Ancient history of butter

History of butter
Butter is made churning fresh or fermented cream or milk. It is essentially a fat of milk. Butter is used as a spread and condiment, as well as in cooking applications.

Butter started in Mesopotamian some where between 9000 and 8000 before century. At that time butter was made from sheep or goat’s milk.

For ancient Greek and Rome butter is considered a food fit for barbarians. In Northern Europe, butter was also used to prevent kidney and bladder stones.

The ancient dwellers of India relating to butter making, dating back to 1500-200BC when Hindus of that time gave young married couple a ‘bridal feast’ consisting of milk, honey and butter.

Until the 19th century, majority of butter was made by hand.

In 1860s, first butter appeared in United States. Now a days margarine is taken over butter consumption due to less expensive and perceived as being healthier.
Ancient history of butter

History of food mineral: chromium

The German prospector Johann Gottlieb Lehmann (1719-1767) first wrote about this red-orange mineral in 1762, calling it red lead. He analyzed samples from a Siberian mine and wrongly thought they were made from the heavy metals lead and selenium.

Chromium was discovered by the French chemist Louis-Nicholas Vauquelin, Professor at the Ecole des Mines de Paris in 1797, while he was studying the properties of crocoite, and ore which is rich in lead chromate.

Vauquelin’s studies showed the crystals contained lead and a completely new metallic element.

Its common name of chrome was derived from the Greek word chroma, which means color, because the element is present in many different colored compounds.

It was not until 1959 that the medical scientists W. Mertz and K. Schwarz discovered that the feeding of chromium salts resulted from the feeding of diets based upon torula yeast.

Since the 1960s, chromium has been generally believed to be essential for proper carbohydrate and lipid metabolism. Chromium deficiency has been suggested to lead to symptoms associated with adult-inset diabetes and cardiovascular.

During the 1960s and 1970s, evidence accumulated that marginal of deficient chromium may predispose to maturity onset diabetes mellitus and atherosclerotic disease.

In 1999, sales of products containing chromium reached almost half-a-billion dollars, making the supplement second in sales only to calcium among mineral supplements.
History of food mineral: chromium

History of fork

The used of forks became widespread during the high Renaissance. In Europe, prior to the 15th century, most food was eaten with the hands or from the points of a knife.

Forks merged in the European eating settings only in the 15th and 16th centuries. One can trace the history of the fork back to the dagger - sharpened metal stick that can be used to transport pieces of objects of solid consistency. It didn’t take on a food sense until the mid –fifteenth century.

The person credited with introducing the eating fork to England was Thomas Coryate, an author and traveler from the time of Shakespeare who was famous for walking huge distances – to India and back in one occasion.

In his writing, Coryate’s Crudities, in 1611 he gave much praise to the dinner fork, which he had first encountered in Italy. In 1616, Ben Jonson, English poet and dramatist, took up Coryate’s campaign for amore salutary table in The Devil Is an Ass, which he surmised that the Italians used forks to keep their hands clean and spare the host soiled napkins.

Until the late nineteenth century the fork became part of the basic equipment of a lower–middle class kitchen, while working-class families largely continued to eat with knives and spoons.
History of fork

History of cod liver oil

Cod-liver oil has been used since very early times by the Greenlanders, Laplanders and Eskimos.

In the 15th century the English physician Howel, in his formulary, recommended ‘cod oil’ in the preparation of a ‘cere cloth’ a kind of cerate to be used on wounds.

About 1730, Norwegian fishermen and farmers found that cod-liver oil cured rickets. In 1766 it was recorded that the oil was been used for treatment of rickets in Manchester, England.

Cod liver oil seems to have been used in Germany from a remote period as a domestic remedy in various forms of disease. It was first introduced into the Materia Medica by Dr. Thomas Percival, of London, in 1771 as a remedy for chronic rheumatism.

In 1841, Dr J. H Bennet of London published a treatise on Oleum Fecoris Aselli, in which he set forth its great value as a remedy in tubercular disease. From 1820 until 1920, there are numerous reports of clinical improvements in pulmonary and lymphatic tuberculosis with cod-liver oil therapy.

In 1854 the pharmacist Peter Moller introduced the new method of heating up the cod liver with steam resulting in golden tran that ‘tasted fresh’.

During 1860s the oil was largely viewed as a dietetic aid, and it is significant that the oil’s principal reputation in Newfoundland became as a general tonic, strengthener and preventive.

In 1918, Mellanby reported that he could produce rickets in dogs by feeding them oatmeal and could cure the disease by adding cod-liver oil to the diet.
History of cod liver oil

Food of ancient Roman

The daily food of the early Romans consisted of cereals, pulses and vegetables and plunder became the exception rather than the rule.

Public life began at dawn so that Romans had little time to prepare breakfast. They nibbled a bit of bread, dipped in milk or undiluted wine. A heavy breakfast was considered unhealthy and vulgar.

The diet of most people was frugal, based on corn (grain), oil and wine, but exotic foods and recipes were available for the dinner parties of the wealthy.

Cereals, mainly wheat, provided the staple food. The main wheat of the Romans was emmer. Later emmer was supplanted by durum wheat and bread wheat which had the advantage that these produced finer flour. 

Emmer grains were ground to provide meal for pottage and for alica (emmer groat) which was use to make a wide variety of bread and cakes. Bread, cakes and pastries were produced commercially and at home. 

Cooking was done in the kitchen, and smoke from fires escaped though the roof or a vent in the wall.

Food was often cooked with fruit, honey and vinegar, to give a sweet and sour flavor.

Beans and peas were a major vegetable and a basis for pottage. Vegetables and salad produce were widely eaten. Other vegetables included onion, lettuce, cabbage celery and cucumbers.

A large variety of fruit was available. Figs, grapes, apple, and pears were staples. Pliny noted more than 100 new varieties of fruit trees and Columella gave about 50.

Meat was generally too expensive for most household budgets to afford on a regular basis; pork and veal were the two most readily available meat products.
Food of ancient Roman

Modern Food Advertising

Before that late nineteenth century, food was not commonly marketed directly to Americans.

Shoppers at typical nineteenth century grocery stores would walk in, find a clerk and tell the clerk what they needed and the clerk would pass the order to other employees.

The goods then either delivered to the customer’s home or given to the customer on the spot.

The invention of modern advertising can be largely be credited to patent medicine sellers of the Reconstruction era.

They came up with all sorts of spurious and very dangerous cures for such ill-defined diseases as neuralgia and dyspepsia, which seemed epidemic in that unsettled time.

Early soft drinks were sold and marketed as patent medicine. An 1892 advertisement for Coca-Cola was typical of the genre the carbonated potion was recommended as “the Ideal Brain Tonic for Headache & Exhaustion.”

Coffee substitutes were originally promoted in much the same way. As late as 1951, the Federal Trade Commission was investigating the Post Company for running ads for its Postum beverage claiming that drinking coffee discourage marriage or that it results in “divorces, business failures, factory accidents, juvenile delinquency, traffic accidents, fire or home foreclosures.”

Since 1970s and the latest presents a picture that hasn’t change much. But two thirds of the TV commercial on Saturday morning TV were foods.

Over half of these commercials were for breads cereal, rice and pasta and the next largest category (28%) were fast food outlets.

The strong rise of food advertising was closely related to the emergence of brand names and the transformation of the retail sector.

In pre-industrial society the production and purchase of consumer goods were mostly locally oriented.

The range of available goods was limited and their quality depended on their region and the preferences of the retailer. From the second half of the 19th century onwards, industrial mass production of consumer goods, including food products, increased rapidly.

Producers needed to sell to a wider market and to provide the customers with information about the product.

Advertising offered the obvious means to this end. This led the manufacturers to package their products and complete them with a brand name.

Advertising are major influences on American food consumption patterns. Food marketers are the nation’s largest advertisers, with around $30 billion per year is for food products after automobiles. About 70% of food advertising is for food products, principally packaged foods, snacks and soft drinks and another 28% for food service especially fast foods.
Modern Food Advertising

Food for Gods

Food lays a role as a commodity within a mutual transactional exchange between humans or between individual and god, a situation that manifests a connection between god, food and life in a cosmological triangle.

The abundance of food in Mesopotamia is evident in the records of what was presented to the gods and goddesses, who needed to eat four times a day.

Their main stay was bread, as it was for humans.

The main god, Anu and three main goddesses, Antu, Ishtar and Nayana, got thirty loaves a day.

The millers, bakers and butchers had to recite prayers of thanks to the gods and goddesses as they ground the grain, kneaded the bread, and slaughtered the animals.

Then the priest placed the food on golden platters and set it before the gods, perhaps on a table.

In Hinduism food plays an essential role in ancient sacrifice, religious speculation, devotional worship, and purity and pollution regulations.

Since the gods only accepted cooked food, the sacrificer is reminded of his inferior status by waiting to consume his portion on the scarifies animals.

In the most ancient scarifies herbs and plants were plucked up y the roots and burnt with their leaves and fruit before gods and this was considered a very acceptable.

By the law of Athenians were required to worship the gods with the fruits. Barley and afterwards wheat were offered in sacrifice to gods.

Sacrifice had its origin in meals, in the offering of food to the gods. This could and did at times become a matter of exchange, of offering food to god or to the gods in order to gain favor and benefit.

The offering also expresses thanks and praise for what had been received, whether the harvest of the fields, the blessing of a child, or the arriving at a new stage in life.
Food for Gods

Early Days of Airline Food

Early Days of Airline Food
The commercial industry airline industry in the United States developed after World War I when trained military pilots returning home applied their skills to moving mail and light cargo in airplanes.

These planes typically had few passengers seats and when passengers were aboard little thought was given to serving them. Passengers on long flights often brought a box lunch or snack onboard.

It was not until the 1930 that the fledging airline industry designed planes specifically with the idea of moving people as a core business and with these planes, accompanying galleys were instituted.

Form the beginning, despite the challenges like cramped spaces, weights restrictions, and lack of usable electricity onboard, airlines worked to compete with steamship and trains by providing full service dining experiences to passengers, albeit with in-flight accommodations like pillows and lap trays rather than tables.

Coffee was brewed onboard and in-flight meals were purchased from fine restaurants and hotels, kept warm where possible using piped water or glycol heated by the engines and served on china and linen with real cutlery.

By the late 1930s, problems with the quality control, ground transportation and timeliness of food service subcontracted from hotels and restaurants as well as a more competitive marketplace, prompted United Airline, closely followed but its major competitors, to created airport-based kitchens around the country. Airline continued to buy from restaurants and hotels in smaller airports.

The late 1940s and 1950s prompted many of the in-flight dining innovations familiar today. Aircraft after World War I began to be constructed with attachable or attached tray tables, making the dining balancing act a bit easier for passengers.

The ability for planes and later jets to generate usable electricity in flight made commercial kitchen equipment such as oven and warming cabinets, as well as dry ice iceboxes, adaptable to airplane galley.

While these innovations improved the quality and availability of airplane food, problems remained. The short life of refrigerated and reheated food, or food held warm as acceptable for a short or even transcontinental flight but problematic or oceanic fight, on which two or even three meals might have been served en route.

Furthermore, the increase popularity of air travel necessitated costly flight kitchens in nearly every airport, including those where access to reliable fresh food was a challenge.

The increased frequency of transoceanic lights in the 1950s and 1960s prompted a further innovation in in-flight dining: the frozen tray dinner (TV dinner), brought aboard frozen, shipped throughout the world and heated in fight via convection oven.

This last development, removing the restaurant chef from the process, developing standardized 195os-stye frozen entrees and plating a complete meal service in a single dinner tray, complete with an individual cutlery and seasonings packet, represented a major innovation in in-flight efficiency but contributed to many of the negative associations with airline food today.
Early Days of Airline Food
Other related article: Food in Airplane

Food in Airplane

Food in Airplane
United Airlines, a pioneer in the industry was the only airline to serve meals on trays from the beginning of commercial aviation.

While other airlines had copilots passing out sandwiches to passengers United employed uniform stewardess to serve cold chicken.

Many airplane travelers in the early days of the aviation industry’s food service complained of how often chicken was served; American Airlines was even nicknamed “the fried chicken airline.”

Passengers derided chicken as a cheap food option; industry professionals found that chicken’s versatility responded well to the demands of in-flight food service.

By 1936 American Airline stewardesses were filling service trays with food from very large thermoses containing hot food prepared in advance usually by the airport café and offering real dishware and flatware to boot.

Food would stay hot in the containers for about one to two hours, with no need for reheating.

The thermos approach was succeeded by a system of using large casseroles, which provided the advantage of loading meals, already plated and hot.

Food often stayed heated for many hours with this system, however and food quality suffered along with menu choices.

Then around 1945 Pan American worked together with Clarence Birdseye and the Maxson Company to create the convection oven, which would allow frozen foods to be heated on board the aircraft.

Soon afterward the microwave oven was developed; it has since become the industry standards in aircraft food service preparation.

As the twentieth century progressed, two elements affected the continuing development of airplane food.

America became more tolerant of a diversity of a eating habits, and a greater diversity of people began using airplanes as a means of travels.

To respond to these trends airlines began offering a greater variety of types of meals that responded to religious, ethnic or health requirements with respect to food.
Food in Airplane

History of Food Safety

History of Food Safety
Before manufacturing traditional, farming practices and preserving techniques were used to ensure safe food.

During industrial revolution, food began to be processed and packaged. Lacking regulation, manufacturers were free to add whatever they liked to their products. Sweeping from the floor were included in pepper, lead salts were added to candy and cheese, textile inks were used as coloring agents, bricks dust was added to cocoa, and copper salts were added to peas and pickles.

In the 1880s, women started organizing groups to protest the conditions at slaughterhouses in New York City and adulterated foods in other parts of the country.

In 1883, Harvey W. Wiley, chief chemist of the U.S Agricultural Department’s Bureau of Chemistry, began experimenting with food and drug adulteration.

Meanwhile, Upton Sinclair spent several weeks in a meat packing plant investigating labor conditions and turned his discoveries into a book, The Jungle, published in 1906. Although the focus of that book was the conditions immigrants experienced in the early twentieth century, there were graphic descriptions of the filth and poor hygiene in packing plants. It caught the public attention.

People began complaining to Congress and to President Theodore Roosevelt. Pressure was also mounting from foreign governments that wanted some assures that food imported from United States was pure and wholesome.

Two acts were passed in 1906, the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Beef Inspection Act, to improve food safety conditions.

In 1927, U.S Food, Drug and Insecticide Administration (shortened to Food and Drug Administration) or FDA was created to enforce the Pure Food and Drug act.


The Pure food Act was later superseded in 1938 by Pure Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act. This act prohibited any food or drug that is dangerous to health to be sold in interstate commerce.

In 1958, concern over cancer led to the adoption of the Delaney Amendments, which expanded the FDA’s regulatory powers to set limits on pesticides and additives. Manufacturers had to prove that additives and pesticides were safe before they could be used.

The Fair Packaging and Labeling Act of 1966 standardized the labels of products and required that labels provide honest information.

The next major act was the Food Quality Protection Act of 1996. It set new regulations requiring implementation of Hazard Analysis and Critical Control points (HACCPs) for most food processor.

The Food quality Protection Act also changed the way acceptable pesticide levels are calculated. Now total exposure for all sources must be calculated.
History of Food Safety

Food preservation: Canning

Food preservation: Canning
In the early nineteenth century, when France and Britain were at war with each other more soldiers and sailors died from disease than from battle.

Both the French and Britain government realized something important. Finding a new way to preserve food (keep it from spoilage) would prevent soldiers and sailors from dying. A larger, healthier fighting force would bring a greater advantage in battle. In 1795, the French government took action. It offered a prize of 12,000 francs. The money would go to the inventor of the best preserved food. The food had to be healthy, easily carried and not too expensive.

In 1803 a French chef named Nicolas Appert invented a new technique for preserving food. He prepared and preserved soup, beef with gravy, beans and peas. The French navy stored it for three months. Then they tried it. The food was delicious and safe to eat.

For the next few years, Appert provided the French fleet with preserved foods such as stew, milk and juice. This preservation technique proved successful. In 1810 the French government gave Appert the prize.

In this process, Appert filled the glass bottles with food and closed the bottles with cork stoppers. He then tight down the stoppers with the wire and sealed them with a thick, waxy coating called pitch. As a final step, Appert boiled the sealed bottles in water. Food heated in the airtight bottles did not spoil.

In 1821 an Englishman named William Underwood brought Appert’s invention to the United States. Underwood set up a factory in Boston, Massachusetts, to bottle lobster and salmon. Later the factory switched from glass bottles to metal canister. The word “can” was first used in Boston for these metal containers. Appert’s preservation method became known as “canning’ whether bottles or cans were used.
Food preservation: Canning

History of Food Crops

History of Food Crops
The angiosperms provide most of our food crops. They first appeared in the early Mesozoic or late Paleozoic era about 200 – 250 million years ago, but fossil evidence of them is extremely limited until they began to dominate during the Cretaceous (136 – 190 million years ago). The angiosperms were the first plants to have double fertilization and the enclosure of seeds in fruit. Double fertilization provided zygotes with copious resource to help them get established and fruits attracted animals for dispersal, it was the appearance of the angiosperm that set the stage for the development our mammal ancestors.

A wide range of hypotheses implicating selection have been presented for a rapid emergence and diversification of the angiosperms. The most popular hypothesis is that the concomitant rise of pollinating insects led to powerful divergent selection as foragers and hosts developed complex relationship.

It was the angiosperms that ultimately provided us with most of our crops and their emergence predated the appearance of our species, Homo sapiens. In fact, most of our food families or their close relatives were in existence long before we began farming. The only completely new crop type to appear after the advent of agriculture was maize, Zea mays, which has an ear and tassel arrangement not found in its progenitors. In most cases, human beings did not influence the overall structure of crop species, only the size of their edible organs and their ease of harvest.

Human beings now consume a diverse array of plant structure, and at least 64 families of angiosperms and 180 genera are utilized as crops. This is a broad systematic group, but represents only a small fraction of the total number of angiosperm families (300) and genera (3000). The dicotyledons provide the highest number of crop plants; however, the bulk of the world is fed by a few monocotyledonous grains (maize, rice and wheat).
History of Food Crops

History of Yoghurt

History of Yoghurt
Fermentation of yoghurt is one of the oldest methods practiced by human beings in order to transform milk into products. There is evidence of cultured milk products being produced as food for at least 4,500 years. The exact origin of making fermented milk could be date from some 10000 – 15000 years ago. It might dates back to pre-Biblical times, and Moses reputedly partook of it on his way to promised Land. The earliest yoghurts were probably spontaneously fermented by wild bacteria living on the goat skin bags carried by the Bulgars (or Hunno-Bulgars), a nomadic people who began migrating into Europe in the second century AD and eventually settled in the Balkans at the end of the seventh century.

Archaeological evidence shows that some civilians were well advanced in agriculture and husbandry methods, and in the production of fermented milks such as yoghurt (for example the Sumerians and Babylonians, the Pharos and Indians).

The belief in its beneficial influence on human health and nutrition has existed in many civilizations. The use of yoghurt by mediaeval Turks is recorded in the books Diwan Lughat al-Turk by Mahmud Kashgari and Kutadgu Bilig by Yusuf Has Hajib written in the eleventh century. In both texts the word "yoghurt" is mentioned in different sections and its use by nomadic Turks is described. The first account of a European encounter with yoghurt occurs in French clinical history: King Francois I suffering from an intestinal complaint which no French doctor could cure. His ally Suleiman the Magnificent sent a Jewish doctor from Constantinople, who allegedly cured the patient with yoghurt. The doctor arrived on foot with flock of sheep and cured his royal client, but refused to divulge the secret of his concoctions. It is likely, however, that the origin of yoghurt was from Middle East after domestication of milk producing animals began, around 9000 B.C.

The Russian biologist Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov co-winner of 1908 Nobel Prize had an unproven hypothesis that regular consumption of yoghurt was responsible for the unusually long lifespans of Bulgarian peasants. Believing Lactobacillus to be essential for good health, Mechnikov worked to popularise yoghurt as a foodstuff throughout Europe. It fell to a Sephardic Jewish entrepreneur named Isaac Carasso to industrialize the production of yoghurt.
History of Yoghurt

Heat and Homes

Food History
Early humans had been using fire for thousands of years, but it was the Cro-Magnons named after the cave in southern France in which their bones were founds – who discovered that if certain stone, iron pyrites, is stuck with a flint it gives off a spark hot enough to ignite tinder. So a quicker, surer way of starting a fire than striking two sticks together was at hand.

The hearth was a focus of family life, both in summer – when many people live in tents of wood and hide – and in winter, when they sheltered in cave. As well as providing heating and light, the hearth was used for cooking pot, and fire was used to ward off hungry predators which might attack the community. Gathering fuel for the fire and building up a good stock for the winter were essential chores. In most places this meant collecting wood, but on the plains of Eastern Europe and Russian, where trees were scarce, bone were used d instead. Bones do not burn easily, so shallow channel were due to draw more air into the bottom of earth.
Food History

History of Sugar

Food History
Sugarcane is originated from New Guinea. It cultivated spread along human migration routes to Southeast Asia, India and Polynesia. Arabs brought sugarcane to Spain, during Middle Ages. Sugarcane only began at United Sates in the mid of the 18th century .

Sugar as a commodity in its own right can be traced back several thousand years in China and India. In 510 B.C. when soldiers of the Persian Emperor Darius saw sugar cane growing on the banks of the River Indus, they called it the reeds which produce honey without bees. Later it was grown in Persia and the Arabs took it to Egypt. The word sugar is itself derived from an Arabic word.

Alexander the Great (356-232 B.C.) introduced sugar to the Mediterranean countries, from whence it spread down the east coast of Africa. By 600 A.D. the practice of breaking up the sugar cane and boiling it to produce sugar crystals was widespread.

Then, Marco Polo visited China, he saw flourishing sugar mills. By the middle of the fifteenth century there were plantations in Madeira, the Canary Islands and St. Thomas, and they supplied Europe with sugar until the sixteenth century, when manufacture spread over the greater part of tropical America, followed in the next century by the development of sugar exports from the West Indies. Old records show that raw cane sugar was being refined in Dublin and Belfast in the middle of the seventeenth century.
Food History

History of Avena Sativa

Food History
Oats didn’t come important to human being as early s wheat or barley. Perhaps the oldest oats grain was found in Egypt among remains of the 12th Dynasty, which was about 2000BC. The oldest known cultivated oats were found in cave in Switzerland that are believed belong to Bronze Age.

They were the last of the major cereal grains to be domesticated, around 3,000 years ago in Europe, Greeks and Romans considered oats to be nothing more than a diseased version of wheat.

Oats were a lowly horse food for the Romans, who scoffed at the "oat-eating barbarians", or those pesky Germanic tribes who eventually toppled the West Roman Empire.

The history of oats is somewhat clouded because there are so many different species and subspecies, which makes identification of old remains very difficult. The chief modern center of greatest variety of form is in Asia Minor.

Oats were first brought to North America with other grains in 1602 and planted on the Elizabeth Islands off the coast of Massachusetts. As early as 1786, George Washington sowed 580 acres to oats.

By the 1860s and 1870s, the westward shift of oat acreage in the United States had moved into the middle and upper Mississippi Valley, which is its major area of production today.
History of Avena Sativa

History of Burger

Food History
The widest-reported "first" appearance of the hamburger most commonly cited in the lore of foodservice was that the product appeared at the World's Fair in St. Louis in 1904. But the man who gave the hamburger its contemporary look and sought to expand the products appeal through chain operations was J. Walter Anderson, a Wichita, Kan., resident who went on to co-found the White Castle Hamburger system, the oldest continuously running burger chain.

However, there is a history that in late eighteenth century, the largest port in Europe was in Germany. Sailors who visited port brought special food called “Hamburg steak” as a popular usage. It was a hard slab of salted minced beef, often slightly smoked, mixed with onions and breadcrumbs. Immigrants arriving England at that time also bring new food with consist of chopped beef, suet, and spices.

The other famous story is that Charlie Nagreen of Wisconsin, at age 15, sold hamburgers from his ox-drawn food stand at the Outagamie County Fair. He went to the Outagamie County Fair and set up a stand selling meatballs. Business wasn't good and he quickly realized that it was because meatballs were too difficult to eat while strolling around the fair. In a flash of innovation, he flattened the meatballs, placed them between two slices of bread and called his new creation a hamburger. He was known to many as "Hamburger Charlie." He returned to sell hamburgers at the fair every year until his death in 1951.
Food History

History of Noodles

5000 B.C.
Wheat flour, believed to originate in the Middle East, serves as the basis of the first “noodles.” Chinese ate pasta as early as 5,000 BC.

2 BC
Wheat was grown in northern China by end of the second millennium. By fourth and third centuries BC, version of pasta existed in many cultures. Indian called it sevika, or thread; the French, noulles; German, Nudeln and the English, noodles.

4
Guangzhou in China considered to be culinary mecca of China. When the first Arab merchants arrived in the fourth century to serve as intermediaries between the Chinese and Greek, they established a steady commerce between China, India, Africa and Europe.

It was via this route that the noodle is said to have found its way from China, through the Middle East to Europe.

300
The Chinese form whole grain paste into various noodle-like products.

500-600
Amidst numerous cultural exchanges, China shares Buddhism and the art of noodle-making with Japan. Buckwheat noodles become a staple of the Japanese tea ceremony.

1138
Arab geographer, Idrisi, travels to Sicily and writes about “triyah,” a food resembling threads and produced in large quantities.

1200
Explorer Marco Polo introduced pasta to Italy after encountered it at the court of Kublai Khan in China in 1295. However, the history shows that pasta, maccheroni and vermicelli were known foods before Marco Polo return to Italy.

1300
German bakers made a precursor to pasta in the 13th century, when they rolled dough into symbolic shapes such as swords, breads and stars, which they baked and served as bread.

1600
Early in the 1600s., the beginning of Japan’s Edo period, somen noodles and soba (buckwheat) noodles gained popularity in Tokyo and along the east coast. Because of a demand for soba as breakfast and festival food and street fare, farmer began sowing more grain.
1700
The very first spaghetti is produced in Napoli, Italy.

1800
Japanese specialty shops create noodles, similar to those eaten today, but requiring considerable preparation time and effort. It is believed that noodles originated from China as early as 5000 BC, then spread to other Asian countries.

Today, about 40% of the flour consumed in Asia is for Noodle manufacture. In recent years, noodles have also become very popular outside Asia and this popularity is likely to increase.
History of Noodles

Coriander

History of Coriander
The Arabian night tells a tale of a merchant who had been childless for 40 years and was cured by a concoction that included coriander. That story is over 1000 years old so the history of coriander as an aphrodisiac dates back far into history. Coriander has been used as an “appetite” stimulant. Its dried seed produce a euphoric effect, especially in women.

The seed of the well known Coriandrum sativum is known as coriander. The coriander is derived from the Greek word koris. It means bedbug. This due the unripe seeds and leaves when crushed has a smell suggestive of a crushed bedbug.

Coriander is used in condiments, dessert, liqueurs perfumes and candies. Generally it thought to be from Mediterranean and parts of southwestern Europe. It is believed to be used since 5,000 BC. Ancient Egyptians and Greeks believed coriander had aphrodisiacal properties.
History of Coriander

History of herbs and spices

Today international trade brings herbs grown in Turley, and Cyprus to supermarket shelves as a matter of course. Frequent deliveries from Japan, Thailand and Singapore bring tropical herbs and fresh spices to specialist shops and some supermarkets.

Herbs and spices have been added to foods throughout history for preserving and flavor. Although they are plentiful and inexpensive today, herbs, spices and other flavorings were considered as value as good or jewels for many century.

It seems probable that many of the flavoring herbs now in use were similarly employed before the erection of the pyramids and also that many then popular no longer appear in modern lists of esculents.

As early as 3500 BC the Egyptian queen Hatshepsut, used cinnamon as an aromatic. And in 3000 BC, history records that the gods of the Mesopotamian peoples drank sesame wine, one of the products for which this popular seed was used.

Relying upon Biblical records alone, several herbs were highly esteemed prior to current era; in the gospels of Matthew and Luke reference is made to tithes of mint, anise, rue, cumin and other "herbs"; and, more than 700 years previously, Isaiah speaks of the sowing and threshing of cumin which, since the same passage also speaks of "fitches" (vetches), wheat, barley and "rie" (rye), seems then to have been a valued crop.

Both the Bible and historical records reveal that spices and aromatics were held in high esteem and a gift of spices was greatly prized.
History of herbs and spices
Updated: Mar 3 2017