Tuesday, April 20, 2021
Random Quora-type question
Bored and tired. Spending too much time on Quora this week.
Here's a Quora-style question that I haven't seen there.
We're familiar with the vegetable crops that were brought from the Americas back to Europe, and quickly became universal there. Tomatoes, potatoes, corn, chili peppers, tobacco.
What about livestock? Why aren't there any equivalent meat products?
Probably because the only unique livestock are small. The big animals in this hemisphere are llamas and bison. Llamas are similar to horses. Bison are similar to oxen. Not nearly as unique and irreplaceable as tomatoes or potatoes or tobacco.
The truly unique animals in the Americas are edible but never became commercially popular even here. Possums, coatimundis, capybaras, armadillos.
After writing the above I went back to Quora to see if it reflected my writing as usual. It didn't exactly, but it did remind me that squash was also among the unique crops.
Later: It's a little surprising that English "cuisine" didn't pick up on those small animals. Traditional English "cuisine" is all organ meat, using a wide variety of obscure organs from small birds and mammals. Possum pancreas or armadillo aorta would fit right into a classic fry-up.
Labels: Asked and not worth asking
¶ 2:19 PM
