My favorite facts about Halifax is that the first French people to get there starved to death the first year because they wouldn't eat that weird vegetable the natives from the Mi'kmaq tribe gave them, because they didn't like the taste. Turns out it was potatoes. Can you imagine that?

[–] havid_dume@lemmy.ml 20 points 11 months ago (1 children)

I mean, do we know how they were cooking them? Maybe the natives told them to eat them raw as a prank.

Also, they were presumably unsalted?! I may rather die too

[–] joneskind@lemmy.world 9 points 11 months ago

I do think some French dudes would have tried to at least boil and salt them. While it's true Mi'kmaq people didn't put salt in their food as they thought it was toxic, those French settlers couldn't care less. Salt was used as a conservant pretty much everywhere in Europe, and Nova Scotia has very long coast line (meaning salt was abundant).

My guess is that our tastes changed a lot since then. And "French" fries wasn't possible yet, because frying grease was too costly and rare.

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