Food & ingredients available in Medieval Europe before contact with the Americas

It is sometimes difficult to comprehend that many of our most favourite and common foods and spices were not available to ‘the old world’ till after Europeans found their way to the Americas.Yes, once upon a time we somehow managed to survive without potatoes, tomatoes, tobacco and many more delicious things.And yes, till the spice trade started increasing in size, many now common spices were either extreme luxuries or simply unavailable in Europe.Some people think that because we didn’t have all the ingredients that we have today, that medieval food was bland and boring.But this is not the case.I’ve written a little bit about this here in my ‘Medieval Myths Bingo’ article (I’ll write more, one day), but I thought that making a list of every food, herb & spice available in Medieval Europe before Columbus made his trip, would be just as eye opening and also rather handy to have access to.I hope that seeing all these ingredients will at least show that if people had the means, they…