vegetable · foodway9 bonds · 9 sourced

tomatillo

The Columbian Exchange is usually described as a transfer, but it was a selection, and someone did the selecting.

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Cultural layer

Origin

Mesoamerica; Physalis philadelphica, domesticated in Mexico before the tomato and cultivated by the Aztec, who used it more than they used tomatoes

Routes

Central to Mexican and Central American cooking; largely absent from European cooking, which took the tomato and left its relative behind

Context

Europe met both and chose one. The tomato went on to reorganise Italian, Spanish and Balkan cooking, while the tomatillo stayed in Mexico, which is why salsa verde is regional and salsa roja is global. Nothing about the fruit decided that. The Columbian Exchange is usually described as a transfer, but it was a selection, and someone did the selecting.

Behind this layer

Diccionario Enciclopédico de la Gastronomía Mexicana (Ricardo Muñoz Zurita, 2012)

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