Food and Drink Atlas
Things this atlas does not know. Each entry is a question that specialists
have posed and not settled, recorded with what would actually resolve it and which
expertise the answer needs.
These are kept deliberately, rather than quietly omitted. An atlas that shows
only what it is sure of implies a confidence it has not earned, and the gaps are often where
the interesting work is. Several sit exactly where two fields fail to meet: identifying the
hyssop of the Hebrew Bible needs a botanist and a philologist of Biblical Hebrew, and neither
one settles it alone.
Grouped by the part of the atlas the question sits in. Start here if you know the territory better than the technique.
Showing 41 to 54 of 54 open questions, page 3 of 3.
Traditions 9
Distillation
When was distillation apparatus first turned specifically to drinkable alcohol, rather than perfumes, medicines or other substances?
Open Distillation
Why It Is Open The alembic and retort were refined by Islamic Golden Age chemists including Jabir ibn Hayyan in the 8th century, and reached medieval Europe through Latin translations of Arabic alchemical texts in the 12th century, where distilled wine, aqua vitae, is clearly attested by the early 13th century in Spain. What the earliest stills were actually used to distill, and whether any earlier tradition, Chinese or Indian apparatus is sometimes cited, produced drinkable spirits before that point, is not settled by the surviving record. This is also a genuine Divinity Atlas cross-atlas edge candidate, since the transmission ran through the same alchemical tradition Divinity already covers.
What Would Settle It A dated residue or textual analysis tying a specific early Islamic-world or earlier still directly to beverage alcohol rather than another substance, or an equivalent finding for the disputed Chinese or Indian apparatus.
Question posed in
Encyclopaedia Britannica, history-of-distillation and history-of-alchemy literature.
Mezze
In what specific century or decade did the mezze custom of serving small dishes with drink begin?
Open Mezze
Why It Is Open Wikipedia's own history section places the origin only as "medieval times," specifically crediting Byzantine Greek and later Ottoman Greek households and tavernes, with no century or decade named. The word meze itself is traced further back, to Ancient Persia, but that is an etymology claim about the WORD, not a dated claim about when the small-dish PRACTICE began; the two should not be conflated into one number.
What Would Settle It A dated primary source, a household account, monastic record, market regulation or archaeological find, that places the small-dish-with-drink custom in a specific century within the broad medieval Byzantine window, rather than the general "medieval times" description current secondary sources give.
Expertise Needed Culinary and social history
Question posed in
Mezze (Wikipedia), section: History.
Street Food Culture
In what century, region or single tradition did street food culture (selling ready-to-eat food from stalls and shopfronts to city dwellers) first arise, if it arose in one place at all?
Open Street Food Culture
Why It Is Open Street food culture is independently attested in the ancient Roman world (popina and thermopolia, over 80 counters excavated at Pompeii) and has since developed independently in virtually every urban culture. No source consulted names a single point of origin, and the phenomenon is defined by a recurring urban condition (city dwellers without home kitchens) rather than a single invention or diffusion event, so an honest origin-start-year cannot be given without implying a single-origin claim the sources do not support.
What Would Settle It A comparative food-history source establishing whether ready-to-eat food-for-sale independently arose in multiple ancient urban centers (Rome, and separately in ancient China, Mesoamerica, South and Southeast Asia) on convergent timelines, or whether the earliest attested instance anywhere (not just the Roman world) can be dated and cited.
Expertise Needed Food History
Question posed in
Ancient Pompeiians Stopped at This Snack Bar to Feast on Snails, Fish and Wine (Smithsonian Magazine), Smart News, para. 2-3.
Maple Syrup Production
When did Indigenous peoples of Northeastern North America first begin making maple syrup?
Open Maple Syrup Production
Why It Is Open Every source consulted (Wikipedia's Maple syrup article, the National Museum of the American Indian's own magazine) agrees the practice is ancient and predates European contact by a long span, and Wikipedia states plainly that there are no authenticated accounts of how maple syrup production and consumption began. The earliest fixable date found, 1680, marks European settlers and fur traders already harvesting maple products, a continuation of an established Indigenous practice, not its origin.
What Would Settle It An archaeological find (a boiling site, a processing vessel) or a dated Indigenous oral history account placing maple sap processing at a specific century before European contact.
Expertise Needed Food history and archaeology
Question posed in
Maple syrup (Wikipedia), History section, European adoption passage.
Boodle Fight
When did the Armed Forces of the Philippines' boodle fight tradition begin among Philippine Military Academy cadets?
Open Boodle Fight
Why It Is Open Wikipedia's Kamayan article describes the boodle fight as a tradition of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, originally practiced by Philippine Military Academy cadets and named for military slang from the United States Military Academy West Point, but names no year, decade or bounding period for when PMA cadets began the practice. A search of further secondary accounts found the same description with no added date.
What Would Settle It A Philippine Military Academy institutional history, a military historian's account, or a dated news reference naming when cadets began this specific communal eating custom.
Expertise Needed Military and food history
Question posed in
Boodle fight (Wikipedia), Kamayan article, boodle fight passage.
Merienda
When did the merienda custom of a light afternoon meal begin in southern Europe, and when did it spread to the Americas and the Philippines?
Open Merienda
Why It Is Open Wikipedia's Merienda article documents the custom's geography and its name's spread across Spain, Portugal, Italy, the former Yugoslavia, France, Hispanic America, the Philippines, North Africa and Brazil, but gives no year, century or era for when the custom began or for when it reached the colonies. A secondary source (Spanish Sabores) states plainly that the origins of the custom are murky, with no more specific date offered there either.
What Would Settle It A documented reference in a historical Spanish, Portuguese or Italian text naming a period when the merienda custom is first attested, or a colonial-era record dating its export to the Americas or the Philippines.
Expertise Needed Food history
Question posed in
Merienda (Wikipedia), Lead section, geography and language spread.
Sobremesa
When did the Spanish custom of sobremesa, lingering at the table after a meal, begin?
Open Sobremesa
Why It Is Open Wikipedia's Sobremesa article and La Tienda's own culture page both describe sobremesa as a living Spanish table tradition tied to agrarian life and the siesta, but neither names a year, century or era for when the custom of remaining at the table began.
What Would Settle It A dated literary or historical reference (a period cookbook, a travel account, an academic food-history source) naming when Spanish sobremesa is first documented as a named custom.
Expertise Needed Food history
Question posed in
Sobremesa (Wikipedia), Lead section, opening sentence.
Buddhist Vegetarianism (Buddhist Dietary Practice)
When did Buddhist monastic vegetarianism become a settled, codified practice, closing the origin period Ashoka's Rock Edict 1 (c. 257 BCE) began?
Open Buddhist Vegetarianism (Buddhist Dietary Practice)
Why It Is Open Ashoka Rock Edict 1 (c. 257 BCE, already recorded as this entity's origin-start-year) shows royal commitment to vegetarianism and a ban on animal sacrifice in the Maurya Empire, but the sources consulted (the Buddhist vegetarianism and Buddhist cuisine Wikipedia articles, and the Emperor Wu of Liang Wikipedia article, checked for a later Chinese Buddhist monastic vegetarianism edict) describe the Theravada/Mahayana divergence on meat-eating as gradual, unfolding over centuries with no single codifying event or year named.
What Would Settle It A dated primary or secondary source naming a specific edict, monastic code revision, or council ruling that formally codified Mahayana monastic vegetarianism, giving a defensible close to the origin period Ashoka's edict began.
Expertise Needed Buddhist religious and food history
Question posed in
Buddhist vegetarianism (Wikipedia), Views of the three Buddhist vehicles section, Theravada view subsection.
Browse by Cuisine 3
Caribbean Cuisine
Did jerk seasoning and slow smoking originate with the Indigenous Taino, with Maroon communities of escaped enslaved Africans, or as a fusion of both?
Open Caribbean Cuisine
Why It Is Open The pit-smoking technique is documented among Jamaicas Taino inhabitants before European contact, and Maroon communities in the same region are separately credited with developing the spice marinade and much of the technique as it survives today; oral tradition and food-history writing attribute the fusion differently depending on which strand a given account emphasizes.
What Would Settle It Colonial-era written accounts or archaeological evidence dating the spice marinade specifically, rather than the smoking pit alone, would help separate the two strands; much of the record is oral rather than documentary, which may keep this genuinely unresolved.
Expertise Needed Culinary and Caribbean history
Question posed in
Caribbean Cuisine (Wikipedia).
British Cuisine
Who first combined fried fish and fried chipped potatoes into the dish now called fish and chips, and where?
Open British Cuisine
Why It Is Open Fried fish, introduced to Britain by Jewish immigrants, and fried chipped potatoes were both independently established foods in Britain before they were sold together; competing local histories credit a London shop opened by Joseph Malin around 1860 and a shop in Mossley, Lancashire, run by John Lees around the same period, and no single surviving record settles which came first.
What Would Settle It A dated advertisement, rate record or newspaper mention naming the combined dish earlier than either claimed date would settle the priority question; no such record has surfaced despite sustained local-history interest on both sides.
Expertise Needed Culinary history
Question posed in
Fish and Chips (Wikipedia), Lead section.
Hungarian Cuisine
By what route did the chili pepper reach Hungary and become paprika?
Open Hungarian Cuisine
Why It Is Open The chili pepper reached Europe from the Americas after 1492, but how it specifically reached Hungary is contested: one account has it arriving through Ottoman Turkish territory during the sixteenth and seventeenth century occupation of central Hungary, another traces a Balkan trade route independent of direct Ottoman planting, and a popular but weakly evidenced tradition credits Bulgarian gardeners settled near Szeged.
What Would Settle It Earlier dated agricultural or trade records naming the pepper along a specific one of these routes, rather than the general post-1492 diffusion already well established, would settle which path actually carried it into Hungarian cooking.
Expertise Needed Culinary and agricultural history
Question posed in
Hungarian Cuisine (Wikipedia).
Ingredients 3
Ginger
Does a wild ancestor of cultivated ginger survive, and where was it first domesticated?
Open Ginger
Why It Is Open Zingiber officinale is not known to exist in a wild state anywhere; every cultivated plant has been propagated vegetatively from rhizome cuttings, generation after generation, for long enough that no confirmed wild population has ever been identified. Competing accounts place the likely point of origin in India or in Maritime Southeast Asia among Austronesian-speaking peoples, without resolving the question.
What Would Settle It Discovery and genetic confirmation of a true wild Zingiber officinale population, or comparative genomic work establishing which existing wild Zingiber species is its closest relative and where that species is native, either of which would narrow the search for where and when domestication took place.
Expertise Needed Botany and plant genomics, specifically phylogenetic comparison across wild Zingiber species.
Question posed in
The Oxford Companion to Food, Alan Davidson.
Coconut
Was the coconut domesticated once, in the Indo-Pacific, or independently twice, in the Pacific and Indian Ocean basins?
Open Coconut
Why It Is Open Genetic studies published in the early twenty-first century found two genetically distinct coconut populations and proposed two independent domestication events; other researchers read the same and later genomic data as consistent with a single origin later dispersed by Austronesian voyaging, and the debate has not settled.
What Would Settle It A broader, better-sampled ancient-DNA study across Indian Ocean and Pacific coconut populations, dated against the archaeological record of Austronesian and Indian Ocean seafaring, would let botanists distinguish shared ancestry from independent domestication.
Expertise Needed Botany and archaeobotany
Question posed in
Coconut (Wikipedia), Lead section.
Cashew
When was the cashew first used by its Indigenous South American originators?
Open Cashew
Why It Is Open The source documents only the 16th-century Portuguese contact and spread of the cashew, a European-contact date, not an Indigenous first-use or domestication date; no earlier archaeological or textual attestation was found.
What Would Settle It Archaeobotanical remains of Anacardium occidentale from a pre-Columbian Brazilian site, dated and published.
Question posed in
Cashew (Wikipedia), Lead section.