oh jeez...pomodoro literally means smelly apple...I was racking my brain trying to come up with something that is like an apple but with a strong smell. Never landed on tomato...wow.
Cranberries aren't exclusively a new world crop. Wikipedia states 3 or 4 different varieties of cranberry, 2 of which are also found in Eurasia. We'd still have them even without Columbus.
Some quick research shows that European and Malaysian cranberries are similar in some ways to the North American cranberry, with one exception being that they are far more bitter and acrid. Considering that North American cranberries are already one of the worst berries, I shudder to think of what a European cranberry would taste like.
Interesting to learn that fruit exists, here in Australia "pawpaw" and "papaya" to refer to the same fruit. I put in "pawpaw" and then didn't think to guess "papaya" because I would have thought it would have gone through as an alternative
Definitely hard to imagine cooking before the 1600's with damn near all our modern staples being from the Americas! Also, I'd have added green beans and squash. Also not native to the Old world.
I knew that you were after maple syrup because of its popularity, but I've also had sycamore syrup - it's very good too. As far as the Thanksgiving dessert question, speaking for us Southerners, you can keep your pumpkin pie. We want pecan, please.
and 'pepper' is an ambiguous term, because if you buy pepper for seasoning it is from a completely different plant from chilli peppers and cayenne peppers.
Could you include chilli as an answer for 'peppers'? In my country and a lot of others, pepper and chilli have very different meanings, pepper being the small black things and chilli being what you refer to as 'peppers' here
Yes to me (I'm British) pepper is this black stuff, peppers are the non-spicy/sweet type of pepper and chilli peppers I would generally just call chilli