User:Valereee/Magic 8 Foods

The Magic 8 foods are corn, beans, squash, chili, tomato, potato, vanilla, and cacao, foods native to the Americas and unknown anywhere else before 1491, which were taken by explorers to other parts of the world as part of the Columbian exchange, where they profoundly changed cuisine in many places. According to cultural anthropologist and food historian Lois Ellen Frank,

If we deconstruct that these foods were inherently native, then that means that the Italians didn’t have the tomato, the Irish didn’t have the potato, half the British National Dish—Fish and Chips—didn’t exist. The Russians didn’t have the potato, nor did they have vodka from the potato. There were no chiles in any Asian cuisine anywhere in the world, nor were there any chiles in any East Indian cuisine dishes, including curries. And the French had no confection using either vanilla or chocolate. So the Old World was a completely different place.