Irish cuisine

The development of Irish cuisine was altered greatly by the Tudor conquest of Ireland in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, which introduced a new agro-alimentary system of intensive grain-based agriculture and led to large areas of land being turned over to grain production.

[11] Also unique to settlements positioned close to water systems are large mounds of bivalve shells known as middens, which provide concrete evidence that shellfish played a role in the dietary practices of the Mesolithic Irish.

[21][22][9] For example, prehistoric Ireland's paucity of small mammals,[23] and its absences of species important to other Mesolithic communities, such as red deer, wild cow, and elk[11][9][22] would have contributed to unique dietary habits and nutritional standards.

[11][13][9] Outside of boar, large predators including the wolf, the brown bear, and lynx are scarce in archaeological assemblages, and understood to have been generally avoided as a source of food, as they were in most of contemporary Mesolithic Europe.

[11] Likewise, while cereals were unlikely to have been yet consumed due to the processing required to make them digestible, fungi, roots, leaves, stems, flowers, nuts, seeds, berries and fruits were all otherwise simple to harvest and eat and would have substantiated the Mesolithic diet with nutritional variety and a diversity of flavour.

[10][9][24] Despite the scarcity of plant-based artifacts in light of Ireland's wet weather and acidic soil, biochemical assessments of human bone have been used to provide evidence for a variety of floral sources, including apples, crowberries, raspberries, blackberries, water-lily seeds, tubers, and hazelnuts.

[9][28] The sizable presence of hazelnuts in many archaeological assemblages in both Mesolithic Ireland and Britain suggests the nut was important,[29][30] and may have even been used as a form of currency, as acorns were for Native Americans of California during the same period.

[34] Though the Mesolithic Irish were a hunter-gatherer people, such assemblages as middens, discoveries of lithic tools and technologies, and seasonal organization of animal remains alludes to understandings of environmental management to meet subsistence needs.

[11][9] For example, the transportation and management of boar through selective hunting and culling techniques[35][28] suggests a food source potentially purposefully semi-domesticated, as well as a species important to the Mesolithic communities of Ireland.

[48] Understanding the details about the foodways of the prehistoric Irish can be difficult to capture, especially given the island's temperate climate and prevalence of wet, acidic soils that are quick to erode organic material,[35][15] but thanks to extensive evaluation of biochemical and isotopic signatures recovered from human bone and pottery sherds, there is insight into Neolithic dietary habits.

[49][50][14] Biomarkers such as lipid and plant residues preserved in the clay matrix of pottery vessels[14] observe a diversity of plant- and animal-life in the diet of the Neolithic Irish, including berries, leafy vegetables, tubers, legumes, meats, seafoods, and nuts.

These in combination with the agricultural developments of the Neolithic period such as field systems, farming tools, and animal husbandry[51][52] begin to describe the dramatic changes in the dietary practices and eating behaviours of the prehistoric Irish people, distinct from their Mesolithic ancestors.

[53][14] Emmer wheat was assumed to be a preferred crop for its resilience to wet Irish weather and soil, but evidence of other cereals such as rye, einkorn and barley have been recovered, albeit at a lesser degree.

[56] New domestic livestock including beef and sheep are understood to have been brought to the island from continental Europe, in addition to red deer,[57] which marked new and increasingly significant species in the Irish diet.

[74] Radiocarbon dating of crescent-shaped mounds of burnt stones, called fulachtaí fia in Irish, are understood to be the remnants of cooking sites in Ireland that emerged in the early Neolithic Period but came to prominence during the Bronze Age.

[79] While burnt mounds of similar natures have been discovered around Europe, Ireland hosts the greatest number of these sites, which suggests that indirect cooking methods were significant in Irish cuisine during the time.

[58] Such technology could likely have facilitated a dual purpose for the use in building steam lodges, which were common in parts of Europe at the time,[80] but fulachtaí fia typically feature significant assemblages of charred faunal remains, which argues they were used predominantly as cooking sites.

[81] It has been considered that these sites were impromptu cooking locations used particularly by hunters, but most fulachtaí fia were established in low-lying agricultural lands and similar environments not supportive of optimal hunting conditions.

[58] It is thought that the use of clean, fresh water was a preferred medium given the placement of troughs over or near natural springs, and for their close proximity to irrigation channels carved into the earth which could have assisted in draining the pit after it was used.

[98] Likewise, that fulachtaí fia are structures made principally to facilitate the indirect cooking of food—methods significantly slower and longer than direct heating applications—provides further reasoning that these mounds were places for special occasions where people chose to spend long periods of time eating and communing together.

Distinct from preceding eras, the Middle Ages ushered the development of dense urban centers that dramatically affected preexisting food systems by changing both physical and societal infrastructures.

[123][122] The Anglo-Normans in particular propagated a commercial economy[123][124] that encouraged urban settlement and the steady trade of local and foreign commodities by holding festive market fairs[125] and attracting settlers with offers of burgage plots replete with space for a house and garden.

[128] As such documents were generally concentrated on the literate upper classes of Ireland, additional archeological data[129][130] offers broader insight into food consumption habits of peasants, commoners, and Irish Medieval society as a whole.

[163][164][128] As beer-making would only surface later in Ireland during the 14th century,[165] and because ale had a short shelf-life that did not import or export well, ale-brewing was a significant industry in urban centers for providing what was then valued as a nutritious dietary staple.

[167] Wheat was difficult to grow in Ireland's wet, acidic soils, but the Anglo-Normans nonetheless worked to intensify its production[168] as it was a coveted grain to the upper-classes,[169] and vital in the creation of the Catholic sacramental Host; a thin, white wafer.

[176] The presence of vegetables, in particular, is therefore minimal in archeological assemblages, but fruit—via fossilized seeds and pits—consequently features more frequently,[177] with evidence of cherry, strawberry, sloe, rowan, blackberry, bilberry, apple, and haws as present in Medieval cesspits.

[131][159] Apples are frequently mentioned in Medieval texts of various kinds,[163][137][169] particularly in reference to sweet varieties as valuable and rare offerings to nobles and lords,[155][173] and sour breeds as used to make cider, verjus, vinegar, and medicine.

Chickens were not raised on a large scale until the emergence of town grocers in the 1880s allowed people to exchange surplus goods, like eggs, and for the first time purchase a variety of food items to diversify their diet.

[citation needed] After the famine, many Irish women migrated to America to escape poverty, and were exposed to new ingredients and foods not common in Ireland, such as a greater variety of meats and produce.

This cuisine is based on fresh vegetables, fish (especially salmon and trout), oysters, mussels and other shellfish, traditional soda bread, the wide range of cheeses that are now being made across the country, and, of course, the potato.