Why have wheat and rice been consumed in different forms?

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Wheat has often been eaten boiled whole or cracked, whether called bulgar or frumenty/frumentee. Frumenty was a common street-peddlar food in Western Europe up into the 1800s. (Hale, Horizon History of Eating and Drinking)

I'm used to eating mochi rice as boiled or baked dumplings or cakes. There's rice noodles, too, all very traditional.

So it's not really divided the way you think it is. You just have a limited food experience.

The real difference here is that wheat can develop gluten protein in a way most grains can't. This gluten allows bread to be raised and develop its breadlike texture. Most other grains can only be made into flatbreads.

As for cornbread, I checked Homemade Bread by the Food Editors of Farm Journal and, except for Anadama Batter Bread, all corn bread is made with wheat flour flavored with corn meal. Rye bread is rye-flavored wheat bread &c.

Ah, The American Woman's Cookbook 1943 gives us a Southern Cornbread that relies on stiffly beaten egg white to make it less than leaden. Ditto the Southern Spoon Bread. Not so the johnnycake, and you know the rhyme about that.

EDIT: Sorry, guess this is a New England thing. "Pea soup and johnnycake Make a Frenchman's belly ache." I seem to have inherited my Francophone grandmama's digestion and don't like either. But the rhyme was saying neither was delicate food.

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From comment to answer:

The starch and protein (e.g. gluten) content and composition of each grain types are different, even between different wheat types. For example, most wheat types of middle ages in Europe did not contain enough gluten and were not suitable to prepare bread! Wheat was often eaten cooked as polente or with water similar way as outmeal, instead of bread, depending on region and the type of wheat there.

Even nowadays bread-flour (hard flour)is made from a given, high protein content wheat, while other wheat types used for other meals (e.g. durum for pasta).

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