Montage of New World domesticated plants. Clockwise from top left: 1. Maize (Zea mays) 2. Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) 3. Potato (Solanum tuberosum) 4. Vanilla (Vanilla planifolia) 5. Pará rubber tree (Hevea brasiliensis) 6. Cacao (Theobroma cacao) 7. Tobacco (Nicotiana rustica)
New World crops are thosecrops, food and otherwise, that are native to theNew World (mostlythe Americas) and were not found in theOld World before1492 AD. Many of these crops are now grown around the world and have often become an integral part of the cuisine of various cultures in theOld World. Notable among them are the "Three Sisters":maize,winter squash, and climbing beans.
The transfer of people, crops, precious metals, and diseases from the Old World to the New World and vice versa is called theColumbian Exchange.
Food historianLois Ellen Frank calls potatoes, tomatoes, corn, beans, squash, chili, cacao, and vanilla the "magic eight" ingredients that were found and used only in the Americas before 1492 and were taken via theColumbian Exchange back to theOld World, dramatically transforming the cuisine there.[17][18][19] According to Frank,[20]
If we deconstruct that these foods were inherently native, then that means that the Italians didn't have the tomato, the Irish didn't have the potato, half the British National Dish—Fish and Chips—didn't exist. The Russians didn't have the potato, nor did they have vodka from the potato. There were no chiles in any Asian cuisine anywhere in the world, nor were there any chiles in any East Indian cuisine dishes, including curries. And the French had no confection using either vanilla or chocolate. So the Old World was a completely different place.
^Kent, J.A.; Bommaraju, T.V.; Barnicki, S.D. (2017).Handbook of Industrial Chemistry and Biotechnology. Springer International Publishing. p. 902.ISBN978-3-319-52287-6. RetrievedAugust 4, 2020.Sunflower Seed Sunflower (Helianthus annus var. marcocarpus) is a New World crop, known to have been grown in Arizona–New Mexico in 3000 BC and in the Mississippi–Missouri Basin at least since 900 BC.
