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Pesach before the Columbian exchange



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sequoia




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, May 05 2016, 10:03 am
What did people eat?
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etky




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, May 05 2016, 12:38 pm
I was also wondering what they did in Europe before then.
The ban on kitniyot dates to the late 12th century so there were a few hundred years that they weren't eating legumes and they didn't yet have potatoes.
I guess they ate lots of proteins and vegetables?
Or possibly they made dishes with matzo too.
Avoiding gebrokt was a much later minhag.
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Raisin




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, May 05 2016, 12:41 pm
They had much more monotonous diets anyway. I guess they at turnips, carrots, onions etc.

Also, hard matza is fairly recent. Matza used to be softer.
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5mom




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, May 05 2016, 12:41 pm
Meat, fish, cheese, fruits and vegetables. And lots of matza. They were probably still eating the soft laffa type of matza that we now think of as Sefardi matza. So, not too terrible. Medieval European diets weren't all that varied to begin with.

ETA: sorry, I see that Raisin and I must have posted at the same time.
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sequoia




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, May 05 2016, 1:57 pm
Medieval European diets were very grain-based. It was all about porridges, kashas, pies with various savory and sweet fillings. You can't make matzah pie.
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Raisin




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, May 05 2016, 3:51 pm
sequoia wrote:
Medieval European diets were very grain-based. It was all about porridges, kashas, pies with various savory and sweet fillings. You can't make matzah pie.


you can make porridge with matza meal. Except matza meal probably wasn't a thing if they had soft matza. And no food processors.

I'm guessing they ate kugels and stews. Maybe matza kugel?
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mfb




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, May 05 2016, 4:19 pm
Did they have beets already then?
Cooked beets, and borsht soup
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little_mage




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, May 05 2016, 4:25 pm
sequoia wrote:
Medieval European diets were very grain-based. It was all about porridges, kashas, pies with various savory and sweet fillings. You can't make matzah pie.


I have a cookbook, it's either Olive Trees and Honey or the World of Jewish Cooking, both by Gil Marks, that does have a recipe for a (Spanish) matzah pie. I think it's called mina? I've never made it, but it's certainly a recipe that I've looked at and thought about. And I make matzah lasagna all Passover. Obviously that isn't something that was being made, but it's essentially a matzah pie...
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esther09




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, May 05 2016, 4:32 pm
sequoia wrote:
Medieval European diets were very grain-based. It was all about porridges, kashas, pies with various savory and sweet fillings. You can't make matzah pie.


It's an interesting question. I don't have an actual historical answer but... We uproot our entire diet, as well. And it's only a week. So... Meat and vegetables, soups?
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spring13




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, May 05 2016, 6:58 pm
At least they weren't trying to replace chocolate chip granola bars or mayonnaise made with soybean oil or any of the bajillion other stupid things people spend heaps of money on substituting now. They weren't expecting the same variety of foods that we expect now. So limiting themselves to poultry/meat, eggs, dairy, root vegetables, nuts, whatever they'd managed to grow or preserve, probably wasn't as big of a drama. Even without potatoes, they had beets, carrots, turnips, cabbage, onions, etc. In warm enough climates they had olives and eggplant. And I expect they just ate a lot of matza.
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etky




 
 
    
 

Post Thu, May 05 2016, 10:15 pm
little_mage wrote:
I have a cookbook, it's either Olive Trees and Honey or the World of Jewish Cooking, both by Gil Marks, that does have a recipe for a (Spanish) matzah pie. I think it's called mina? I've never made it, but it's certainly a recipe that I've looked at and thought about. And I make matzah lasagna all Passover. Obviously that isn't something that was being made, but it's essentially a matzah pie...


Minas of different kinds -basically layers of matzo and meat - is a casserole dish that features in the Pesach cuisine of many Sephardic communities with various local permutations. My (non-Sephardi) mother had a recipe that she occasionally made. I remember it being tasty but quite oily. I think she got it from a book called The Israeli Cookbook that came out in the sixties.
I also make matzo lasagna -both milchigs and fleishigs. Also "lukshen kugel" with broken, moistened matzo that is almost indistinguishable from the real thing.
I'm thinking that the soft matzo that they had then was even easier to work with and might not have needed extra moistening.
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