Does anybody else here find the diffusion of foods fascinating? (restaurants, diet)

[tvdxer]

One topic I'm interested in is food history, and what is particularly interesting is the diffusion of various foods.

An example:

Samosas are believed to have originated in central Asia, where they were known as samsa.

Today, they are known as samosa in India, sanbuse in Iran, sambusa in the Arab world, samuza in Burma, and sambusa in Somalia (brought by Arab traders?), and chamusa in Mozambique and Angola.

A similar thing with "halwa"...known by the same name from Eastern Europe and the Balkans across to India and then southwards to Somalia!

Anybody else find this interesting?

[Trimac20]

That is interesting. I can think of many other examples. I went to a Central Asian food stall at the Adelaide markets here in Australia, and ate this Russian dish of dumplings with sour cream. The dumplings tasted EXACTLY like Chinese dumplings one would get at a dumpling house or dim sim, just with sour cream.

I've also encountered kebabs in Xian, China. No, not Turkish restaurants, but this was a local speciality (I did some research). I tried one, not bad. It seems a lot of food travelled across Eurasia.

In Japan there's this snack, I forget the name, which is basically like a bean curd filled with rice. In Central Asia there's something very similar but with fried dough instead of bean curd.

The use of yoghurt as a side is something that is typical of India, the Middle East and Greece. Northern India and the Middle East do share some similar culinary traditions.

It was once widely believed that Marco Polo introduced pasta from China. Apparently now most don't believe that story. But it's interesting how pasta and noodles/dumplings developed independently. But when you think about it it's no big surprise, it's quite a logical way of doing things.

[Stumbler.]

Diffusion? lol... when I first read this thread title, I thought you'd be talking about something like diluting a drink or drowning out a strong flavour with a milder one, or else something related to chemistry, heh.

Then I realized you were talking about cultural diffusion (it's actually a pretty sophisticated concept few people stop to think about; I've only heard the term used in anthropology).

But definitely yes. Food has been spreading from place to place, from people to people since time immemorial (it's not just yesterday when newcomers start to bring in trendy "ethnic" food from one part of the world to another).

Actually, come to think of it, the invention of agriculture itself is an example. The wheat used in making bread and pasta, was once just a local upland Mediterranean climate winter-growing edible grass seed harvested in the Fertile Crescent about ten thousand years back, perhaps in Turkey or Israel but over the millenia, spread across Europe and Asia, becoming a world dietary staple; corn (or maize, from the Taino/old native Caribbean name) was a Mexican subtropical to tropical highland crop that was even more remarkably bred/cultivated into a source of big juicy grains from its wild ancestor which was only a small-seeded, inedible grass plant and before the time of European colonialism, corn was already cultivated through so much of the Americas from the South American Andes where the Incas relied on it, to upstate New York and southern Ontario in Canada, as grown by the Iroquois people, and points in between (one of the most amazing spreads/diffusions of a crop to have been accomplished across latitudes; contrary to some popular belief, there weren't all hunter-gatherers there before European arrival); Asian rice, an originally southern Chinese (or depending on who you ask, perhaps also natively northeastern Indian) marsh grass that's a cereal grain sustaining in part the bulk of the two most populous, and what were once historically richest civilizations in history. Sugar cane, a natively tropical South/Southeast Asian and New Guinean tall juicy grass too, produces the table sugar that most of us feel we couldn't live without and drove much industry for much of the 19th century (and yet also responsible for in those years, among the largest migrations of desperate workers as well as enslaving of peoples for plantations the world has known). Amazingly, all these plants I mentioned are actually grasses (most grains we eat are typically grasses) or members of the grass family and yet these grasses are so important and still are, as our staples and in our history.

Also, few realize that how many of our foods have had such a tangled history. Everything we eat is a mishmash of things ranging from stuff that people invented on one side of the world thousands of years ago to things that people just mixed and matched together last decade. It really makes you think hard and question what it means to be authentic, in cuisine or culture or otherwise (lol... I'm already the kind of person who doesn't really have to look hard to notice the social constructions and historical contingencies inherent in many things).

[Stumbler.]

Originally Posted by tvdxer

One topic I'm interested in is food history, and what is particularly interesting is the diffusion of various foods.

An example:

Samosas are believed to have originated in central Asia, where they were known as samsa.

Today, they are known as samosa in India, sanbuse in Iran, sambusa in the Arab world, samuza in Burma, and sambusa in Somalia (brought by Arab traders?), and chamusa in Mozambique and Angola.

A similar thing with "halwa"...known by the same name from Eastern Europe and the Balkans across to India and then southwards to Somalia!

Anybody else find this interesting?

Names for foods/drinks really get around, along with their concept/recipe. Check out the word for "tea" in languages all over the world.

[Trimac20]

Colonialism changed the European diet tremendously too. Potatoes, tomato, coffee, chocolate, pretty much all spices, a lot of herbs, most of the fruits we eat - all from distant places.

[Kannadiga]

I know it sounds weird but I had never tasted a Samosa in all my 23 years in India. I ate my first Samosa after I came to US in one of the Indian grocery stores near my apartment. Not a big fan of Samosa either as the dripping oil in it scares me.

[TabulaRasa]

I make Samosas that are baked. They're not traditional, but they are good.

Not that I find oil to be frightening.

[Chatteress]

Originally Posted by Trimac20

That is interesting. I can think of many other examples. I went to a Central Asian food stall at the Adelaide markets here in Australia, and ate this Russian dish of dumplings with sour cream. The dumplings tasted EXACTLY like Chinese dumplings one would get at a dumpling house or dim sim, just with sour cream.

I've also encountered kebabs in Xian, China. No, not Turkish restaurants, but this was a local speciality (I did some research). I tried one, not bad. It seems a lot of food travelled across Eurasia.

In Japan there's this snack, I forget the name, which is basically like a bean curd filled with rice. In Central Asia there's something very similar but with fried dough instead of bean curd.

The use of yoghurt as a side is something that is typical of India, the Middle East and Greece. Northern India and the Middle East do share some similar culinary traditions.

It was once widely believed that Marco Polo introduced pasta from China. Apparently now most don't believe that story. But it's interesting how pasta and noodles/dumplings developed independently. But when you think about it it's no big surprise, it's quite a logical way of doing things.

Inari is the name of this delicacy