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Old World Foods
Coffee
The coffee plant is apparently native to Abyssinia. The use of coffee in Abyssinia was
recorded in the fifteenth century and regarded at that time as an ancient practice (EB). I believe
that there is a reference in one of the Greek historians to what sounds like coffee being drunk in
what might well be Abyssinia, but I have not yet succeeded in tracking it down.
Coffee was apparently introduced into Yemen from Abyssinia in the middle of the 15th
century. It reached Mecca in the last decade of the century and Cairo in the first decade of the
16th century (Hattox).
The use of coffee in Egypt is mentioned by a European resident near the end of the sixteenth
century. It was brought to Italy in 1615 and to Paris in 1647 (LG). The first coffee house in
England was opened in Oxford in 1650 (Wilson), and the first one in London in 1652 (EB). The
earliest use of the word in English is in 1592, in a passage describing its use in Turkey (OED).
It appears that coffee is out of period for European feasts and late period for Islamic ones.
Tea
The use of tea in China and Ceylon goes back to prehistoric times. According to the Larousse,
it was brought to Europe by the Dutch in 1610 and to England in 1644. According to the OED, it
was first imported into Europe in the 17th century and first mentioned in a European language
(Portuguese) in 1559. The first use of the word in English (in the form “Cha”) is given as 1598;
the passage seems to describe its use in China.
It appears that tea is out of period for European feasts and (since it was being brought from
China by sea rather than overland) even further out of period for Islamic feasts. It is, of course, in
period for Chinese and Japanese feasts. So far as I know, iced tea is a modern invention.
Bananas
The Four Seasons of the House of Cerruti, an Italian manuscript of the fourteenth century
(based on an Arab work of the eleventh century) mentions bananas as something which “we
know of .. only from texts or tales from merchants from Cyprus or pilgrims from the Holy Land.
Sicilians ... know them well.” It is clear from the accompanying picture that the artist had never
seen a banana. The first bunch of bananas is said to have reached England in 1633 (Wilson).
Citrus Fruit
Citrus fruit are native to southern Asia and the Malay Archipelago, and cultivated citrus occur
very early in China. In the West, the citron was known to classical antiquity. By the 10 th c. the
Arabs had sour oranges, and by the 12 th century lemon, sour orange, citron, and pummelo had all
made it as far as Spain and North Africa. By the 13 th century lemon, sour orange, citron, and what
is probably lime are described from northern Italy. The sweet orange is mentioned in a few
documents from the second half of the 15 th century as growing in Italy and southern France, and
seems to have been fairly widely grown by the early 16 th century. In 1520 or thereabouts the
Portuguese brought a new and superior sweet orange variety from China, which then spread
around the citrus-growing areas of Europe in the 16 th and 17 th centuries. Mandarin oranges do not
seem to have made it to Europe until the early 19 th century. The grapefruit seems to have