Culinary traditions in Middle Earth

[eowyntje]

Originally Posted by Child of the 7th Age

"Pork recipes for hobbits?" Whoops, not my hobbits.

But I suppose you are right concerning the dearth of beef.

How about vegetarian hobbits?

I believe there is at least one mentioning in the Lord of the Rings, of a hobbit eating bacon:

There was beer in plentym and a mighty dish of mushrooms and bacon besides much other solid farmhouse fare

(book one, 'A shortcut to mushrooms')
I find it hard to believe hobbits were vegetarian, but of course you're free to create great vegetarian hobbit recepies.

To know more about the hobbit's eating habbits, we may have to look at their tradingcustoms. I think not everything about the hobbit kitchen was english, for example:
Hobbits grew and ate patatoes, for as far as I can tell, they have had them for quite a long time. However, since patatoes came from Amerika, Great Britian could not have had any before 1492. In fact, after destroying the Inca-civilasation, the spanish invaders did not notice the papatoe at all and thought it to be useless. It is only in the late 17th and 18th century that the papatoe begins to spread around Europe.
So in this matter, hobbiton can't have been like Britian, the shire must either have a different climate for patatoes to grow their naturaly, or they must trade or have traded with a region with that climate. But where in middle earth do we find people capable of trade with hobbits, having a south-amerika like climate?

Also, they have great wineyards, and grew tabacco which is not something Great Britian is famous for. Meriadoc Brandybuck said:

All the same, observations that I have made on my many journeys south have convinced me that the weed itsself is not native to our parts of the world, but came northward from the lower Anduin, wither it was, I suspect, originally brought over sea by the men of Westernesse

(prologue, 'concerning pipe-weed')
A sign of a quite long traderoot. If they imported pipeweed, what else did they import?

Maybe I'm digging to deep in all this, but I think finding out a bit about the middle earth traderoots would tell us a lot about their eatinghabbits.


So far in Lotr I've found notes of hobbits eating: patatoes, rabbits, herbs, mushrooms, carrots, cabigages, bread, corn, appels, honey, wine, beer, and pipeweed.