page_title: Mediterranean cuisine
section_title: Origins
hierarchical_section_title: Mediterranean cuisine / History / Origins
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Französisches Eintopfgericht "Cassoulet" aus der Region Toulouse mit Gänsekeule, Gänsewurst und weißen Bohnen. Französisches Restaurant "Auberge Gutshof" in Bischofswerda, Sachsen, Deutschland
context_page_description: Mediterranean cuisine is the foods and methods of preparation by people of the Mediterranean Basin region. The idea of a Mediterranean cuisine originates with the cookery writer Elizabeth David's book, A Book of Mediterranean Food and was amplified by other writers working in English. Many writers define the three core elements of the cuisine as the olive, wheat, and the grape, yielding olive oil, bread and pasta, and wine; other writers emphasize the diversity of the region's foods and deny that it is a useful concept. A common definition of the geographical area covered follows the distribution of the olive tree.
  The region spans a wide variety of cultures with distinct cuisines, in particular the Maghrebi, Egyptian, Levantine, Ottoman, Greek, Italian, Provençal, and Spanish, though some authors include additional cuisines. Portuguese cuisine, in particular, is partly Mediterranean in character.
context_section_description: The ingredients of Mediterranean cuisine are to an extent different from those of the cuisine of Northern Europe, with olive oil instead of butter, wine instead of beer. The list of available ingredients has changed over the centuries. One major change was the introduction of many foods by the Arabs to Portugal, Spain and Sicily in the Middle Ages. Those foods included aubergines, spinach, sugar cane, rice, apricots and citrus fruits, creating the distinctive culinary tradition of Al-Andalus.
  Another major change was the arrival of foods from the Americas in Early Modern times (around the sixteenth century), notably the incorporation of the potato into Northern European cuisine, and the eager adoption of the tomato into Mediterranean cuisine. The tomato, so central now to that cuisine, was first described in print by Pietro Andrea Mattioli in 1544. Similarly, many of the species of Phaseolus beans now used around the Mediterranean, including P. vulgaris (the French or haricot bean), were brought back from the Americas by Spanish and Portuguese explorers.
caption: The haricot beans used in a Southern French cassoulet were brought to Europe from the Americas.
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