I was discussing the origin of fries yesterday, and someone said that frying potatoes in oil was pretty obvious. I said, sure, I bet the Inca did it already. This got me wondering, what do we know about pre-Colombian recipes? I mean, presumably we know what sort of food was consumed, but do we know how it was prepared? I'm assuming any such knowledge is indirect and fragmentary. Any pointers would be appreciated.
Speaking specifically of frying, there's little evidence that frying was ever known to the Inca before contact. They did have knowledge of seed oils, specifically chia, and used them for painting and medicinal purposes. However, the use of oils in cooking was limited at best.
In a more general sense, our knowledge of pre-columbian cuisine is incomplete. We know it varied greatly by region. The Inca were obsessed with chilis and potatoes. These featured prominently in the food available to everyone. Higher ranked people would have had access to a diet with more expensive spices like cacao and things such as fish. Cheaper meat would have come from guinea pigs and llamas when available and some foods like oca were almost exclusively eaten by lower classes.
Of course access to food depends not just on wealth, but also on region and trade networks. The Mesoamerican diets emphasized corn heavily and it features heavily in regional dishes there to this day. Cassava root, agave, fish, various types of chiles, potatoes, tomatoes, sapote, avocado, pineapple, and nopales were common staples in various regions.
Heading north to the modern US-Mexico borderlands, cuisine changed quite dramatically. Chiles were not cultivated as they were to the south. Instead, the only chile available was the wild chiltepin. This wasn't consumed widely due to its rarity and our evidence for its consumption is fairly recent. Native diets reflected the reality that spices as a whole are far less common within the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts. Meat featured prominently, often augmented by agave and parts of cacti. The Tohono O'odham and the Seri of Northern Mexico use the Saguaro fruit to make a fermented drink. I've heard the festivals around producing it are quite the experience and the drink itself is "interesting". However, the true dietary staple of the Tohono O'odham is the one they are named for. Legend has it that when the Spanish asked them what they are called, they replied that they were the People of the Bean, the Papavhi O'odam. The Spanish misunderstood this and called them the Papago thereafter. Tepary (and other) beans were extensively cultivated. In the sandy Yuman areas where bean cultivation was difficult or impossible, natives chased small game and collected other plants. This little bugger is called the sandfood. They're bizarre plants that inhabit fixed dunes and the large stem (growing upwards of 5 feet long) is considered edible. Puebloan peoples cultivated beans and maize too. The Hopi of Northern Arizona make a traditional bread called Piki from maize and alkali tree ash coated on a hot stone. Here's a modern interpretation of piki bread alongside a ramekin of tepary bean hummus at the Turquoise room in Winslow.
Along the coastal areas, foods coming from the ocean tended to be dietary staples. Fish, shellfish, and seaweeds were in wide culinary use along both coasts, even down into Mexico. The tribes of the Pacific Northwest are well known today for their traditional fish recipes and the Caribbean peoples are generally considered the progenitors of modern Barbeque with their smoking techniques.
Inland nomadic tribes tended to focus more on accessible game. The blackfoot, for example, used local berries to augment their buffalo-laden diet.
I was assigned this book for a class I had on the crafting of Mexican national identity when I was in Uni. Its called Que Vivan Los Tamales: Food and the Making of Mexican Identity. Here's a link to the Amazon page for it: http://www.amazon.ca/Que-vivan-los-tamales-Identity/dp/0826318738
Connections between what people eat and who they are--between cuisine and identity--reach deep into Mexican history, beginning with pre-Columbian inhabitants offering sacrifices of human flesh to maize gods in hope of securing plentiful crops. This cultural history of food in Mexico traces the influence of gender, race, and class on food preferences from Aztec times to the present and relates cuisine to the formation of national identity.
The metate and mano, used by women for grinding corn and chiles since pre-Columbian times, remained essential to preparing such Mexican foods as tamales, tortillas, and mole poblano well into the twentieth century. Part of the ongoing effort by intellectuals and political leaders to Europeanize Mexico was an attempt to replace corn with wheat. But native foods and flavors persisted and became an essential part of indigenista ideology and what it meant to be authentically Mexican after 1940, when a growing urban middle class appropriated the popular native foods of the lower class and proclaimed them as national cuisine.
I know its more centered around Mexico than Peru and the Incas and focuses more on the blending of the Pre-Columbian and the Spanish traditions, but perhaps you could give it a skim and get at the writer's sources.
hi! there's a popular post of beverages in the FAQ: What did ancient Native Americans drink?
Also, several examples of dishes came up a few days ago Why are there no Native American restaurants or distinct Native American foods?
and these have a few examples of cuisine
What did native Americans eat before the arrival of Europeans?
How common among Native North/Central/South Americans was the so-called "Three Sisters" diet?
