Corn had a larger impact in Africa and Southern Europe while the potato had a huge Eurocentric impact.
Yeah, the introduction of maize to Europe was sort of not really a big deal. The primary use of it was as a starchy grain, and as Europe already had plentiful wheat and barley, maize was sort of just another grain.
"Corn," by the way, is the Old English ("korn" in Old Norse and "kornum" in proto-Germanic) word for "grain." It referred to cereal crops (i.e. grasses that produced seeds with fermentable starch) in Europe, and came to refer to maize in the Americas because that was the dominant grain that was grown here.
As for the crop with more impact than the potato? Maybe the tomato, but that's not really a staple. Still, the introduction of tomatoes reshaped vast swathes of European cuisine.
Maybe we're talking about two different things, but corn is the most prolific crop in the world right now and is used in basically every packaged good. Many things would not exist right now without corn.
Most of the evidence of distilled alcohol prior to 1500 is shaky at best and outright misrepresented at worst. Lots of national pride gets bound up in the origins of these beverages, and people want to believe that their cultural practices go back for very very long spans of time, as though the weight of years adds an otherwise lacking validity.
Honestly, that's just what I've been told - Russia and Poland fight it out over who did it first, 9th or 8th century, Russia had slightly more evidence, though it propably wasn't called vodka at the time. Evidence was not, as it were, in evidence, since it's just conversation between bartenders on break. My interest is purely for the sake of customer interaction and knowing my product.
My bet is on the 11th century, since there's apparently actual records of the first distillery in Russia from that period, not that I can point you to them.
Yeah, so I'm just gonna point out that the traditional potato is not actually a root, but rather stem tissue that forms storage bulbs underground. This is why they turn green and sprout stems when exposed to light.
Sweet potatoes are root tissue though. Which is why they occasionally have stringy little roots hanging onto them.
Maybe we're talking about two different things, but corn is the most prolific crop in the world right now and is used in basically every packaged good. Many things would not exist right now without corn.
You're right, but the potato is extremely important historically. Potatoes can grow in such poor soil and under such broad environmental conditions that they quickly became a staple crop. Without the potato to feed Europe, the industrial revolution might never have happened.
So I had "fries" last night that were really just four Lincoln log sized sticks of potato fries in truffle oil. Can't say I noticed a difference between them and regularly fried-in-peanut-oil wedges, but the aoli was excellent on them.
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"Corn," by the way, is the Old English ("korn" in Old Norse and "kornum" in proto-Germanic) word for "grain." It referred to cereal crops (i.e. grasses that produced seeds with fermentable starch) in Europe, and came to refer to maize in the Americas because that was the dominant grain that was grown here.
As for the crop with more impact than the potato? Maybe the tomato, but that's not really a staple. Still, the introduction of tomatoes reshaped vast swathes of European cuisine.
My bet is on the 11th century, since there's apparently actual records of the first distillery in Russia from that period, not that I can point you to them.
And if we go back to the Romans, Apicius has a lot to say about food:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/29728/29728-h/29728-h.htm
Sweet potatoes are root tissue though. Which is why they occasionally have stringy little roots hanging onto them.
oh and who can forget this gem that Rym found