Black Satchel: Historical Cookery: Answers

Here are some (probably not all) of the answers I've given on /r/AskHistorians about historical cookery, food, and agriculture. They're in reverse chronological order. They were last updated in September 2017.

• If I went back to England in the 1500s, how different would the food quality be?
• What did European peasants typically eat prior to the age of exploration? How would they deal with the monotony? (thread also includes a long debate about pickling)
• There are a number of articles on the internet where people make disgusting recipes from the 1950s (ex. ham and bananas hollandaise). Did people in the 50s really eat these?
• Before the industrial revolution, how common was raising and eating meat in the diet of an average person? Or was it mostly something the rich got to eat?
• Ireland before Potatoes (also includes a moderately extensive bibliography)
• How long did it take new world foods to permeate the region? ("the region" being Europe)
• How were non-staple crops grown in medieval and earlier times?
• How important were Pince cones/seeds in the medieval diet? Were they used more as food or as a medicine?
• Why is there butter in bogs?
• What were the standards of living for the average person in Europe's northernmost and westernmost fringes in the beginning of the 20th century?
• When and how did the modern idea of cooking come about?
• What environmental problems were caused by the Columbian exchange?
• Is it accurate to say that medieval meals were highly ritualized and symbolic and 'everything had its place'?
• What foods were most popular among the lower classes in the Ottoman Empire?
• What sorts of foods were grown in cities inside of gardens over the ages?
• Did humans ever eat raw rabbits or whatever, or have they been cooking stuff for all time?"
• Between, let's say, the Georgian and Edwardian eras, was the highest aspiration of an English gentleman to go around outdoors all day shooting at birds?
• Early modern (15/16th century) European illustrations depict farms as being very packed in, with an enormous variety of crops and animals growing very close together. Were farms actually like this i.e diverse, self-sufficient, and did people's diets reflect this?
• What kinds of spices did pre-Colombian civilizations have access to?
• Why do some cities historically create better food than others?
• How did potatoes become a staple in European diets?
• What did people eat in Northern Ireland historically?