Geo Dish Selection: The Geography of Caldo Verde

1 The Geography of Caldo Verde The Caldo Verde, commonly referred to as the green soup, is a favorite Portuguese dish.

Caldo Verde is a creamy soup containing kales that give it a greenish appearance. The soup is commonly taken with other types of food including bread. The soup can be enjoyed all year round, whether in winter or summer. The claimed area of origin of the Caldo Verde is Minho province, Northern Portugal. History has it that this dish was most likely invented in the mid-15th century. The Caldo Verde was originally a traditional dish embraced by the poor people as their staple food. Poor people in the villages preferred the Caldo Verde since its ingredients were readily available. The green soup represents the dishes scraped together from local produce by people that did not have the wealth to afford exotic ingredients. The purpose of using the readily available ingredients was to feed a large population at a lower cost.

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2 The simple meal was mostly served at the beginning of a large meal. The highly nutritious collard greens in the meal provided a nourishing meal even in hard economic times.

The dish became popular in Portugal before being introduced to Portuguese colonies such as Brazil. The popularity of the Caldo Verde was contributed by the fact that it was easy to make and consume during winter and other harsh climatic conditions. The people eventually introduced the soup in most of the popular festivals in the country. The Portuguese slowly introduced the soup into other regions across the world. Caldo Verde is consumed in almost all Portuguese families. The soup is also prepared in hotels and restaurants and given to customers as an appetizer.

In prehistoric times, people consumed soup for warmth, comfort, and nourishment to the people. Eventually, the soup was introduced in the main meal (Bouley, 2019). The simple recipe has contributed to the popularity of the Caldo Verde. Various national contests to determine the most popular dish in Portugal have revealed that Caldo Verde is a popular delicacy. The delicacy is no longer confined to northern Portugal. It has turned out to be a favorite meal in Portugal and other parts of the world.

The Ingredients The Caldo Verde is a simple broth made from few ingredients. The ingredients include Idaho potatoes, kales, yellow onions, salt, black pepper, Portuguese olive oil, water, garlic cloves, Portuguese chorizo sausage and cornbread to eat with the soup. Kales and potatoes, as pointed out by Gentilcore (2015), are the main ingredients of the green broth. The inventors of the Caldo Verde preferred these ingredients since they were locally available. The ingredients originated from different parts of the world. For instance, potatoes were first cultivated by the Inca Indians in Peru and the northwestern region of modern-day Bolivia around 8,000 to 5,000

3 BC. Spanish conquistadors conquered Peru, were the first Europeans to discover the different flavors of potatoes and carry them to Europe at the end of the 16th century. From Spain, potatoes spread west back to America and northwards to other parts of Europe. Potatoes were probably introduced in Portugal around 1760 (E-Ncubadora De Ideias, 2021).

Kales originated in Asia Minor and the eastern Mediterranean around 2,000 BC (Maggioni, von Bothmer, Poulsen & Lipman, 2018). Yellow onions were first domesticated around 5,000 years ago in Asia before being spread to different parts of Europe and across the world by colonizers and traders. Salt is a native product in Portugal and other parts of the world.

In Portugal, salt production began around the 9th century BC (Rodrigues, Bio, Amat & Vieira, 2011). Black pepper, which is a common ingredient, was initially domesticated in southern India around 2000 BC. Historical records show that Roman traders were most likely the people who introduced black pepper in Europe (Lohman, 2016). Garlic is native in central Asia. It is a herb that was domesticated about 5,000 years ago. The cultivation and cultivation of garlic increased significantly due to its medicinal properties.

The Portuguese chorizo sausage is made of pork. The Near East inhabitants were the first people to domesticate wild pigs between 8,500 and 8,000 BC. These animals were introduced in Portugal and other parts of Europe by agriculturalists. Cornbread is not an ingredient of Caldo Verde but is eaten together with the soup. The domestication of corn was first done in Mexico around 10,000 years ago. Colonialists were taught how to grow maize by Americans. They later introduced maize to Europe and other parts of the world. Olive oil was first used in Greece.

Greek mythology has it that the spread of oil was the responsibility of minor god Aristaeus (Kiritsakis & Shahidi, 2017).

4 This analysis indicates that most of the Caldo Verde ingredients were first domesticated in Southwest Asia. Colonizers, explorers, and traders were involved in the transportation of different food products to Europe and regions across the world.

Table 1: The Geography of Caldo Verde: Ingredients Claimed region of origin: Minho province, Northern Portugal Ingredients

Region of origin

1

Potatoes

Andean uplands

2

Kales

Mediterranean and Asian Manor

3

Yellow onions

Southwest Asia

4

Salt

Native

5

Black pepper

Southern and southern Asia

6

Portuguese olive oil

Southwest Asia

7

Garlic cloves

Mediterranean

8

Portuguese chorizo sausage (pork) (pig)

Southwest Asia

9

Cornbread to eat with the soup

Meso America

10 Water

Map 1: The Geography of Caldo Verde

5

Andean uplands Meso America Mediterranean Southern and southern Asia Southwest Asia

6 References E-Ncubadora De Ideias (2021). Glory Of the Potato. http://www.virgiliogomes.com/index.php/chronicles/135-glory-of-the-potato Maggioni, L., von Bothmer, R., Poulsen, G., & Lipman, E. (2018). Domestication, diversity, and use of Brassica oleracea L., based on ancient Greek and Latin texts. Genetic resources and crop evolution, 65(1), 137-159. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10722-017-0516-2 Rodrigues, C. M., Bio, A., Amat, F., & Vieira, N. (2011). Artisanal salt production in Aveiro/Portugal - an ecofriendly process. Saline systems, 7(1), 3. https://doi.org/10.1186/1746-1448-7-3 Wilde, A. S., Haughey, S. A., Galvin-King, P., & Elliott, C. T. (2019). The feasibility of applying NIR and FT-IR fingerprinting to detect adulteration in black pepper. Food control, 100, 1-7. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodcont.2018.12.039 Lohman, S. (2016). Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine. Simon and Schuster.

Kiritsakis, A., & Shahidi, F. (Eds.). (2017). Olives and Olive Oil as Functional Foods: Bioactivity, Chemistry, and Processing. John Wiley & Sons.

Larson, G., Piperno, D. R., Allaby, R. G., Purugganan, M. D., Andersson, L., Arroyo-Kalin, M., ... & Fuller, D. Q. (2014). Current perspectives and the future of domestication studies. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 111(17), 6139-6146.

Gentilcore, D. (2015). Food and Health in Early Modern Europe: Diet, Medicine, and Society, 1450-1800. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Bouley, B. A. (2019). Christopher Kissane. Food, Religion, and Communities in Early Modern Europe. Bloomsbury Academic.