8 Comments

You're quite right that imperial palace traditions were necessary for cuisines to innovate and develop into their respective "haute" variants. Indian and Chinese cuisines owe much of their distinct flavours to ingredients originally from Mesoamerica, so your ranking makes perfect sense to me.

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Spencer Wells

Love it!

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Jan 19, 2023Liked by Spencer Wells

Great article. Thanks for summarizing what I have been thinking for years. Just one correction. Cacao’s originated in the Amazon basin

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Interesting no African foundational cuisine, sub Saharan at least. Otherwise they correspond to continents, except Australia I guess because of remoteness.

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