If Japan had never existed, we wouldn't have sushi. If Italy had never existed, we wouldn't have pizza or pasta...

If Japan had never existed, we wouldn't have sushi. If Italy had never existed, we wouldn't have pizza or pasta. If Mexico had never existed, we wouldn't have tacos, etc.

But because of a sheer accident of history, the ancient peoples of Italy, Japan and Mexico managed to form states that could develop their own distinctive cuisines using the ingredients that they had with themselves at the time.

So my question is: why don't we try to "invent" new cuisines? Why do we only take from what was available in the past? We can use science to figure out what sort of tastes people (generally) prefer. And then experiment with the ingredients that we have available to us to create new foods and thus new "cuisines" that are specifically designed to be delicious rather than adapted from past cultures.

Other urls found in this thread:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasta#History
aiweirdness.com/tagged/cookbook
anyforums.com/
twitter.com/NSFWRedditGif

People explore with food all the time. Are you just getting hip to the game?

>If Japan had never existed, we wouldn't [the laziest foods known to man]

God shut the fuck up and go back to re ddit

>Italy had never existed, we wouldn't have pizza or pasta.
Pretty sure we hand pizza and pasta prior to 1861, user.

what is left to invent?

>People explore with food all the time
Yes, but it's always within the context of existing cuisines. Someone might put a new ingredient into a sushi or a burrito or a pizza. But the product of that experiment is still a burrito or a pizza. You might create a fusion dish with both Japanese and Mexican elements. But the product is still a mix of two existing cuisines rather than something new.

Ever seen a fast food research lab? We are creating scientifically inspired new cuisine. But cooking is art not science so that food comes out trashy.

>why don't we try to "invent" new cuisines?
What is:
>turducken
>pineapple upside-down cake
>general tso's chicken
>molten lava cake
>onion rings
>beef wellington
>lobster wellington
>bananas foster
>stromboli
>jell-o
>brownies
You fucking idiot.

Pasta was invented in China I guess, but I think I've read that pizza was actually a new food created specifically to celebrate the unification of the first Kingdom of Italy. I believe the first pizza was a Margherita, with its red sauce, white mozzarella, and green basil symbolizing the new red, white, and green flag of Italy, and named after their first queen.

Because humans have been around for tens of thousands of years, and in terms of cuisine framework, there's nothing else left to invent. Just like how there's no wholly original stories anymore.

First you need a navy and an army, then you can secede from whatever country you are from. Now you can call your territory something new. Then you can come to Veeky Forums and grant select people citizenship so that you can start a department of culinary affairs and have them come up with a national dish. Congrats, you have renamed ramen soup.

Are you stupid? I'm not talking about "fusion cuisine", in talking about what you are dumb ass. Its done all the time. I do it all the time and I'm a no name peice of shit. Grab a base ingredient and fucking do some magic with it. Fuck.

Pizza predates the unification of Italy significantly. Pizza has existed since Roman times.

>19th century
>humans have been around for tens of thousands of years, there's nothing else left to invent
>trains invented
>phones invented
>20th century
>humans have been around for tens of thousands of years, there's nothing else left to invent
>cars invented
>planes invented
>computers invented
>internet invented
>wi-fi invented
>radio invented
>television invented
>21st century
>humans have been around for tens of thousands of years, there's nothing else left to invent
>smartphones invented
>VR invented
>smartcars invented

Just to clarify, are you suggesting that Mexican, Italian, and Japanese cuisine was created whole-cloth from scratch? And if you say no, then how are you suggesting those came about?

Then I guess it's just the Margherita pizza specifically that was created to celebrate unification. Please show me this evidence of "roman pizza" though. As far as I have been aware the Romans didn't even have tomato sauce.

Traditional pizza did not have tomatoes in it because tomatoes are a new world food that came from Mexico. Pasta used to be eaten slathered with oil, cheese, and vegetables/greens.

Did you black out for half my sentence? I said in terms of cuisine framework, there's nothing left to invent. I hope humans can invent a cure for mental retardation next.

Wheat is native to the fertile crescent. How far back do you faggots want to go to establish ownership of a particular food? At some point we have to meet the common ancestor between humans and wheat.

Romans wouldn't have had tomato sauce. Tomatoes are a new world plant.

>Traditional pizza did not have tomatoes
Then it wasn't fucking pizza you cock sucking mother fucker

Guy, tomatoes did not exist in Yuropa before 1500CE. Are you stupid?

>Anything on flat bread is pizza
Nice try

The 19th century inventions were real inventions in the sense that in 1799 nobody had imagined or predicted technologies like trains and phones.
The 20th century inventions are a bit of a mixed bag. Lots of people imagined heavier-than-air flight driven by corkscrews or wings, and although many continued to believe it was physically impossible even as it was being proven by the Wright brothers, their successful design was in fact based on wings and the corkscrew principle just as speculative thinkers of centuries past had imagined. Inventions having to do with information technology came a "bit more out of nowhere." Just like the case with the 19th century inventions, at the dawn of the 20th century nobody had imagined the internet and they probably would not have even understood the purpose of it.

But the 21st century inventions so far are no inventions at all. Portable computers/communicators, immersive virtual reality, and vehicles that drive themselves were all popular sci-fi ideas that had existed for decades. You can see examples of every single one of those things in Star Trek episodes from the 1960s!

Right, so what the fuck is this "pizza from roman times?" Sounds like you're just talking about bread.
From a quick google search,
>Modern pizza developed in Naples, when tomato was added to the focaccia in the late 18th century.
If you're just talking about "pizza-like foods," that is, anything put on top of flatbread and baked, then you might as well be arguing that pizza was invented in India.

I am the one saying the romans did not have pizza. Can you read? I know there were no tomatoes in Europe at that time, which is why I said the romans did not have tomato sauce. You seem like the stupid one here.

>tomatoes are the defining ingredient of pizza
Go and read a history book you collossal sperm gargling fuckwit.

>ITT: ameritards who think pizza has always been made with tomatoes.
Your education system is a fucking joke,

I have read many history books and very few of them have even mentioned pizza. By the way I'm aware of and even a fan of white pizza, which is a modern derivative of the original tomato sauce-based neapolitan pizzas.

Hahhahaha is this nigger for real?

I think you've had enough internet for today.

>The term pizza was first recorded in the 10th century, in a Latin manuscript from Gaeta in Southern Lazio on the border with Campania.
Point and laugh at the retards who think the new world was discovered in the 10th Century.
Point and laugh, everyone.

Hahaha this fucking retard thinks just because the word pizza was used at some point before pizza was invented there was pizza.

Literally the same wikipedia page also says pizza was invented in the late 18th century. Words were used for things before they acquired their modern meanings. The word "prince" had its modern meaning in feudal times, but originally "princeps" just meant "first citizen" hundreds of years before that.

Pizza is dough with tomato and cheese. No tomato, no pizza. Linguistics doesn't factor into the existence of a food.

>what is etemology?

>the word pizza was used at some point before pizza was invented there was pizza.
Jesus Christ........

Nothing? Etemology isn't a word.

The word car was used as far back as the 13th century. Does that mean cars existed in the 13th century? Use your brain for once.

>Pizza is dough with tomato and cheese.
Unless you're in the USA.

If my avatar is an anime MLP, does my opinion count 1/9rd of a normal person's?

No, but your misuse of the apostrophe does.
Mouth Breather.

That usage is perfectly correct. It's possessive.

Today there are many varieties derivative of the original neapolitan pizzas. Some of those varieties even change the fundamental ingredients or change the purpose of the dish from an entree to a dessert. They are still described as pizzas because they are derived from the common ancestor of all modern pizzas.

This has got to be a joke about "1/9rd," which did give me a chuckle. I read it as "one nird," i.e. "one nerd."

Sushi:
fish and rice with soya sauce. Not necessarily a uniquely japanese idea, but definitely a Japanese preparation of something that would have been at least nudged by China. Ultimately, simple local ingredients, prepared in a way that either makes the most sense (this rice is sticky. Let's stick the fish to it!), or tries to be artistic wherever possible (also a very Japanese idea).

Pizza:
New ingredients given to an old idea. An Italian preparation of an idea probably almost as old as bread itself.

Tacos:
New people to old ingredients. The indigena would have been using corn, tomatoes, peppers, rice, beans, etc for hundreds of years before the Spanish brought some Latin flair along with their conquest of the new world. The end result is still in flux - Tex Mex vs. resort town, vs. street vendor vs North vs. South, etc.

The ability to import nearly anything, and the lack of necessity hamper modern invention, but the ability is still there. It's why people like Adria, and places like Noma are able to charge what they do for their food - it's an artistic new take on an old idea.

From my own experience, there is a resurgence of local ingredients and first-nations inspiration in Canadian cuisine. The national zeitgeist probably won't let it take off the same way that molecular gastronomy or Korea fusion has, but there is a push to create a national cuisine for a country that historically doesn't have much of an identity.

>places like Noma are able to charge what they do for their food
I don't think it makes sense to compare Noma to any kind of heritage foods. Noma fills a niche more like a feast thrown by a decadent Roman emperor who had exotic ingredients brought in from all over the empire. Caligula's crazy feasts or whatever did not really influence the cuisine or the culture since those foods never would have been accessible to ordinary home cooks.

However "common people" have still invented new dishes in modern times due to the availability of new ingredients. A lot of the examples are kind of disgusting (I'm thinking about mid-20th century cassaroles in the midwest or spam-based foods in Hawaii after WWII), but there are probably some that are really good. Over time the best ones or the ones that have the widest appeal will become established as traditional foods, just like pizza or sushi or whatever have today.

the past is time-tested. It's already been vetted to an extent. And people make new foods all the time. kapsalon, nachos, frito pie, chocolate chip cookies, nashville hot chicken are all less than 100 years old

Or you could say that what you're describing is done every day in fancy kitchens. That's basically what haute cuisine is these days

Noma's thing could prove to be inspirational, especially somewhere like Denmark where historically and logistically it makes sense to forage locally and preserve everything possible. Without that sense of allegory behind it, it would be a mad man plating up pickled moss.

But you're definitely not wrong, and I agree with you on your second point. American cooking at the dawn of the cold war was pure necessity. As much of it is god awful, it still left its mark and put streetlights along the road for the processed food market.

>why don't we try to invent new cuisines?
we literally did, it's called fast food. Tons of r&d $$$ and teams of scientists worked to provide the common man with McChickens.

Because globalization and multiculturalism are destroying individual cultures and replacing them with a homogenous brown mush called consumerism. For fucks sakes there is a McDonalds below the Museum of Communism in Prague.

Didn't that used to be the torture museum?

Communism, torture, same thing

I dunno what country that is, but in a lot of eastern european tourist cities I've been to, they have "torture museums" that are mostly about the history of political oppression during communism in the cold war. Maybe they are just renaming them to reflect more accurately what they are. Tourists going to a "torture museum" want to see like medieval torture devices, not be reminded of actual historical bad stuff.

im embarrassed about poutine... and about our liberal government

Poutine is the shit my man, even if it is street food its still good. I agree about the government though.

Probably true but it used to be a medieval torture museum. Pretty gruesome it was.
>tfw: you'll never have a wooden pyramid smashed up your arse by a guy with a sledgehammer

>due to a mistake in history we will never have the great country of Blanvrond and all of their delicious cuisine

This reality is shit

Most of those are fake anyway. Just tourist traps. Very few of the torture devices in those museums were ever actually used.

Fuck Mexicans, Salvadoran food is the best Latin food

>Pasta was invented in China I guess
no. how did this shitty meme get propagated so thoroughly?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasta#History

How do you propose "inventing" new foods without any sort of cultural context? Create a list of every edible substance and use a computer program to make a recipe of randomized proportions and cooking techniques?

>en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasta#History
That section seems to be defining pasta as "boiled dough" which means that any form of dumpling counts. Not surprising that there were multiple independent inventions of the dumpling, considering that it is represented in almost every heritage cuisine.
Thanks for showing me that though, from now on I'm going to tell everyone that lasagna is the most ancient form of pasta.

>no. how did this shitty meme get propagated so thoroughly?
Answered right there in your article,
>There is a legend of Marco Polo importing pasta from China which originated with the Macaroni Journal, published by an association of food industries with the goal of promoting pasta in the United States.
It was literally an advertising stunt that "originated in the 1920s or 30s in an advertisement for a Canadian spaghetti company."

Computer-generated recipes exist and they are hilarious
>¼ cup white seeds
>1 cup mixture
>1 teaspoon juice
>1 chunks
>¼ lb fresh surface
>¼ teaspoon brown leaves
>½ cup with no noodles
>1 round meat in bowl

aiweirdness.com/tagged/cookbook

most of the stuff you listed are not 100% new inventions. its taking something old and making it more efficient/doing something more. trains with more mobility=cars, car with more mobility = plane, radio with picture = tv, internet without wires = wifi, phone with a computer = smartphone, etc. the culinary equivalent would be hotdog to corndog, pizza to calzone, sandwich to burrito/taco/wrap. the biggest thing is the birth of fast food. stuff like that didnt really exist until now. processed sludge is new too

>the biggest thing is the birth of fast food. stuff like that didnt really exist until now.
I agree with most of what you posted (in spirit at least if not in detail), but I'm not sure that's right. The "fast food" niche existed in ancient cities in the Roman empire and probably other places in the form of vat food that could be cooked in huge pots and then served a la carte. Not so different from something like Chipotle today. The difference between modern and ancient fast food seems to be consistency, but maybe there's more to it. I can't quite put my finger on it.

if only they'd invent the cure for retardation. you could really benefit from it

Wait, you’re claiming that tomato is necessary for pizza to qualify as pizza?

I used to run a wood fired pizza restaurant kitchen. We did pizzas without tomato all the time. Seafood mornay pizza, caramelised banana dessert pizza, hoi sin cha siu pizza, the list goes on. Are you telling me they weren’t pizzas?

hoisin is one word lad

Americans did, but you need to look at specific subcultures (like Cajuns in the Louisiana bayous who invented étouffée, and probably a few other cajun dishes that weren't already developed and brought over from Canada/France), rather than "national" food.

New cuisine is always invented.
It is only that we deny whether we affirm it or not.

>So my question is: why don't we try to "invent" new cuisines?
you dumb fucking idiot, what a false premise

I think in some sense it is related to how so many things have already been done, in a way that things which may have seemed "new" at some point are just variations on a theme now. We don't really have new ingredients to play with except in some of those gastronomy places where they get creative with chemicals and access to new equipment like Jell-O printers or pancake printers or whatever that allows us to work previously impossible aesthetic accuracy. Another thing is people seem to like to know what type of food they're eating, not just food. It has to belong to a recognized category. There's definitely restaurants that are just "experimental" but the culture around food prices ordinary people out of those so they'll remain something unattainable and probably won't ever reach mainstream. In the sense that people used to be "inventors" and "polymaths" because if you were smart you could just figure a bunch of stuff out about everything, now you need to study for years in a specific field (usually) to make any new insights into it. The same may apply to cooking but it's not viewed the same way as an academic subject so it's hard to tell.

Pasta, as in shaped semolina dough cooked by heat and moisture, originated in either Pakistan/India, Afghanistan/Persia or North Africa, depending on how strict your definition is.
The Indo/Pak Persi/Afgh version dates to, IIRC, at least the 6th century, but it is a much softer dough and, once cooked, eaten cold as a sweet. Falooda is the modern version of this dish.
The North Africans were introduced to semolina with the Islamic conquests a century later. They began making couscous and tlitli with it, which are similar to their forebear but eaten savoury rather than sweetened and made with 100% hard semolina rather than a mix of semolina and soft flour. Prior to semolina's introduction, they were made with starchy root vegetables and/or other grains. Some regions of southern Algeria and southeastern Libya still prefer the old variety, often made from millet and/or teff.
Both the subcontinental pre-pasta and the North African one are steamed from fresh rather than boiled from dry, as is done with semolina pasta in Italy.
Semolina entered European gastronomy by way of the Islamic conqest of Sicily at around the same time the North Africans began to use it, the difference being that in Sicily, they dried out the dough then boiled it rather than steamed it freshly made. The drying method used in the Sicilian Emirate, by laying out freshly made pasta on palm fronds to dry in the sun, traveled back to North Africa and was adopted readily.

Also of note, rice was known in ancient Europe but only entered our gastronomy when the Arabs began to cultivate it in conquered Iberia and Sicily.

So pasta is durkadurka in origin, not Chinese.

Those are all variations of the traditional tomato sauce pizza. They are all clearly inspired by pizza and intended to be understood as pizzas. You served them in a pizza restaurant, right?

Talking about pizza today is not the same thing as trying to determine when pizza originated. A useful demarcation between all forms of flatbread (which were invented independently all over the world many times in prehistory) and the historical introduction of Neapolitan style pizza is when cheese and tomato sauce were layered on bread and baked together in an oven.

I never understood the idea that national cuisines are this autochthonous entity. Like it's a game of Civilization and the French civilization spawned on the map with the "bœuf à la Bourguignonne" tech unlocked from the very start. This is contrasted with the "fake" American cuisine, which was developed by humans based on previous techniques.

Those are pizza in the same way tomato and squash bisque are bisques.

You do realize that "ethnic" foods are a myth, right? Most "ethnic" foods didn't exist before international trade. You think Dante Alighieri ever slurped spaghetti from his plate? Retard.

>You think Dante Alighieri ever slurped spaghetti from his plate?
No, considering he lived in like the 13th century. He probably ate that ancient lasagna-like dish discussed upthread though.

The 13th century Neapolitan Liber de Coquina has a 'recipe' for, no joke, curried lasagne. IIRC, it's boiled pasta sheets layered with grated cheese which had been tossed with a "strong powder" of mixed spices and whatever vegetables were available. I put 'recipe' in quotes because it's more like
>get some flour and mix it with water until you make a dough then roll it flat and boil it then put it in a dish and top it with cooked vegetables and top that with grated cheese mixed with strong powder then top that with more dough then top that with more cooked veg...
etc etc etc
I also recall fish sauce being mentioned in that book, but not sure I recall if it was mentioned for use in the lasagne or some other recipe.

I'm from Italy and quite a few of the dishes mentioned in the book such as various chickpea dishes and leaf-veg dishes, are still very much eaten today. Several other dishes, however, faded into obscurity after the Columbian exchange.

VR goes as far back as 1995 with the Virtual Boy.

aussie sandwiches