The Origin of Food
I often spend my time wondering where foods came from. Rather, not where foods came from but how anyone discovered that they were edible. Or went through a whole lot of trouble making them edible.
Take, for example, the simple escargot. It's been documented as livestock since Roman times and there's even evidence that it was the first domesticated animal (from archeological findings at the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition period around the Mediterranean). Now, once cooking's developed, I can see this pretty easily. You can eat oysters raw, snails are the consistency of oysters and have a shell. They taste gross raw, so you try cooking them, and they taste okay, but sometimes they make you sick. You collect them and keep them around so you can cook a bunch later and those don't make you sick. This last part is based upon the theory that their diet is more carefully managed because a subsistence human probably wouldn't produce enough carrion and offal to give extras to snails. Then, naturally, it becomes hoity-toity because it's can be a hobby and seems gross, which always screams "delicacy."
Then there's the artichoke. I have two theories on this one, but I think the second one is right. The first one is that some human was starving and found this ugly prickly plant. Desperate, he or she ripped it apart looking for something edible. Most wasn't, but the squishy white part wasn't covered in thorns and tasted kind of good. The second theory I believe to be more plausible is that there's some animal that loves artichokes. Given animals' general universal aversion to being stabbed by thorns, this animal knows a way to get to the good stuff without a face full of blood. Humans copy it.
Finally, we come to tonight's consumable of interest: tequila. We'll work backwards for this one. When the Conquistadores arrived, they naturally came toting a lot of liquor, in this case brandy. Unfortunately, a hundred men without a woman or bath in site for months at a time (actually, they probably never really bathed except on the rarity they found a clean stream that wasn't freezing cold or rushing dangerously, so almost never) tend to consume liquor like it's going out of style. So, they ran out and needed a substitute. "Oh, hey, these Aztecs we've been slaughtering all day were drinking this weird beery-wine stuff. I wonder if we can distill it like brandy?" And okay, yes, technically the Conquistadores made mezcal, not tequila, but the difference is mainly in marketing. Anyway how'd the Aztecs come up with this beery-wine (called pulque)? Well, it's a sacred drink and mostly ceremonial to them, although this seems a little tongue-in-cheek since half of their pulque drinking vessels are lovingly hand-carved in the shape of manic simians. Why ceremonial? It comes from the Maguey plant, aka Century Plant, that blooms very rarely, but when it does, it shoots out a flower stalk about, oh I don't know, 20 feet tall. In the desert, walking by a spiky agave all your life and then suddenly finding a 20-foot-tall sexing tower coming out of the middle of it would be a pretty big deal. So, what's a surprised and spiritual person to do? Naturally, you follow human nature and chop the bastard down so you can suck the delicious life-giving juices from its once-majestic husk. Like giving a blowjob to a man who married his high school sweetheart before she got fat and demanding.
That's my theory, anyway. I'd be intrigued to hear anyone else's.
Take, for example, the simple escargot. It's been documented as livestock since Roman times and there's even evidence that it was the first domesticated animal (from archeological findings at the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition period around the Mediterranean). Now, once cooking's developed, I can see this pretty easily. You can eat oysters raw, snails are the consistency of oysters and have a shell. They taste gross raw, so you try cooking them, and they taste okay, but sometimes they make you sick. You collect them and keep them around so you can cook a bunch later and those don't make you sick. This last part is based upon the theory that their diet is more carefully managed because a subsistence human probably wouldn't produce enough carrion and offal to give extras to snails. Then, naturally, it becomes hoity-toity because it's can be a hobby and seems gross, which always screams "delicacy."
Then there's the artichoke. I have two theories on this one, but I think the second one is right. The first one is that some human was starving and found this ugly prickly plant. Desperate, he or she ripped it apart looking for something edible. Most wasn't, but the squishy white part wasn't covered in thorns and tasted kind of good. The second theory I believe to be more plausible is that there's some animal that loves artichokes. Given animals' general universal aversion to being stabbed by thorns, this animal knows a way to get to the good stuff without a face full of blood. Humans copy it.
Finally, we come to tonight's consumable of interest: tequila. We'll work backwards for this one. When the Conquistadores arrived, they naturally came toting a lot of liquor, in this case brandy. Unfortunately, a hundred men without a woman or bath in site for months at a time (actually, they probably never really bathed except on the rarity they found a clean stream that wasn't freezing cold or rushing dangerously, so almost never) tend to consume liquor like it's going out of style. So, they ran out and needed a substitute. "Oh, hey, these Aztecs we've been slaughtering all day were drinking this weird beery-wine stuff. I wonder if we can distill it like brandy?" And okay, yes, technically the Conquistadores made mezcal, not tequila, but the difference is mainly in marketing. Anyway how'd the Aztecs come up with this beery-wine (called pulque)? Well, it's a sacred drink and mostly ceremonial to them, although this seems a little tongue-in-cheek since half of their pulque drinking vessels are lovingly hand-carved in the shape of manic simians. Why ceremonial? It comes from the Maguey plant, aka Century Plant, that blooms very rarely, but when it does, it shoots out a flower stalk about, oh I don't know, 20 feet tall. In the desert, walking by a spiky agave all your life and then suddenly finding a 20-foot-tall sexing tower coming out of the middle of it would be a pretty big deal. So, what's a surprised and spiritual person to do? Naturally, you follow human nature and chop the bastard down so you can suck the delicious life-giving juices from its once-majestic husk. Like giving a blowjob to a man who married his high school sweetheart before she got fat and demanding.
That's my theory, anyway. I'd be intrigued to hear anyone else's.