legume · foodway14 bonds · 14 sourced

red lentil

The supply chain underneath it has been inverted.

savouryveganvegetarian

Cultural layer

Origin

The Fertile Crescent; among the first crops domesticated in the Neolithic, split and hulled to cook fast without soaking

Routes

Spread from West Asia across South Asia, the Mediterranean and the Horn; now grown largely in Canada, Australia and Turkey for export back into the cuisines that have always eaten them

Context

Canada is the world's largest exporter of lentils, most of them destined for South Asia and the Middle East. A crop domesticated in the Fertile Crescent and eaten there for ten thousand years now largely arrives by container from a country that adopted it in the 1970s. The dal is unchanged. The supply chain underneath it has been inverted.

Route

Pending

The routes are written. They are not yet mapped.

This entry's cultural layer already names where it came from and how it moved. What it does not yet carry is that movement as structure: ordered waypoints with real coordinates, and a mechanism on each leg. Until it does, the layer stays an empty slot rather than a drawn line, because a map built from prose would be a guess with a projection under it.

1 of 404 entries carries a mapped route · nutmeg is the prototype

What renders here when it lands

Waypoints
Ordered places, each with its kind
Coordinates
Real positions, with the gazetteer they came from
Segments
From, to, and the mechanism that moved it
Confidence
Documented, attributed or contested
Summary
What the route argues, in a sentence

Names · co-equal, marked by how each one travelled

Foodway

Present as a living food culture.

No names recorded.

Peoples

South Asian

Connections

14 bonds · 14 sourced

cumin

Structural

.80

Masoor dal tadka.

OriginMadhur Jaffrey's Indian Cookery (Madhur Jaffrey, 1982)

turmeric

Structural

.80

Masoor dal.

OriginMadhur Jaffrey's Indian Cookery (Madhur Jaffrey, 1982)

rice

Structural

.80

Masoor dal with rice.

Mechanism · nutritional

Grain and pulse complementarity again, with the quickest-cooking of the dals. Rice short on lysine, masoor short on methionine, the plate complete where neither half is.

Maize in human nutrition: improvement of maize diets (Food and Agriculture Organization, accessed 2026-09-13) · Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cookery (Madhur Jaffrey, 1982)

OriginMadhur Jaffrey's Indian Cookery (Madhur Jaffrey, 1982)Recorded on rice

teff

Structural

.80

Mechanism · nutritional

The same complementarity, with the red lentil of misir wot specifically. Teff short on lysine, the pulse short on methionine, injera carrying both.

Maize in human nutrition: improvement of maize diets (Food and Agriculture Organization, accessed 2026-09-13) · Ethiopia: Recipes and Traditions from the Horn of Africa (Yohanis Gebreyesus, 2019)

OriginEthiopia: Recipes and Traditions from the Horn of Africa (Yohanis Gebreyesus, 2019)Recorded on teff

injera

Structural

.80

Misir wot.

OriginEthiopia: Recipes and Traditions from the Horn of Africa (Yohanis Gebreyesus, 2019)Recorded on injera

panch phoron

Structural

.80

Tarka dal with masoor.

OriginMadhur Jaffrey's Indian Cookery (Madhur Jaffrey, 1982)Recorded on panch phoron

garlic