Old RPing Lore Topic: RPing with Food from the New World

[Rivvy Elf]

Reason number 42 on why it's a bad idea to have a set year in the third age is because it made so many new world items implausible to RP with, especially a year like 3014. Now of course since we have most kingdoms set in the 4th age or not in a set year, almost all of these New World foods can plausibly be circulating somewhere in Middle Earth. Here was one of my contributions to RPing with lore back in the late late plaza in 2017:

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On Roleplaying with Foods and Crops from the "New World" (Corn, Potatoes, etc.)

Why is this important?: Tolkien himself has replaced food and goods that were exclusive only to the new world prior to the Exploration Age in revised editions of his works. See this link for more discussion on the subject, and how some new world plants could've been imported from Numenor/Valinor. So if we want to have our RP posts in-line with the spirit of Tolkien, we have to keep in mind which foods are plausible to grow and use in current day in 3014.

I would like to point out that it is very plausible to use most of these foods and goods in our everyday RP. But not all of them, as you'll see.

This is how I will discuss some of the most commonly used foods and crops in our modern day world: I will discuss where the origin of each food/crop in real life, and how plausible it is for an average RP character to possess/use it.

Please feel free to make comments or suggest any changes.


Grains-

Maize (Corn):
Origin- Mexico. Can be grown in plenty of regions
Middle Earth Plausibility- Confirmed as ingredient in Lembas (Maybe? See Morgoth's Ring for description of white corn in lembas). Either way, very high plausibility



Pseudograins-

Sunflower:
Origin- Most commonly in North America in temperate regions
Middle Earth Plausibility- Very High



Beans-

The Common Bean:
Origin- Mesoamerica and parts of South America. Can be grown in plenty of regions
Middle Earth Plausibility- Very High

Lima Beans:
Origin- Mesomerica. Can be grown in plenty of regions
Middle Earth Plausibility- Very High

Peanuts:
Origin- Northwestern Argentina or Southeastern Bolivia. Best grown in regions with long periods of warm weather (see Southern U.S and China)
Middle Earth Plausibility- High



Roots and tubers-

Potato:
Origin- Southern Peru and some parts of Bolivia. Can be grown in plenty of regions (see Ireland)
Middle Earth Plausibility- Confirmed (Source: Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbits, Two Towers)

Sweet Potato:
Origin- Central or South America. Cannot tolerate frost. Can be grown as summer crop in temperate regions, though.
Middle Earth Plausibility- High



Fruits-

Avocado:
Origin- Mexico or California. Most common breed grows in sub-tropic region without frost and with little wind.
Middle Earth Plausibility- Medium. Probably most common in places with a degree of weather control, like Lothlorien

Cocoa Bean (Chocolate):
Origin- Central America. Can only be grown 20° to the north and south of the Equator
Middle Earth Plausibility- Very low. If it can be found anywhere in 3014, most likely in the jungle areas deep within Harad region. But availability extremely limited even then due to probable trade embargoes from Gondor to Harad, lack of Harad government (Harad tribe could hoard cocoa and not spread it) to commercially grow or create organized trade to Rhun (?)

Cranberries:
Origin- North America. Traditionally grown in wetlands. Can be grown in places with consistently high soil moisture content. Can be grown in cold climates if managed effectively
Middle Earth Plausibility- High

Peppers (Capsicum. NOT to be confused with peppercorns, which is an expensive old world crop originating in India):
Origin- South America and Central America. Grown in sunny lands with warm, loamy, moist soils (but not waterlogged). Hates frost
Middle Earth Plausibility- High

Tomatoes:
Origin- Central and Western South America. Can be grown in plenty of regions
Middle Earth Plausibility- Low, not because it can't be grown in a lot of places in Middle Earth (it can), but because Tolkien changed tomatoes to pickles in The Hobbit.



Melons-

Squash and Pumpkins:
Origin- Mexico or South America. Can be grown in a lot of regions
Middle Earth Plausibility- Very High



Nuts-

Cashew:
Origin- Northeastern Brazil. Commonly grown in tropical climates. Cannot stand frost
Middle Earth Plausibility- Low

Pecans:
Origin- North America. Commonly grown in warm temperate to sub-tropic climates
Middle Earth Plausibility- High



Other-

Chicle (key ingredient in chewing gum):
Origin- Central America. It is sub-tropical, and does not tolerate frost. Can grow in a variety of soil conditions, however
Middle Earth Plausibility- High

Maple Syrup:
Origin- Northeastern America. Common in temperate regions.
Middle Earth Plausibility- High in places without ents or huorns

Rubber:
Origin- Amazon Rainforest. Has a history of being hard to cultivate even in tropic climates due to things like Blight.
Middle Earth Plausibility- Very Low

Tobacco is confirmed in Middle Earth because of its use in the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings.

Vanilla:
Origin- Mexico. Grown in regions with hot-humid climate with well-drained, high organic loamy soil. Most commonly grown 10-20 degrees from equator, but it actually can be grown in regions like Eastern China and areas in Turkey.
Middle Earth Plausibility- Low

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I didn't get criticism for this thread at the time, but I do recall some people later sarcastically commenting in other threads "here to make things less fun again, Rivvy?" Or maybe I just want to show proof that I can apply research to the legendarium in 2017 :P.

[Elenhir]

I'm not sure I follow your unspoken reasoning for why being a wee bit into the Fourth Age makes the situation any different from the last years of the Third.

For things like potatoes and tobacco, which are New World and yet confirmed in Third Age, the conceit is that they were introduced long in the past, and then became, at some point, extinct in the Old World. They would then be reintroduced in history, thousands and thousands of years later.

[Rivvy Elf]

It's unspoken because I find holes in it myself upon further reflection. The reasoning is very debatable because it relies on the dangerous line of counterfactual and speculative historiography on assuming that the accounts as written from the perspective of the peoples of the West, rather than the peoples of Rhun, Mordor, or Harad, could leave some possibility that such information on certain foods was simply unknown by the people in Tolkien's legendarium. From an in-universe perspective that is.

But a counter to my perspective would be that in Appendix A, the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen was written more than a hundred years into the fourth age, would be if there were such new commodities, they would be confirmed to have returned by then by Tolkien somewhere. Assuming of course that the historian who wrote the account was thorough and had accounts from the east and the south.

You're right of course, a few years within the Fourth Age would not make the situation any realistically different. Trade doesn't evolve that fast after all especially pertaining to the hostilities between Gondor, Rhun, and Harad

[Elenhir]

Ah, so the argument isn't that they weren't present in Middle-earth in the Third Age but might have become present in the early Fourth. Rather, the argument is that they weren't necessarily present in the particular theaters of Middle-earth we see, but might have been in the mythologically-distant Old World somewhere. Yes, that does help.

[Galastel]

I think you're going about it the wrong way. Tolkien wasn't interested in history - not when writing the LotR. To evidence that, we have for example the simple fact that the LotR isn't set in any particular time. The weapons in use are early medieval, but the way the hobbits are dressed, the way their houses are furnished etc. are 19th century.
Tolkien set out to create a mythology for England. The one question that underlies his choices regarding whether something exists in ME or not, and thus the one question that should guide us, isn't whether something could have grown in the UK, but whether something was traditionally and quintessentially British. Tea is as British as you get, so the hobbits drink tea and have tea-time. Chocolate was introduced to Europe at about the same time, but is not British (it came from the Spanish colonies rather than the British ones), so it doesn't exist in ME. Potatoes became a staple of British food, ergo they exist. Sweet potatoes - to the best of my knowledge they were far from common in the British kitchen, thus it doesn't matter that they came from the same place as regular potatoes, grow in the same climate etc. - they do not exist.
Using the same rationale, I wouldn't even introduce non-British methods of preparation to existing ingredients. For example, Confit de Canard is a cured and poached duck - all the ingredients are present in ME. But it is a Gascon (southern French) dish, not an English one, thus it doesn't belong.

In the Fourth Age, peace would allow Gondor to trade with distant lands, introducing more varied ingredients and methods of preparation. I believe it would not be out of character for the location to become closer to how we know the UK today.

[Aduchil]

I don't believe "white corn" refers to maize. That is American usage. Corn originally means grain, but it can be used for the most commonly grown crop in an area. In America, that's maize, but Tolkien was not American. There's no reason to assume "corn" refers to maize, on the contrary.

[Nessa Saelind]

I agree with @Galastel reasoning on this. And also if we're going with the assumption that the time period in Middle Earth is a kind of a representation of the European Middle Ages, it's a view of the Middle Ages that never was; or to be precise how the Middle Ages were perceived in the 19th c. Helen Young wrote and interesting article about the Middle Ages in Popular Media in Whose Middle Ages? where she mention Tolkien and Lord of the Rings, although she was writing about race in that article, not food.

While we're on the topic of food in Middle Earth I recently discovered a book Flora of Middle Earth by Walter S. Judd and Graham A. Judd. It was published 3 years ago, if my memory serves me. I've skimmed through it a bit (didn't have a chance to read it properly), it looks interesting and it has a section about food.

[Androthelm]

Although it's been a bit since this post, I was just reading over the Prologue Concerning Hobbits and did notice that in the section on Pipe-weed, Tolkien himself (or, the writer of this part of the Red Book anyway, who does reference having met Gandalf personally and so who we can presume is probably one of the four Hobbits of the Fellowship) notes that pipe-weed was probably first introduced by the Men of Westernesse to Gondor, from whence it spread northward, eventually reaching the Shire/Bree area -- where they began to put it in pipes. The Gondorians grew it for its fragrant blossoms, and called it Sweet Galenas.

Anyway, this route (Númenor -> Gondor -> the Rest of Middle-Earth -> Presumably dying out before the colonization of the New World) may pretty cleanly be used to justify any New World foods referenced, since it seems that Númenor had a somewhat unique ecosystem. I know this was all essentially stated in the OP, but I just wanted to throw in a pretty explicit textual citation.