Food and Drink Atlas
Claims this atlas currently marks as unsettled or as tested and found false. A debated fact is one scholars hold competing positions on; a debunked one has been checked against the record and found not to hold. Both are kept in view rather than quietly smoothed over, with the reasoning that put each one where it stands.
72 statements marked Debated.
Olive Oil, Earliest Documented Use, From (Year)-6000
Olive Oil, Ingredients
Standing
Concerns Earliest Documented Use, From (Year)
Currently States -6000
Dating for early olive domestication and oil pressing varies by site across the eastern Mediterranean and the Levant; a range is given rather than a single year.
Source The Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson
Olive Oil, Earliest Documented Use, To (Year)-4000
Olive Oil, Ingredients
Standing
Concerns Earliest Documented Use, To (Year)
Currently States -4000
Dating for early olive domestication and oil pressing varies by site across the eastern Mediterranean and the Levant; a range is given rather than a single year.
Source The Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson
Paella, Origin Period, From (Year)1850
Paella, Dishes
Standing
Concerns Origin Period, From (Year)
Currently States 1850
Marks the mid-19th century, when paella in its modern form is traced to the rural area around the Albufera de Valencia lagoon; the dish may have older, undocumented antecedents.
Source Paella (Wikipedia)
Pho, Origin Period, From (Year)1900
Pho, Dishes
Standing
Concerns Origin Period, From (Year)
Currently States 1900
Sources place the dish emergence anywhere from around 1898 in Nam Dinh province to roughly 1910 in Hanoi, and food historians disagree on whether it crystallized gradually over that span or at one identifiable moment; 1900 is used here as a round midpoint, not a settled date.
Source What Pho Can Teach Us About the History of Vietnam (National Geographic), Ryley Graham
Pina Colada, Origin Period, From (Year)1954
Pina Colada, Drinks
Standing
Concerns Origin Period, From (Year)
Currently States 1954
Three competing bartender claims exist for the drink's invention: Ramon 'Monchito' Marrero at the Caribe Hilton in 1954, Ricardo Garcia, also at the Caribe Hilton, in 1953, and Ramon Portas Mingot at the Barrachina restaurant in 1963; none is universally accepted as definitive.
Source Pina Colada (Wikipedia)
Pizza Margherita, Origin Period, To (Year)1889
Pizza Margherita, Dishes
Standing
Concerns Origin Period, To (Year)
Currently States 1889
Marks the popular legend's date for Queen Margherita's Naples visit and the pizza named for her; Wikipedia's own account notes the story and the name were first promoted only in the 1930s-1940s and its authenticity is doubted.
Source Pizza Margherita (Wikipedia)
Potato, Earliest Documented Use, From (Year)-8000
Potato, Ingredients
Standing
Concerns Earliest Documented Use, From (Year)
Currently States -8000
A more precisely dated anchor exists alongside this broad genetic-domestication estimate: the earliest archaeologically verified potato tuber remains, at the coastal site of Ancon in central Peru, date to 2500 BC, a firmer single point than the range this fact records.
Source Potato (Wikipedia)
Potato, Earliest Documented Use, To (Year)-5000
Potato, Ingredients
Standing
Concerns Earliest Documented Use, To (Year)
Currently States -5000
Closing bound of the same 7,000 to 10,000 years ago domestication estimate; see the start-year note for the firmer 2500 BC archaeological anchor at Ancon.
Source Potato (Wikipedia)
Red Onion, Origin RegionUncertain among Iran, western Pakistan and Central Asia; the onion species (Allium cepa), of which red onion is a color cultivar, is known only from cultivation with no confirmed wild ancestor, so its geographic origin cannot be pinned to one place.
Red Onion, Ingredients
Standing
Concerns Origin Region
Currently States Uncertain among Iran, western Pakistan and Central Asia; the onion species (Allium cepa), of which red onion is a color cultivar, is known only from cultivation with no confirmed wild ancestor, so its geographic origin cannot be pinned to one place.
The source states plainly that the geographic origin of the onion is uncertain and that ancient records span both eastern and western Asia; this entry describes the species generally, since the red-skinned variety has no separately documented origin of its own.
Source Onion (Wikipedia)
Rendang, Origin Period, From (Year)1400
Rendang, Dishes
Standing
Concerns Origin Period, From (Year)
Currently States 1400
Marks the Malacca Sultanate era (1400-1528); food historian Fadly Rahman places the earliest reference to rendang in the manuscript Hikayat Amir Hamzah, associated with that sultanate.
Source Rendang (Wikipedia)
Rice, Earliest Documented Use, From (Year)-9000
Rice, Ingredients
Standing
Concerns Earliest Documented Use, From (Year)
Currently States -9000
Archaeobotanical evidence places rice domestication in the middle to lower Yangtze River valley; the exact millennium is debated among specialists working from different sites and dating methods, so a range is given rather than a single year.
Source The Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson
Rice, Earliest Documented Use, To (Year)-6000
Rice, Ingredients
Standing
Concerns Earliest Documented Use, To (Year)
Currently States -6000
Archaeobotanical evidence places rice domestication in the middle to lower Yangtze River valley; the exact millennium is debated among specialists working from different sites and dating methods, so a range is given rather than a single year.
Source The Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson
Rye, Earliest Documented Use, From (Year)-1800
Rye, Ingredients
Standing
Concerns Earliest Documented Use, From (Year)
Currently States -1800
An earlier, more dramatic claim, that rye was cultivated at Tell Abu Hureyra in northern Syria around 13,000 years ago, remains controversial; critics point to inconsistencies in the radiocarbon dates, so this fact uses the well-established Bronze Age central European record instead of the disputed earlier date.
Source Rye (Wikipedia)
Rye, Earliest Documented Use, To (Year)-1500
Rye, Ingredients
Standing
Concerns Earliest Documented Use, To (Year)
Currently States -1500
Closing bound of the same Bronze Age central European archaeological record; see the start-year note for the disputed, much earlier Tell Abu Hureyra claim.
Source Rye (Wikipedia)
Soybean, Earliest Documented Use, From (Year)-7000
Soybean, Ingredients
Standing
Concerns Earliest Documented Use, From (Year)
Currently States -7000
Estimates have moved substantially with new evidence: early work on small, possibly wild-type seeds suggested domestication up to nine thousand years ago, while a later comparative study of charred remains from many sites concluded that clearly domesticated, larger-seeded soybeans appear around fifty five hundred years ago in the Yellow River basin. The range given spans both ends of this unsettled picture rather than asserting either alone.
Source The Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson
Soybean, Earliest Documented Use, To (Year)-3500
Soybean, Ingredients
Standing
Concerns Earliest Documented Use, To (Year)
Currently States -3500
Estimates have moved substantially with new evidence: early work on small, possibly wild-type seeds suggested domestication up to nine thousand years ago, while a later comparative study of charred remains from many sites concluded that clearly domesticated, larger-seeded soybeans appear around fifty five hundred years ago in the Yellow River basin. The range given spans both ends of this unsettled picture rather than asserting either alone.
Source The Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson
Spice Trade Traditions, Origin Period, From (Year)-2000
Spice Trade Traditions, Food Traditions
Standing
Concerns Origin Period, From (Year)
Currently States -2000
Long-distance exchange touching spices is attested as early as the 10th millennium BCE around the Indian Ocean and Island Southeast Asia in the broadest sense, but the first well-documented spice-specific trade into the Mediterranean world is Egypt's import of cinnamon and cassia by about 2000 BCE; scholars have not settled on one single starting point, so a representative documented date is given rather than the earliest speculative one.
Source Spice Trade (Wikipedia)
Sugar, Earliest Documented Use, From (Year)-8000
Sugar, Ingredients
Standing
Concerns Earliest Documented Use, From (Year)
Currently States -8000
Estimates for sugarcane's domestication in New Guinea from the wild species Saccharum robustum range from about eight to ten thousand years before the present. The later development of solid, crystallized sugar production in India, roughly twenty five hundred years ago, is a separate, much later innovation and is not reflected in this range, which covers only the plant's earliest cultivation.
Source The Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson
Sugar, Earliest Documented Use, To (Year)-6000
Sugar, Ingredients
Standing
Concerns Earliest Documented Use, To (Year)
Currently States -6000
Estimates for sugarcane's domestication in New Guinea from the wild species Saccharum robustum range from about eight to ten thousand years before the present. The later development of solid, crystallized sugar production in India, roughly twenty five hundred years ago, is a separate, much later innovation and is not reflected in this range, which covers only the plant's earliest cultivation.
Source The Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson
Tacos al Pastor, Origin Period, From (Year)1900
Tacos al Pastor, Dishes
Standing
Concerns Origin Period, From (Year)
Currently States 1900
Marks the approximate arrival of Lebanese immigrants and their lamb shawarma into central Mexico in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the technique tacos al pastor adapts; the exact year the pork spit-roast itself began is not documented.
Source Al Pastor (Wikipedia)