European Food from the Renaissance to today
European Food HistoryQuatr.us > Modern Europe > FoodWHEAT RYE BARLEY POTATOES CARROTS SUNFLOWERS TOMATOES SUGAR COFFEE CHOCOLATE TEA MODERN EUROPE QUATR.US HOMEmen drinking together
An early chocolate house
During the 1500s and 1600s AD, European traders began to bring back all kinds of new foods from places they sailed to around the world. Rich people began to eat sugar and ginger from India (Combining these two new foods together gave us the gingerbread man). They drank hot chocolate from Central America, coffee from East Africa, and tea from China.
But most people couldn't afford these fancy foods. They were still living mainly the way they had in the Middle Ages - on barley - barley porridge, barley bread, and barley soup, or, in northern Europe, on rye bread ("black bread"). The Little Ice Age made it harder to grow food, and made rye more important than barley even further south. People hated the rye bread, but they had to eat it anyway.
woman baking bread
Woman baking bread (Jean Francois Millet, France 1854)
But colonialism - conquering other countries and profiting from the work of people in India and Africa and South America - made Europeans richer. In the 1600s and 1700s, people in Europe got richer and got more political power - the British had Cromwell, and then the French had the French Revolution - and the newly powerful citizens demanded white bread - wheat bread - instead of that horrible rye bread. By the late 1800s, even in Germany only beggars and prisoners ate rye bread.
women working in a factory
Chocolate factory (1800s)
Thanks to colonialism, Europe could also support educated food scientists, and these scientists also began to create new foods to please people who could now afford to buy them. They made the first big orange carrots in the 1600s.
Colonialism and trade also brought new foods from other countries. Ordinary people began to eat potatoes, and then tomatoes, both from South America. Cooks in Europe cooked these foods in new ways, inventing french fries and potato salad, and adding tomato sauce to pizza and spaghetti and gazpacho. Food scientists developed the chocolate bar in the 1800s. As modern countries formed, governments encouraged all French people or all Italian people to eat the same way, mixing up the food of each small region. So instead of only Bretons eating crepes, people all over France began to eat them. Instead of only people from Bavaria eating pretzels, people all over Germany began to eat pretzels.
In the 1900s, even more new foods came to Europe from around the world. People moving to Europe from Asia and Africa brought with them new foods like couscous, tofu, peanut oil, safflower oil, and curry. Today, people in Europe come from all over the world and eat foods from all over the world, cooked both in the traditional way and in new, European ways.
More about rye bread
More about North American food