To ask what you think food would be like if tomatoes and potatoes had never arrived in Europe from the new world

[Fragmentedbrain]

What sort of stuff would we be eating? Would your dinner be totally different?

Curries (South and East Asia) would still be made hot with black pepper instead of chillies.

Hungarian goulash (no paprika) would be very different.

I once toured an old flour mill: the amount of bread eaten by English people before the arrival of potatoes was insane - several loaves a day, for people doing hard physical work. Anyone with cœliac disease would starve to death pretty quickly.

It's crazy to think hot food wouldn't really have been that spicy!

@Redflagsabounded bingo! See you in a couple of weeks?! 😁 Although I won't be cooking this time. Add your own KW food that I've forgotten to this thread! To show it's not at all just bread and turnips when you don't have potatoes!

Pies!

Dumplings
We might have started eating pasta sooner
More yorkshire pudding

Turnips, nettles and fat hen.
All horrible.

Suet puddings: steak and kidney, spotted dick…

Have you ever tried fresh mustard or horseradish?

We've always eaten spicy food to make basic foods less boring. If we're only excluding things like tomato, chilli or potatoes, we'd be able to get wasabi as well via Russia - and other starches such as plantain and yam.

Black pepper can make food pretty spicy if you use enough of it. The Romans were very keen on it. They would have loved chilli!

Off topic, I sometimes cook smoked haddock and rice in a mixture of water and orange juice.

Back on topic

I think we would have mash and chips but it would be turnip or other root veg.

OP

Do you mean sort of back in time before they arrived in the UK (which I know didn't exist then) or that everything else has developed as we are now, just with no potatoes and tomatoes?

Bread would probably provide most carb content and I think pies have quite a long history.