The fight against hunger, or occasionally the desire to taste something new, has always urged man on in his quest for new foods which can be either plentiful and cheap or rare and expensive. For this reason rice, previously grown on a large scale in Italy during the Middle Ages. It was brought back to Europe by the merchant venturers of Venice and Pisa and the soldiers who took part in the Crusaders.

The discovery of America opened up great opportunities for Europe in the way of food. In 1519 Hernan Cortes seized the city of Mexico and found there a food market that was ‘twice as large as the city of Salamanca’ in Spain, according to the historian Diaz. This market was full of food that the Europeans had never seen before. The items included pancakes made of maize flour, turkeys, potato pancakes and sweetmeats made of cocoa.

It took several hundred years before these strange new foods, like tomatoes and certain varieties of beans, spread to other parts of the world. Once they had been eaten and enjoyed they became a normal part of the everyday diet of people throughout the world, just as the potato did.