The Food Timeline:

January 19, 2002 10:15 PM

The Food Timeline: Want to know when people first started eating watermelon? This site claims to tell you (roughly). I've no idea how accurate their dates are but this is a grand place to surf foodstuffs. (Also links to some ancient, ancient recipes that sound mouth-watering.)
posted by realjanetkagan (14 comments total)

wow. All the way from salt fo Flutie Flakes. It will take days to process all the links here.
posted by mkn at 10:31 PM on January 19, 2002

Not enough links to cooking dormice (scroll down slightly), but still a great resource.

Some astonishing links in there - Jefferson's Pasta Machine.

(is still playing with the post from realjanetkagan, will be back in a month or so)
posted by thatwhichfalls at 11:44 PM on January 19, 2002

I like to think about how certain foods that are considered old standards are sometimes relatively new, just fads in the long view.

tomatoes in Europe---1544---
potatoes in Europe---1553---
coffee in Europe---1615---
sandwiches---1762---
fish & chips---1860---

By the way:
tomatoes in Europe---1544---
but
---1820, New Jersey--- Col. Johnson eats a tomato at the Salem Cty Courthouse...or did he?
["In North America, however, the tomato's relationship to the poisonous nightshade family made it suspect. What changed attitudes is not clear - this is where the Col. Johnson myth comes in - but by the 1830s, the red fruit had become a common sight in the markets."]

Assuming genetic engineering continues to advance, future lists like this may show a sudden burst of food inventions.
sweet worms---2039---
sweet and sour worms---2041---
Tasty Grass™---2048---
legless box cow---2072---
etc.
posted by pracowity at 12:28 AM on January 20, 2002

I would like to salute whoever was first to eat crab. That must've been one brave individual.
posted by dai at 12:57 AM on January 20, 2002

the truly brave individual will be the first to dine on the savory morsels of the box cow... nice work pracowity - im still chuckling....
posted by adamholz at 1:34 AM on January 20, 2002

Tomatoes in Europe, 1544... and noodles brought by Polo from China.. Can you imagine Italian food before that? Interesting!
posted by chaz at 1:34 AM on January 20, 2002

realjanetkagen: Great post. How complex the history of peanut butter is!
posted by Carol Anne at 6:22 AM on January 20, 2002

ohh theres no mention of green tomatoe ketchup
posted by monkeyJuice at 7:00 AM on January 20, 2002

monkeyJuice: no green ketchup...but check the 1881 link to a recipe for "grape catsup"! I *must* try making that!
posted by realjanetkagan at 8:53 AM on January 20, 2002

"'E was a bold man what first et an oyster"

- Jonathan Swift
posted by mr_crash_davis at 9:40 AM on January 20, 2002

More likely he was a starving man.
posted by realjanetkagan at 10:33 AM on January 20, 2002

Stuffed dormice without the dormice. And a recipe for dormouse soup way down almost to the bottom of the page.
posted by realjanetkagan at 10:45 AM on January 20, 2002

Cool. I didn't realize that Yukin Gold potatoes were only twenty years old.

This timeline is incredible.

On a separate note, it's amazing to see how much cooking has changed over the last 500 years. For example, thai and chinese cooking didn't use chilies until they were brought there from the new world, relatively recently.
posted by warhol at 12:50 PM on January 20, 2002

and noodles brought by Polo from China

Spaghetti, maybe, but the Romans (and the Greeks, the Etruscans and the Arabs) enjoyed a variety of pasta long before Polo's time.
posted by obiwanwasabi at 4:24 PM on January 20, 2002