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The Florentine Codex: A Critical Analysis
By:
Stephen J. Byrne
Bernardino de Sahagun’s General History of the Things of
New Spain, also known as the
Florentine Codex, is a monumental work dealing with the history
of the Native American
Aztec people of Mexico. The Aztecs actually referred to themselves
as the Mexica,
thence the name of the modern nation of Mexico. Sahagun, a Franciscan
monk,
completed his work on the History in 1569, just forty-eight years
after the conquest of the
Mexica by the Spaniards.
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Native American Agriculture and Modern Italian Cuisine
By Stephen J. Byrne
Three of the main food products consumed as a major part of modern
Italian cuisine were
imported from America as a result of the European exploration
of America which began
in the late fifteenth century. These three important elements
of Italian cuisine are the
tomato, the potato and corn. Corn was the first Native American
crop to be widely used
in Italy for making polenta in the sixteenth century. Corn was
preferred by Italians over
earlier grain versions of polenta because of its high crop yield
and its superior flavor.
The early versions of corn polenta were a primary food of the
general population in
Northern Italy. It did not take on its status as a gourmet creation
until the twentieth
century and of course on into the twenty-first century.
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