According to a new study brought out by researchers in Brazil, the ingredients used in recipes across the world have actually changed very little over the years and even over centuries. Of course, dining habits have changed considerably since the Middle Ages - for example, we no longer drink ale with every meal (well, generally speaking) or bake pheasants and partridges in the same pie as pigs trotters. However all over the world there are recurring staple ingredients that have not been dislodged from the worlds' cookery books.

Over 3,000 recipes analysed
The researchers at the university in Brazil studied the recipes found in the Medieval cookery book Pleyn Delit and in different editions of three books originating from Britain, France and Brazil - the New Penguin Cookery Book, Larousse Gastronomique and Dona Benta. By analysing such factors as the dominance of some ingredients over others and the ability of some foods to usurp others to become "traditional" foods of the country, Antonio Roque and his team concluded that cuisine evolves slowly.

Common ingredients
According to the results, there are a significant amount of ingredients that we use today that are as old as the hills they grow on, such as the chayote, a plant in the same family as the cucumber which is native to central and south America. Another is the potato which Europeans have used in cooking for centuries, however before the potato the turnip was widely used. In Japan, the turnip is still used extensively and the potato evolution has not occured.

Roque, who lead the research project, said : "We think it's important to analyse cultural phenomena like cuisine. The idiosyncratic nature of each cuisine will never disappear due to invasion by alien ingredients and recipes."