Early Adopters of the Shellfish Diet

If you’ve ever eaten an oyster, the prospect may have seemed odd to you at some point. After all, who collected these shellfish from the sea for the first time and thought “I’d eat that”? In all actuality, people have been eating mollusks, scallops and other shellfish since the dawn of time. 

Scallops

Food historians can confirm that the ancient Romans were enjoying scallops and that by the 17^th century people were slicing up scallops, breading them and serving them with a sauce. Aristotle observed that scallops retained their best flavors when they spawn in the spring. 

Oysters

The Chinese may have been the first group of people to cultivate oysters, but the world has enjoyed them since the days before recorded history. There was one point in the nineteenth century when one could walk to the coasts of France and pluck oysters from the sea to eat for dinner. 

Mussels

It was an Irishman with a penchant for crime that brought us the world’s first recorded instance of eating mussels. Patrick Walton found himself in a precarious situation and left Ireland in a hurry. He did so in a boat that was ill equipped for the task and ended up shipwrecked off the coast of France. There he tried to capture sea birds in a net he set up. He captured mussels instead and managed to live off the seafood.

There is evidence, however, that he was not the first. Ancient Europeans were raising mussels in 500 BC with bundles of branches they used to capture them.  

Is Pasta Really an Italian Dish?

Pasta is a dish that has become synonymous with Italian culture. Italian immigrants brought pasta with them, and practically everywhere they have gone since. The most famous pasta dishes in the world can usually trace their roots back to Italy, but the country isn’t the original spot for pasta. 

Marco Polo

The origins of pasta are somewhat debated. The most widely believed theory is that the explorer Marco Polo brought pasta home with him after reaching China. This expedition would have occurred during the Yuan Dynasty, and there is evidence that the Chinese had been consuming noodles far before that.

The trouble is that these noodles aren’t technically pasta. In addition, there is evidence pointing to pasta already being in Sicily at least two hundred years before Polo’s expedition. 

Truer Origins

It’s hard to pinpoint, but many food historians seem to agree that Libyans may have originally developed pasta. They also brought sugar cane and eggplant to the region as well. The Talmud makes reference to pasta as early as the fifth century.

In addition, the Italians learned how to hand dry the pasta they made from the Libyans. This theory is bolstered by the number of Arabic flavors found in early recipes for pasta.

Although there are some who speculate that pasta is actually Greek. True, the word pasta does translate to “dough” or “pastry cake.” There is even a story of the god Vulcan pushing dough through a machine that converts it into thin strands of edible dough.