Spreading+of+the+food+in+Europe

= **Spreading of the food in Europe ** = toc = **Chocolate** : = The **history of chocolate in Spain** is part of the culinary history of Spain as understood since the 16th century, when the colonisation of  the Americas began and the cocao plant was discovered in regions of  [|Mesoamerica], until the present. After the [|conquest of Mexico] , cocoa as a commodity travelled by boat from the port of Nueva España to the Spanish coast. The first such voyage to Europe occurred at an unknown date in the 1520s. However it was only in the seventeenth century that regular trade began from the port of Veracruz, opening a maritime trade route that would supply the new demand from Spain, and later from other European countries.

The introduction of this ingredient in [|Spanish culinary traditions] was immediate, compared with other ingredients brought from [|Latin America], and its popularity and acceptance in all sectors of Spanish society reached very high levels by the end of the 16th century. Since its inception, [|chocolate] was considered by Spaniards as a drink and retained that perception until the beginning of the 20th century.

From the early stages, the cocao was sweetened with [|sugar cane], which the Spanish were the first to popularize in Europe. In [|pre-Columbus America] chocolate was flavored with [|peppers] and was a mixture of both bitter and spicy flavours. This made it an [|acquired taste] and limited its appeal to the Spanish conquistadors, who were soon encouraged to sweeten it with sugar brought from the [|Iberian Peninsula] in addition to heating it.

=Potato= Sailors returning from Peru to Spain with silver presumably brought maize and potatoes for their own food on the trip. Historians speculate that leftover tubers (and maize) were carried ashore and planted. Basque fishermen from Spain used potatoes as ships stores for their voyages across the Atlantic in the 16th century, and introduced the tuber to western Ireland, where they landed to dry their cod. In 1553, in the book //Crónica del Peru//, [|Pedro Cieza de Leon] mentions he saw it in [|Quito], [|Popayán] and [|Pasto]. Though the English privateer [|Francis Drake], returning from his circumnavigation, or [|Sir Walter Raleigh]'s employee [|Thomas Harriot][|[26]] are commonly credited with introducing potatoes into England, [|Mary, Queen of Scots] already complained in 1569 of her enforced confinement at [|Tutbury Castle] that its garden was no more than "a potato patch... fitter to keep pigs in.".In 1588, botanist Carolus Clusius made a painting of what he called "Papas Peruanorum" from a specimen in Belgium; in 1601 he reported that potatoes were in common use in northern Italy for animal fodder and for human consumption.

The Spanish had an empire across Europe, and brought potatoes for their armies. Peasants along the way adopted the crop, which was less often pillaged by marauding armies than above-ground stores of grain. Across most of northern Europe, where open fields prevailed, potatoes were strictly confined to small garden plots because field agriculture was strictly governed by custom that prescribed seasonal rhythms for plowing, sowing, harvesting and grazing animals on fallow and stubble. This meant that potatoes were barred from large-scale cultivation because the rules allowed only grain to be planted in the open fields.

In France and Germany government officials and noble landowners promoted the rapid conversion of fallow land into potato fields after 1750. The potato thus became an important [|staple crop] in northern Europe. Famines in the early 1770s contributed to its acceptance, as did government policies in several European countries and climate change during the [|Little Ice Age], when traditional crops in this region did not produce as reliably as before. At times when and where most other crops failed, potatoes could still typically be relied upon to contribute adequately to food supplies during colder years.The potato was not popular in France before 1800. It took time to be popularly adopted, but had widely replaced the [|turnip] and [|rutabaga] by the 19th century. Today, the potato forms an important part of the traditional cuisines of most of Europe.

** The tomato **

The tomato is native to [|South America]. Genetic evidence shows the progenitors of tomatoes were herbaceous green plants with small green fruit and a center of diversity in the highlands of [|Peru].[|[2]][|[3]] One species, //Solanum lycopersicum//, was transported to [|Mexico] where it was grown and consumed by [|Mesoamerican] civilizations. The exact date of domestication is not known. The first domesticated tomato may have been a little yellow fruit, similar in size to a [|cherry tomato], grown by the [|Aztecs] of [|Central Mexico].

Aztec writings mention tomatoes were prepared with [|peppers], [|corn] and salt. The word //tomato// comes from the [|Nahuatl] word //tomatl//, literally "the swelling fruit".

Many historians believe that the Spanish explorer [|Cortés] may have been the first to transfer the small yellow tomato to [|Europe] after he captured the Aztec city of Tenochtítlan, now [|Mexico City], in 1521. Others believe [|Christopher Columbus], a Genoese working for the Spanish monarchy, was the first European to take back the tomato, as early as 1493. The earliest discussion of the tomato in European literature appeared in an [|herbal] written in 1544 by [|Pietro Andrea Mattioli], an Italian physician and botanist who named it //pomo d’oro//, or "golden apple".

Aztecs and other peoples in the region used the fruit in their cooking; it was cultivated in southern Mexico and probably other areas by 500 BC. It is thought that the [|Pueblo] people believed that those who witnessed the ingestion of tomato seeds were blessed with powers of [|divination]. The large, lumpy tomato, a mutation from a smoother, smaller fruit, originated in Mesoamerica and may be the direct ancestor of some modern cultivated tomatoes.

__Spanish distribution __ After the [|Spanish colonization of the Americas], the Spanish distributed the tomato throughout their colonies in the [|Caribbean]. They also took it to the [|Philippines], from where it spread to [|southeast Asia] and then the entire Asian continent. The Spanish also brought the tomato to Europe. It grew easily in [|Mediterranean climates], and cultivation began in the 1540s. It was probably eaten shortly after it was introduced, and was certainly being used as food by the early 17th century in [|Spain]. The earliest discovered cookbook with tomato recipes was published in [|Naples] in 1692, though the author had apparently obtained these recipes from Spanish sources: 17 However, in certain areas of Italy, such as Florence, the fruit was used solely as a tabletop decoration before it was incorporated into the local cuisine in the late 17th or early 18th century.

= ** The corn ** =

**CORN** is a [|grain] domesticated by [|indigenous peoples] in [|Mesoamerica] in prehistoric times. The [|Aztecs] and [|Mayans] cultivated it in numerous varieties throughout central and southern [|Mexico], to cook or grind in a process called [|nixtamalization]. Later the crop spread through much of the [|Americas]. Between 1250 and 1700, the crop spread to all corners of the region. Any significant or dense populations in the region developed a great trade network based on surplus and varieties of maize crops. After [|European contact with the Americas] in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, explorers and traders carried maize back to Europe and introduced it to other countries through trade. Maize spread to the rest of the world due to its popularity and ability to grow in diverse climates. Maize is the most widely grown [|crop] in the Americas with 332 million [|metric tons] grown annually in the [|United States] alone (although 40% of the crop - 130 million tons - is used for corn ethanol). [|Transgenic maize] made up 85% of the maize planted in the United States in 2009. While some maize varieties grow to 12 metres (39 ft) tall, most commercially grown maize has been bred for a standardized height of 2.5 metres (8.2 ft). [|Sweet corn] is usually shorter than [|field-corn] varieties.