old woman for her birthday....
buffy at 12:29AM on 12/07/08
Uhh, what?
nightowl at 12:48AM on 12/07/08
@iz~Thanks! I think about ALL of these things all of the time. I knew you guys had to too. Most people look at you like your head spins around though.
My 14 year old just volunteered - Rocky Mountain Oysters.
Right. Mmmm, those look good enough to eat?
Keep going SEers, I love this.
carolrsfMISSESTEXAS at 12:51AM on 12/07/08
This thread made me smile, because it's the kind of questions I'd ask myself (and others) a lot when I was little (probably drove my parents mad, too), and wondering about things like this is something I never grew out of.
For instance, I use miso quite often (in soups, sauces, dressings, marinades, etc), and it's fascinating to me that it's been round for centuries - I've imagined that someone somehow made that mixture of soybeans, salt, already fermented rice or barley and water, must have forgotten about it for months, then stumbled upon it and decided that it was worth trying instead of just throwing away (I can only imagine how many people poisoned themselves in the past) -- and deemed it edible after all (as in, "Hmm, it tastes kind of funky but I bet it will make a damn good soup!"). And not just edible, but good enough to try and recreate the process.
All right, I know that it didn't happen quite like this and different elements and techniques that resulted in miso had evolved over the time, but still - a nice story to think of, and at least I can hope that this forum wouldn't consider me completely mad for thinking about it:-).
brooke29 at 1:45AM on 12/07/08
@brooke~ that's EXACTLY the kind of stuff I'm talking about. We think about but I don't think the general population does!
Poor "general population".
carolrsfMISSESTEXAS at 3:02AM on 12/07/08
As I've read each of these posts I've nodded and Uh-huh'd @ each. But then I think of Andrew Zimmern's "Bizarre Foods" show, and I realize how much of it's cultural. (MY own childhood memories include going to Fulton Street w/ my grandfather and watching as he picked out a couple of chickens, which were then slaughtered and prepped for him - including the feet, which were a central ingredient in the flavor of the chicken stock that he made for special occasions. Most Americans consider them a large UGH! factor, but they're still a delicacy in many parts of the world - esp roasted or fried - and they still add phenomenal flavor to stock!)
And to put in my own two cents... I wonder @ the thoughts of the person who pondered the concept of bait, and then opined, "Ya know, those worms seem good enough for the fish to want to eat 'em - wonder how they taste?"
Robbo at 1:22AM on 12/09/08