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[bedlamsbard]

Something I have been vaguely considering over the past few weeks is how many fantasy novels have New World foods in them. Not urban fantasy, obviously, but Ye Olde High Fantasy of the Tolkien-esque variety, the kind that involves a lot of knights in armor and tall forests and Western European tropes. I read a lot about food, because I think it's interesting, and I keep thinking about how many New World foods are now associated with European or Asian countries. Ireland and potatoes, Italy and tomatoes, India and, I think (my book is in New Orleans), peppers (or chiles? Something related). And all the kinds of food we take for granted that weren't available before the discovery of the Americas, like corn or turkey or chocolate and a bunch of stuff I'm probably forgetting because I don't know much about it. So I have been wondering how many fantasy novels of that type consider it. Probably not many. I know that there are potatoes in LotR, but I can't think of anything else off the top of my head. Scott Lynch, maybe? He does spend a lot of time talking about food, and I seem to vaguely remember potatoes or tomatoes or something New World. (One assumes that most fantasy authors, at least the ones who do large amounts of research, are researching things like armor and weapons care and the affect of sandstorms on weathered monuments, not foods.)

I feel like potatoes are something that's fairly common to see in fantasy, and cacao in one form or another (usually in hot chocolate form). Also corn? Though I'm not as sure on this one; it's been a while since I've read a lot of high fantasy, and again -- I don't think most writers think about foods this much. I'm just a little curious about how much the globalization of foods (and by extension, plants and animals, either used for food or for other purposes) has sunk into the fantasy genre, which is usually very European Middle Ages-oriented.

Corn. I feel like corn is not as present as I think it is, because I can't think of anywhere it appears -- wait, isn't there a cornfield in the beginning of FotR, at least in the movie? I can't remember about the book. For some reason I think that GRRM has all Old World plants, at least, in A Song of Ice and Fire; I can't remember potatoes or corn or anything of the sort, but again -- it's been a while.

Comments

[aella_irene]

...yes. Ingvar presumably has a colony in their version of the New World?