The reception of Mediterranean cuisine during the first fifty years of Spanish presence in the New World

The following article is devoted to the reception of Mediterranean cuisine during the first fifty years of Spanish presence in the Caribbean and Central America (1492-1535). The transfer of Spanish Mediterranean cuisine, which reached back to Roman, Arab and Jewish culinary traditions, was a natural consequence of the mass migration of Spaniards from the southern and central parts of the Iberian Peninsula. The culinary transfer was heavily dependent on the local conditions. Geographical, climatic and soil factors along with the lack of many of Mediterranean ingredients and the abundance of new types of foods forced the olonizers to change their culinary habits and adapt their diet to thelocal conditions. As a result there started to appear new types of dishes - old recipes were innovatively adapted to include new ingredients and both types of cuisine, Indian and Spanish, started to be fused together. This was how another example of the coexistence of two distinct cultures (Spanish convivencia) was established. This cultural pattern, which originated in Spain in the Middle Ages, was transferred to Central America at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries