Chefs in northern Europe 6,000 years ago seemed to be fans of spicy foods, as suggested by particles of silica tattered from cookware. A new research implies that aside from the known usage of strong flavored spices like onions during the same prehistoric times, garlic mustard – ground seeds with no nutritional value – was also utilized mainly for its tastiness.
A bioarcheologist at the University of York in UK named Hayley Saul wrote in his study that the prehistoric people used phytoliths, microscopic bits of silica. He also added that plants produce phytoliths from dissolved minerals in ground water that is towed to their roots and then disseminated throughout the organism. Though a number of phytoliths are placed inside a plant’s cells, the remaining is formed in spaces between cells or tissues. One trait of phytoliths, having a mineral-like nature, is it remains long after the decomposition of plant’s soft tissues.
Saul and her colleagues studied the charred deposits scraped out from cookware found around the Damish Straits in Denmark and northern Germany. They discovered phytoliths that are globular in shape and with an average size of seven micrometers across. When compared to an array of well-characterized phytoliths, the said particle matched the silica fragments from the garlic mustard seed (Alliaria Petiolata). In a report published in the Aug. 21 issue of PLOS ONE, researchers claimed that the carbon-dating of the particles points between 5,750 to 6,100 years ago.
Garlic mustard seeds are known to be lacking on any nutritional value since it contains just a little amount of starch. In most of the samples, chemical fragments of certain types of fatty substances or lipids, which are most likely produced by marine creatures likes fish or scallops or ruminants like red deer, were also found. Those were possibly the main ingredient of the meal and a strong, peppery flavored ground garlic mustard spiced up the dish.
