Non-Period Foods
from A Miscellany: Recipes, by David Friedman (http://daviddfriedman.com/Medieval/miscellany_pdf/Misc9recipes.pdf)

To do period cooking, it is desirable to avoid ingredients that were not available to period cooks. This list is of foods that were generally unknown in the Middle Ages. Be aware that turkey, the large drumstick of which is ubiquitous at the modern Renaissance Faire, is included here, as well as potatoes. Neither of these foods, so often erroneously associated with medieval feasts, should be served at any authentic medieval dinner, in addition to the rest of the modern or New World items mentioned here.

Food Not Known or Not Used in Medieval Europe (New World Foods Listed Below)

Coffee - did not reach Europe until after the Middle Ages, but was common in Arabia by the medieval period.

The coffee plant is apparently native to Abyssinia. The use of coffee in Abyssinia was recorded in the fifteenth century and regarded at that time as an ancient practice (EB). I believe that there is a reference in one of the Greek historians to what sounds like coffee being drunk in what might well be Abyssinia, but I have not yet succeeded in tracking it down.

Coffee was apparently introduced into Yemen from Abyssinia in the middle of the 15th century. It reached Mecca in the last decade of the century and Cairo in the first decade of the 16th century (Hattox).

The use of coffee in Egypt is mentioned by a European resident near the end of the sixteenth century. It was brought to Italy in 1615 and to Paris in 1647 (LG). The first coffee house in England was opened in Oxford in 1650 (Wilson), and the first one in London was opened in 1652 (EB). The earliest use of the word is in 1592, in a passage describing its use in Turkey (OED) .

Tea - did not reach Europe until after the Middle Ages.

The use of tea in China and Ceylon goes back to prehistoric times. According to the Larousse, it was brought to Europe by the Dutch in 1610 and to England in 1644. According to the OED, it was first imported into Europe in the 17th century and first mentioned in a European language (Portuguese) in 1559. The first use of the word in English (in the form "Cha") is given as 1598; the passage seems to describe its use in China.

It appears that tea is out of period for European feasts and (since it was being brought from China by sea rather than overland) even further out of period for Islamic feasts. It is, of course, in period for Chinese and Japanese feasts. So far as I know, iced tea is a modern invention.

Bananas - known about, but still a foreign fruit and considered exotic. Their short shelf-life prohibited easy transportation to Europe.

Sir John Mandeville (14th c.) writes of them in his Travels and refers to them as "long apples" & "apples of paradise."

The Four Seasons of the House of Cerruti, an Italian manuscript of the fourteenth century (based on an Arab work of the eleventh century) mentions bananas as something which "we know of .. only from texts or tales from merchants from Cyprus or pilgrims from the Holy Land. Sicilians ... know them well." It is clear from the accompanying picture that the artist had never seen a banana. The first bunch of bananas is said to have reached England in 1633 (Wilson).

Molasses

Molasses is a residue from the process of refining sugar. Treacle was originally the name of a medical mixture one of whose ingredients was honey. It originated in classical antiquity and survived into the Middle Ages; at some point molasses or sugar syrup began to be used instead of honey for the base. "When the production of molasses in Britain's refineries out-stripped the needs of both apothecaries and distillers, it was sold off in its natural unmedicated state as a cheap sweetener. Its name of molasses was taken by the early settlers to America. But in Britain in the later seventeenth century the alternative term 'common treacle' came into circulation, and thereafter it was known simply as treacle" (Wilson).

Since, according to Wilson, England had its own sugar refineries by 1540, it is unclear whether molasses would have been used as a sweetener in England before 1600. The word "Molasses" first appears in English in 1582 and all of the pre-1600 references are to its existence abroad. Molasses is, however, mentioned by Hugh Platt in the 1609 edition of Delights for Ladies; I have not been able to find a copy of an earlier edition. Presumably molasses would have been used earlier in areas where sugar was grown, such as Spain, Sicily and the Middle East.

Citrus Fruits

Citrus fruit are native to southern Asia and the Malay Archipelago, and cultivated citrus occur very early in China. In the West, the citron was known to classical antiquity. By the 10th c. the Arabs had sour oranges, and by the 12th century lemon, sour orange, citron, and pummelo had all made it as far as Spain and North Africa. By the 13th century lemon, sour orange, citron, and what is probably lime are described from northern Italy. The sweet orange is mentioned in a few Page 150 documents from the second half of the 15th century as growing in Italy and southern France, and seems to have been fairly widely grown by the early 16th century. In 1520 or thereabouts the Portuguese brought a new and superior sweet orange variety from China, which then spread around the citrus-growing areas of Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries. Mandarin oranges do not seem to have made it to Europe until the early 19th century. The grapefruit seems to have developed out of the pummelo in the West Indies in the 18th c. (Batchelor and Webber).

Artichokes and Cardoons

According to some sources, including McGee, the globe artichoke was known in classical antiquity; others describe it as bred out of the cardoon sometime in the later middle ages, probably in Muslim Spain. The latin word is "cynara;" our word "artichoke" comes from the Arabic “al kharshûf.” Some modern sources describe the cardoon as a kind of artichoke, while others regard it as a different vegetable ancestral to the artichoke. My guess is that the classical "cynara" was the cardoon, making the globe artichoke familiar to us late period.

Chemical Leavenings

So far as we can discover, both baking soda and baking powder are far out of period. According to the 1992 Old Farmer's Almanac, Saleratus (Potassium Bicarbonate) was patented as a chemical leavening in 1840. Hartshorn (Ammonium Carbonate) was used for stiffening jellies by about the end of the sixteenth century (Wilson) but we have found no reference to its use as a leavening agent prior to the late 18th century.

Margarine & Shortening - an invention of the modern food-chemistry industry.

 

New World Foods - not introduced to Europe until after 1492

Potatoes - despite their association with Ireland, potatoes originally came from South America.

Sweet potatoes (Ipomoea batatas) originated in Central America about 5,000 years ago and not only spread throughout the Americas, but even made it to Polynesia carried by birds or storm-blown Indigenous sailors. Cassava (Manihot utilissima) was native to Brazil, and along with sweet potato made a huge nutritional impact when introduced to Africa.

Sweet potatoes are described in 1555 as growing in the West Indies. By 1587 they are said to be "brought out of" Spain and Portugal, and described as venerous (aphrodisiacal). In 1599 Ben Johnson describes something as "above all your potatoes or oyster pies."

According to Crosby, the sweet potato arrived in China "at least as early as the 1560's."

Potatoes (Solanum tuberosum) were first cultivated by South American Indians in Bolivia, Peru and Chile. Spanish man Pedro Cieza depicts the papas in 1533 probably, though a manuscript of the Bibliothèque nationale de France states 1553. The first written trace of the patatas were found in a delivery slip dated 11/25/1567 for potatoes grown in the Canary Islands and destined to Antwerp. In 1574, another boat coming from Las Palmas delivers potatoes to Rouen. It appears that the first plantations on the European continent go back to 1570.

Ordinary potatoes, according to the OED, were described in 1553 and introduced into Spain shortly after 1580. They reached Italy about 1585 and were being grown in England by 1596. By 1678 the potato is described as "common in English gardens."

The Larousse gives somewhat earlier dates - 1539 or 40 for the original importation into Spain, 1563 for the introduction into England ("but its cultivation was neglected there") and 1586 for the reintroduction by Sir Francis Drake. In 1593 several farmers were engaged to grow it in France, but in 1630 "the Parliament of Besanç on, from fear of leprosy, forbade the cultivation of the potato." In 1619 "Potato figures among the foods to be served at the Royal table in England."

Both sorts of potatoes were being grown in parts of Europe before 1600, but it is not clear whether either was common enough to have been served at a feast. If served, potatoes would almost certainly have been regarded as a novelty. I know of no period recipes using potatoes.

In 1588, a botanist, Pierre de l'Ecluse, grew a patch of potatoes in order to examine them and called them taratuffi (little truffle), which gave kartofel in German and cartoufle in French. Tartifle, truffe, truffole and trifolà are variants in various patois. And truffade is the name of a potato and cheese specialty in Auvergne. Since 1716 the French call it pomme de terre (earth apple).

Spanish and English soldiers likened the potato to the sweet potato (papas) and called it little papas: patata in Spanish, potatoe in English.

The potato is introduced to Germany from Spain during the Thirty Years' War. Parmentier discovers it there and promotes it in Paris in 1783. (Who hasn't heard the anecdote about the guarded patch made to encourage theft?).

Corn

The earliest reference in the OED to maize, the British name for the grain that Americans call corn, is from 1555. All of the pre-1600 references are to maize as a plant grown in the New World. Knowledge of maize seems to have spread rapidly; a picture of the plant appears in a Chinese book on botany from 1562. Pictures appear in European herbals from 1539 on. Finan concludes that they represent at least two distinct types of maize, one similar to Northern Flints, the other similar to some modern Caribbean varieties. Grains are variously described as red, black, brown, blue, white, yellow and purple.

How soon did maize become something more than a curiosity? Leonhard Fuchs, writing in Germany in 1542, described it as "now growing in all gardens" [De historia stirpium-cited in Finan]. That suggests that in at least one European country it was common enough before 1600 so that it could have been served at a feast-although I know of no evidence that it in fact was, and no period recipes for it. As evidence that it would not have been served at a feast, John Gerard wrote, in 1597: "We have as yet no certaine proofe or experience concerning the vertues of this kinde of Corne, although the barbarous Indians which know no better are constrained to make a vertue of necessitie, and think it a good food: whereas we may easily judge that it nourisheth but little, and is of a hard and euill digestion, a more convenient food for swine than for man" (Crosby). Gerard's conclusion seems still to be widely accepted in Europe. In West Africa, however, Maize was under cultivation "at least as early as the second half of the sixteenth century..." and in China in the sixteenth century (Crosby). There is also one reference to its being grown in the Middle East in the 1570's (Crosby).

There have been occasional attempts to argue that it either had an Old World origin or spread to the Old World prior to Columbus. Mangelsdorf discusses the arguments at some length and concludes that they are mistaken.

There is no evidence that either corn starch or corn syrup was used in period.

Christopher Columbus discovered corn in Cuba in 1492. Corn has been present since the dawn of time from Mexico to the Andes. Maize isn't always yellow and can actually be blue, red, white, black and even multicolored. Corn was the staple food of the South and Central American Indians, eaten in the form of gruel or tortillas, like wheat, made into bread, was the staple food of the Europeans. Maize started to be grown in Lebanon, Persia and Egypt, in 1520. The Portuguese then introduced it to Africa. It later reached Europe, through the Balkans. Polenta, which in Italy and Savoy was traditionally, since the Romans, made of wheat semolina became cornmeal polenta.

Sweet corn occurs as a spontaneous mutation in field corn and was grown by several Native American tribes. The Iroquois gave the first recorded sweet corn (called 'Papoon') to European settlers in 1779. It soon became a popular food in southern and central regions of the United States.

Tomatoes - a member of the Nightshade family, it was considered inedible or poisonous.

The first European reference to the tomato is apparently in a book published in Venice in 1544; it describes the tomato as having been brought to Italy "in our time" and eaten in Italy "fried in oil and with salt and pepper." It appears from later references that tomatoes were used as food in both Spain and Italy from the 1500's on. The first printed recipes using tomatoes appear in Italian at the end of the 17th century, and are described as "alla Spagnuola." The first use of "Tomato" in English occurs in 1604, in a description of the West Indies (OED). As late as 1753, an English writer describes tomatoes as "a fruit..eaten either stewed or raw by the Spaniards and Italians and by the Jew families in England." But another writer, at about the same time, asserts that the tomato is "now much used in England," especially for soups and sauces. (Most of this is from Longone.)

It appears that tomatoes are out of period for northern Europe and late period for southern Europe, but that no period recipes using them are known to exist.

The tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) is native to Mexico. The wild ancestor of cultivated tomatoes could be a kind of cherry tomato. Tomato was eaten by the Indians in the form of a sauce spiced with peppers.

Naturalist Petrus Andreas Matthiolus depicted tomato in 1544 as a dangerous product similar to mandrake. Tomato was long considered a slightly noxious medicinal plant. In France, it was called Pomme d'or (golden apple) or Pomme d'amour (apple of love) then; it is pomodoro in Italy today.

The tomato was introduced into Europe through Naples, then part of Aragon, from where it went up to Genoa before reaching Nice and Provence. According to Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, tomato was introduced in Languedoc in 1590.

Actually, it has taken some time for tomato to become an accepted vegetable in all of Europe. In 1760, the Vilmorin Andrieux catalogue classified tomato as an ornamental plant. Only in 1778 did it become a garden plant. In 1785 it is the gardening encyclopedia Le bon Jardinier that makes tomato a vegetable. As with potatoes, it was only during the French Revolution (1789 to 1799) that tomatoes really started being eaten. Two restaurants runned by Provencal chefs, Les Trois frères provençaux and Le Boeuf à la mode, put it on the menu.

In the 1838 issue of Viard's Cuisinier royal, the many recipes of cooking from Provence do not use tomatoes; only 3 tomato sauce recipes, a soup with tomato purée and stuffed tomatoes. Tomato wasn't mixed with other products yet.

The first recipe for Italian pasta with tomato sauce as we know it today was written in 1891 by Artusi in La scienza in cucina: a recipe for Neapolitan macaroni. See The First Italian Tomato Recipes.

***Tomatoes originated in the New World and were brought to Europe by the Spanish Explorers, first to Spain. From there, the tomatoes migrated to Italy, where they have become an integral part of Italian cuisine.

For almost 300 years, the tomato was considered poisonous by both Europeans and Americans. In Spain, where the tomato had its first European home, the tomato plant was used as an ornamental in the garden for its bright, small ball-like fruit. At that time, some may have eaten the leaves and stems, which are toxic, and thus the fruit of the tomato plant got the reputation of being harmful.

Tomatoes originated in the lower Andes in what is today Peru. However, the Peruvian Indians (Incas), who were so apt at developing other foods, ignored cultivating the tomato. Archeology has provided no information on the tomato's early history, and food historians have speculated that the Incas simply gathered and ate the wild fruit when it was in season.

The Incas probably did not cultivate the tomato because, at the time, it was very small — about the size of a large cherry. It also was very perishable, unlike most of the food plants they did cultivate, such as potatoes, corn, peppers and squash. Over the years, the tomato spread to Mexico, arriving there at about 2000 B.C.

The Spanish conquistadors brought tomato seeds from Mexico and Peru back to Spain. Tomato seeds were then taken to Naples from Spain, as Naples had come under Spanish rule in 1522.

From the Mediterranean region, the tomato plant traveled north into France, then Germany and eventually England. The French called it "the Apple of Love," and the Germans "the Apple of Paradise." The English, however, while admiring the brilliant red color of the tomato, disclaimed it as a food because they continued to believe it was poisonous.

The Italians were the first to use tomatoes in Europe. They were tomato pioneers both in the kitchen and in the garden. The first cook to use tomatoes much as they are used today was Francesco Leonardi, who experimented with numerous tomato dishes between 1750 and 1780. He was also the chef of Catherine II of Russia. During this period, Italian agronomists began experimenting with enlarging the size of tomatoes.

The French were not as enthusiastic as the Italians about tomatoes, although cooks in the south of the country used them. The northern French enthusiasm centered on the use of the tomato as an ornamental plant, primarily to cover outhouses and arbors. French seed catalogs of the mid-1700s listed it as an ornamental plant.

It was not until 1778 that the tomato plant was advertised in French seed catalogs as a food. However, the general public was not aware of the food qualities of the tomato until the 1900s.

As in other countries, the English approached the tomato with depredation, using it at first only in ketchup and other sauces. The mixture of vinegar and spices with the tomato was regarded as a safety device against the possible toxic effects of the fruit. By 1836, this tomato sauce had become well known in England.

The same English fear of tomatoes being poisonous carried over into the American colonies until the early 19th century. The War of 1812 brought the cooking of New Orleans to the attention of the rest of America. The Creoles in New Orleans were using tomatoes in their gumbos and jambalayas. It was not long after that the cooks of Maine followed suit by combining fresh tomatoes with local seafood.

Thomas Jefferson was one of the first Americans to grow tomatoes. Records show that tomatoes were used in the White House during his presidency. They could be purchased at various Washington markets and had a surprisingly long season, from mid-July to mid-November.

In the United States, as elsewhere, the tomato, as a result of its perishability, was grown in home gardens long before it was cultivated commercially. Louisiana was the quickest to develop this vegetable for stews and sauces, but the tomato still was not eaten raw. By 1835, due to improved transportation, the Northern markets were selling tomatoes during the summer months. Within 30 years, they were offered all year around.

More than half a century later, during World War I, farm clubs for boys and girls encouraged growing more healthy foods. They concentrated on the tomato. The Bureau of Home Economics promoted an ideal diet, which included eating 55 pounds of tomatoes annually per person. Consciousness of the importance of vitamins and minerals had raised this recommended tomato consumption from 36 pounds annually.

The Supreme Court even became involved. Botanically, the tomato is a fruit, but legally, it is a vegetable. The Court ruled in 1893 that it was used like a vegetable; thus, it must be considered one for the purposes of trade.

When we think of the tomato today, a large, red, round fruit comes to mind. Until 1830, however, the tomato was deeply ribbed and ready to be separated into triangular segments, like an orange. At the time, this was the best tomato that the Italians had bred from the small red fruit of Peruvian origin. This type of tomato is rarely grown today.

Now most tomatoes are variations of one species, with the only true tomato being the yellow cherry tomato, which is still grown from seeds. Since World War II American botanist have experimented with producing larger more hardy tomatoes that would be less perishable in shipping.

Capsicum Peppers

The term "pepper" refers to two entirely different groups of plants. The spice pepper, both black and white, is the fruit of any of a group of related Old World trees, and is routinely mentioned in period cookbooks. The capsicum peppers, which include both hot peppers (chili, cayenne, paprika, etc.) and sweet peppers, are New World. According to the OED, the first English use of the word "chili" is in 1662. According to Dewitt and Gerlach, there is a Spanish reference to hot peppers from the New World in 1493; apparently the seeds had been brought back by Columbus. They assert that peppers are mentioned in Italy in 1526 and in Hungary (in a list of foreign seeds planted in a noblewoman's garden-as "Turkish Red Pepper") in 1569. They also say that "according to Leonhard Fuchs, an early German professor of medicine, chiles were cultivated in Germany by 1542, in England by 1548, and in the Balkans by 1569." Assuming that both the dates they give and those they attribute to Fuchs are correct, it sounds as though chile peppers, at least, had spread through much of Europe by 1600. This does not, however, imply that they were in common use. We have not found any period recipes using capsicum peppers, nor period references to their being served at feasts.

Hot pepper is said to have been discovered by Christopher Columbus in Cuba in 1493. Bell pepper is a variety of mild hot pepper that appeared in Southern Europe in the 18th century and was called sweet pepper. Peppers are all of the genus Capsicum, Solanaceae family, and there are many different species varying in size, colour and piquancy, such as paprika, pimento, chiltepin (alias pili-pili?) ...

It is attested that paprika was present in Hungary in 1604. The Turks would be the ones to have introduced it, through Bulgaria, as a substitute for black pepper. Paprika was used as a medicine to fight cholera during the 1831 epidemic and then became an emblematic specialty in Hungary. You find it everywhere, embroidered, sculpted, on earthenware, in frescos or paintings.

Paprika would be derived from the Serbo-Croatian word papar meaning pepper. The chilli peppers have been such a success everywhere that it is difficult today to imagine Indian or African cooking without them. Spiced food is often heard as hot food nowadays. But the Medieval cooking consisted of food favoured with spices without being hot. Consider, the hot chilli peppers were unheard of in the Middle Ages, outside of the Americas.

Beans

Some beans are New World, some Old World. Crosby lists "lima, sieva, Rangoon, Madagascar, butter, Burma, pole, curry, kidney, French, navy, haricot, snap, string, common, and frijole bean" as American, and mentions that soybeans are Old World. The author believes that broad beans, aka fava beans, are also old world. According to Crosby, the haricot bean "was in Europe by at least 1542, for in that year the botanists Tragus and Leonard Fuchs described and sketched it. It was probably grown in appreciable quantities in France by the end of the century; otherwise, why would the Englishman, Barnaby Googe, write of it as the 'French bean' in 1572?" There is also one reference to kidney beans and French beans being grown in the Middle East in the 1570's (Crosby).

Phaseolus vulgaris is a leguminous plant native to the South of Mexico, Yucatan and the warmer parts of Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru. Called Ayacotl in Central America, the common green bean landed in Europe in the 16th century; canon Piero Valeriano started growing it in Italy in 1528, starting with a few seeds offered to Pope Clement VII. In the 18th century, numerous varieties of beans were already found at the markets in the Languedoc region of France. The bean adapted so well to the European climates that is was soon thought to be indigenous.

Black-eyed peas was the only bean type leguminous plant native to the Old World. It was already grown in Italy by the Romans and called Phasiolum. This pea, which is somewhat smaller than the seeds of the American variety of beans, is now practically totally forgotten in Europe. It is still cultivated in parts of Italy, Spain ... and the United States.

The traditional French cassoulet doesn't go back to the Hundred Year's War, as the legend would have it. It is in the 18th century that the mulard mule duck, used for duck confit, appeared and that the white bean of the cassoulet developed.

Peanuts

With peanuts, as with corn, there has been some controversy over their origin. The OED describes them as native to the New World and West Africa. Higgins discusses the evidence at some length and concludes that the peanut is a New World plant that was introduced into West Africa early in the sixteenth century, probably by the Portuguese, and into the East Indies at about the same time, probably by both the Portuguese and the Spanish. European explorers in Africa a century later observed peanuts, maize, cassava, and tobacco, and concluded that they all were native. He cites Chevalier, Auguste, "Histoire de L'Arachide.," Rev. Bot. Appl. & d'Agr. Trop. 13 (146 & 147):722-752. According to Cosby, peanuts were grown in China in the sixteenth century.

There is some archeological evidence for peanuts in China at a much earlier date, briefly discussed by Simoon, but my conclusion from his discussion is that the evidence is probably wrong.

The OED reports no uses of "peanut" (or "groundnut" as a synonym for "peanut") prior to the eighteenth century.

The peanut is a legumuminous plant (Arachis hypogea) native to Mexico. It was called tlacacahualt by the Aztecs, which gave cacahouète in French and cacahuete in Spanish.

Pumpkin, Squash, Gourd

It seems to be well established that at least three of the four cultivated species of Cucurbita (C. pepo, C. moschata and C. maxima) existed in the New World long before Columbus; the fourth (C. ficifolia) is "ordinarily not thought of as a cultivated plant" (Whittaker), but apparently has been cultivated in the past. Whitaker argues, on the evidence of the absence of these species in the fifteenth century European herbals and their presence in the sixteenth century ones, that they were introduced into Europe from the New World. A variety of C. pepo similar to the squash now known as "Small Sugar" is illustrated in an herbal of 1542. What appears to be a field pumpkin is illustrated in 1560, with other varieties appearing in later herbals during the century. Whitaker concludes that "none of the cultivated species of Cucurbita were known to the botanists of the Western world before 1492." If so, all varieties of pumpkins, squash, and vegetable marrows are inappropriate before 1492; some were known in the sixteenth century, but may or may not have been sufficiently common to be used in feasts.

There is, however, a plant translated as "gourd" in both Italian and Islamic cookbooks before 1492. The Four Seasons of the House of Cerruti shows a "Cucurbite" that looks exactly like a green butternut squash-a fact of which Whitaker seems unaware when asserting the absence of all varieties of Cucurbita from pre-sixteenth century sources. I am uncertain whether Whitaker is correct and the medieval gourds and Cucurbite are a different plant, perhaps no longer cultivated, or whether he is wrong and some modern squashes are Old World as well as New World.

"The white-flowered gourd, Lagenaria sicereia," seems to "have been common to both Old and New Worlds" (Whitaker). I am told that the Italian Edible Gourd is a species of Lagenaria and is available from, among others, J.L. Hudson, Seedman (P.O.Box 1058, Redwood City, CA 94064. It might be a good guess for a period gourd, although the description does not fit the gourd pictured in The Four Seasons of the House of Cerruti. Simoons describes a Lagenaria that is used in modern Chinese cooking. We have obtained what we think is the right gourd from a Chinese grocery store, and used it in one or two period recipes with satisfactory results.

The large cucurbitaceae family comes from America: cucurbita pepo, the pumpkin, comes from Mexico and the South of the United States; cucurbita maxima, Hubbard squash, comes from the mild climates of South America (Chile, Argentina, Peru, Bolivia); cucurbita moschata, butternut squash, comes from the Northwest of Colombia and Mexico.

Courgettes, or zucchinis, are a recent variety of cucurbita pepo. The word courgette, for a small courge picked before full growth, was included in the French Larousse dictionary in 1929.

The only type of marrow known in medieval Europe is a gourd (cucurbita lagenaria vulgaris) native to South Asia. There is a recipe for Gourdes in potage, in the Forme of Cury.

Pineapple and Guava

These are New World fruits that were being grown in India in the 16th Century (Crosby).

Blueberry and Cranberry

It appears from comments by Simmons that the term "blueberry" describes a number of different New World species of the genus Vaccinium; the bilberry, which is a member of the same genus, is Old World. The blueberry produces "larger and better flavored berries than the European bilberry." According to McGee, "The cultivated blueberry, a native of the American east, north, and northwest, has been purposely bred only since about 1910 ... ."

According to McGee, Cranberries are also species of Vaccinium. According to several earlier sources, there is disagreement as to whether they are members of Vaccinium or belong in a separate genus, Oxycoccus. There are both old world and new world cranberries, but "the commercial cranberry ... is an American native." (McGee) The word "cranberry" seems to have come into use with the new world variant of the berry.

It sounds, in both cases, as though a jelly made from modern berries would correspond pretty closely to something that might have been eaten in Europe in period, but individual berries would look noticably different from their old world relatives. We do not, however, know of any period recipes using either berry.

Spices - Allspice, also called Jamaican Pepper, and Vanilla

According to the OED, the word "allspice" is first used in 1621 and "vanilla" in 1662. Both are from the New World. They might have been used earlier in Spain or Italy, since South American foods seem to have reached those countries earlier than England.

Vanilla planifolia is a tropical orchid, a parasitic liana of the jungle trees of Central America and the north of South America. Vanilla is the fruit of this orchid. The pods are boiled then dried; giving the black fragrant sticks we buy today. Cultivation of vanilla fragrans, the most fragrant species, was difficult to adapt away from its native area where no apidae meliponinae, the indigenous stingless bee, would pollinate it. Artificial fertilization was imagined around 1830. What would pastry makers do without vanilla today?

Cocoa - A drink made from cocoa was drunk by the Aztecs; according to the Larousse, it was unsweetened, flavored with vanilla, and drunk cold.

Cocoa was brought back by the Spaniards in the sixteenth century; they flavored it "with chillies and other hot spices" and made it "into a soup-like concoction." The first recorded use of chocolate in England was in 1650. The Larousse notes that "All this, of course, was still cocoa, or drinking chocolate. It is not definitely known exactly when chocolate was first sold for eating, probably not until Victoria's reign."

According to Black this conclusion is mistaken. She cites chocolate almonds being produced by 1670, and the use of chocolate "to flavour little light cakes called `puffs' " and as a dinner dessert, with one recipe dating from 1681.

The OED gives the first use of "Chocolate" in English as 1604, in a history of the Indies. References to drinking it start in the 1660's. The word "Cocoa" appears much later.

It appears from this that a drink made from cocoa beans is in period, at least for Spanish personae, although the drink would be very different from modern cocoa. The use of chocolate as a food or an ingredient in foods appears to be well out of period.

Cacahuaquchtl, the tree of the Maya gods. The cacao tree (Theobroma cacao L.) is 5 to 6 meter high and native to the tropical rain forests of Yucatan and Guatemala. Each cacao pod contains 20 to 40 seeds that are to ferment, dry, be roasted and ground in order to give cacao paste, then chocolate.

The Mayas and the Aztecs roasted the seeds, ground them and mixed the powder with boiling water, spiced with hot pepper, or with musk and honey, or with corn flower.

They would then drink the tchacahoua (Mayan) or the tchocoatl (Aztec) of aphrodisiac repute. The Spanish later replaced the hot pepper by vanilla, sugar and cream. The drink brought back to Spain by Cortez in 1527 became "chocolate". It was the object of conversations throughout Europe by 1585.

While spices, which have been used ever since Antiquity are still often considered somewhat exotic, chocolate, which is eaten since the 17th century, has become a local specialty in many parts of Europe, illustrating how the miracle of chocolate arose from the immaterial art of the chocolate maker.

Turkeys

The first reference to turkeys in the OED is in 1555. According to the Larousse, Brillat-Savarin says that turkeys came into use in Europe in the 17th century. There seems to have been some confusion initially with the guinea fowl, which is an Old World bird; it is therefore hard to be certain which early mentions of turkeys refer to what we now call turkeys. It seems likely, however, that turkeys were being eaten in Europe before 1600.

Turkey is a New World food that reached Asia Minor only after 1500 and did not come into general use in Europe until the mid 16th century. (Turkey is documented as being in London markets by the 1540's.) They are perfectly period for Tudor or Elizabethan feasts, but not for either the Middle Ages or most of the Renaissance. (The debate on when the Renaissance ended is still on going, but many historians agree that it was over in most of Europe by the early to mid 1500's.) Many medieval themed restaurants and Renaissance Fairs should be sternly admonished for serving turkey (and potatoes) as authentic food! The only instance in which turkey should be considered for a modern medieval dinner is as a replacement for peacock or swan, two large birds not readily available for the kitchen today and whose meat is not nearly as tender & moist as turkey.

There is also evidence to show that before 1540-50, the bird Europeans often called "turkey" was actually the West African Guinea Fowl; Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary says of the name turkey:

"confusion with the guinea fowl, supposed to be imported from Turkish territory (1555)"

One theory claims that Europeans took to the North American turkey faster than they did to other New World foods (such as the tomato) because of its resemblance, in both physical form and in its name, to the Guinea Fowl, frequently referred to as a "turkey."

Turkey in English is dinde in French. Cortez ate the delicious bird in Aztec country, but when it was brought back to Europe, it was called poule d'Inde in French (India hen, as in the West Indies), and turkey in English. The marriage of King Charles IX in 1570 was the first official occasion in France with dinde served at the banquet. Turkey notably saved the Mayflower pilgrims from famine in November 1620, thus the Thanksgiving commemoration meal.

 

Other References

Broccoli - although a variety of broccoli was known by the Romans, it was not introduced into France until the 1500's and not into England until the 1720's, making it a rather unknown vegetable during medieval times.

Iceberg Lettuce -

Kiwi -

Rhubarb - like the banana, possibly known about but never used.

New World foods are not native to Europe, or Asia. Most are from North or South America, some from Pacific and other islands and Australasia.

Some of these foodstuffs began to be brought back to Europe with Columbus and subsequent expeditions. Some of these were brought back as novelties available to the very rich in late period, however a few items (e.g. sweet potato) became instant hits that could be grown easily, and were relatively widespread in Europe by the middle of the 16th Century. For other items there is no proof that they ever were brought to Europe prior to 1600.

Unless you have checked the history of the particular item, and are making food suitable for a late renaissance rich person, it is best to consider all of the items on the following list as out of period.

Roots: potato, sweet potato, jicama.
Beans: pinto beans, red beans, kidney beans, lima beans, string beans, runner bean, field peas, black-eyed peas, green beans.
Stalks and Vegetable Fruits: tomato, winter squash types, summer squash types except Calabash, the bottle gourd (different species: Lagenaria siceraria) avocado, capsicum, hot/chilli peppers.
Grains: corn (maize), quinoa, wild rice.
Herbs: Chocolate Mint, Eau de Cologne Mint, French Tarragon, Mexican Tarragon, Chilli, Bergamot, Garlic Chives
Fruit: kiwi, mango, guava, papaya, starfruit, grapefruit, passion fruit, pineapple, prickly pear, hybrid strawberry, black raspberry, loganberry, cranberry, blueberry, breadfruit, cacao (from which chocolate is made), vanilla.
Nuts: pecans, peanuts, cashews, Brazil nuts, macadamia nuts.
Poultry: turkey

There were three principal regions of the world in which food plants were domesticated. The vegetables, fruits and spices from these regions include:

ASIAN NATIVES (some imported B.C.)
citron, apricot, peach, yam, water chestnut, bamboo, eggplant, lemon, lime, orange, melon, cardamon, ginger, cinnamon, turmeric, black pepper, clove, mace, nutmeg, tarragon

EASTERN MEDITERRANEAN AREA NATIVES (some used B.C.)
mushroom, beet, radish, turnip, carrot, parsnip, asparagus, leek, onion, cabbage, lettuce, artichoke, cucumber, broad bean, pea, olive, apple, pear, cherry grape, fig, date, strawberry, basil, marjoram, oregano, mint, rosemary, sage, savory, thyme, anise, caraway, coriander, cumin, dill, parsley, fennel, bay, caper, fenugreek, garlic, mustard, poppy, sesame, saffron

NEW WORLD NATIVES (imported 15th-16th centuries)
potato, sweet potato, pumpkin, squashes, tomato, kidney bean, lima bean, sweet pepper, avocado, pineapple, allspice, chili peppers, vanilla, turkey

References

Batchelor, Leon D. and Webber, Herbert John, The Citrus Industry, 1946.
Black, Maggie, “Seventeenth Century Chocolate,” in Petits Propos Culinaires, 14, June 1983.
Coe, Sophie, articles on Aztec and Inca food in Petits Propos Culinaires, 19, 20, 21, and 29.
Crosby, Alfred W. Jr., The Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492, Greenwood Publishing, Westport CT, 1972.
Dewitt, Dave and Gerlach, Nancy, The Whole Chile Pepper Book, Little, Brown Co., Boston 1990.
Finan, John J., Maize in the Great Herbals. Chronica Botanica Company, Waltham, Mass. 1950.
Hattox, Ralph S., Coffee and Coffeehouses, The Origins of a Social Beverage in the Medieval Near East, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1985.
Higgins, B. B., “Origin and Early History of the Peanut” in The Peanut–The Unpredictable Legume, A Symposium, The National Fertilizer Association, Washington, D.C. 1951.
Longone, Jan, From the Kitchen, The American Magazine and Historical Chronicle Vol. 3 No. 2 1987-88. My principal source on tomatoes.
Mangelsdorf, Paul C., Corn: Its Origin Evolution and Improvement. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1974.
McGee, Harold, On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen, Consumer's Union, Mt. Vernon, N.Y. 1984.
Alan E. Simmons, Growing Unusual Fruit, Walker and Company, N.Y. 1972.
Frederick J. Simoons, Food in China, CRC Press, Boca Raton 1991.
Judith Spencer, tr., The Four Seasons of the House of Cerruti (late fourteenth century Italian).
Vesco, Clotilde, Cucina Fiorentina fra Medioevo e Rinascimento, 1984. Page 155
Wadsworth, Capt. John, Chocolate: or, An Indian Drinke. London, 1652. Apparently translated from a book by Melchor de Lara, "Physitian General for the Kingdome of Spaine", 1631.
Whitaker, Thomas W., “American Origin of the Cultivated Cucurbits,” Annals of the Missouri Botanical Garden, 1947.
Wilson, C. Anne, Food and Drink in Britain: From the Stone Age to recent times, Harper and Row 1974. This is an extraordinarily careful and detailed book.