Alex Atala's Amazonian recipes mapped [UPDATED with commentary from Amazonia]

Alex Atala is a Brazilian chef whose is renowned for his championing of Brazilian (read Amazonian) ingredients. He has got a book out called 'Rediscovering Brazilian Ingredients' that I have not seen but which I will. 

A book on Ka'apor ethnobiology (William Balee's Footprints of the Forest) has a list containing hundreds of names of plants used for food by this one Amazonian tribe. So there is a food world to win out there and Atala's work, if anything, shows that the discovery of America is not yet over. 

Map your Recipe is undergoing some essential work at the moment. It used to recognize only those fruits and vegetables identified as belonging to a Vavilov food hearth. I have now added the categories Old world and New World to incorporate products of which the exact place of domestication is only broadly known. The potential names on these two lists are near infinite (everything that is not poisonous can after be all used by an adventurous cook) but I am trying to find those ingredients that would capture all vegetable ingredients in 99.5% of the recipes.

The five recipes of Atala that I found online (here, here, here, here, (with this included 6)) did not make it easy for me. There were a number of ingredients that I never heard of. Jambu which is from the old world but grown extensively in South America. For pimentos de cheiro I have added 'red pepper' but I do not know if that is correct. Priprioca a plant that Atala self-handedly introduced as a food plant with a scientific description.

The resulting geographical spread of the ingredients of these 5 recipes is shown above. I do not know how representative these recipes are for the full Atala menu and use of local meat and fish will also add significantly to the uniqueness of his dishes. But despite these caveats I find that from 42 ingredients recognized a 19.5% use of new world ingredients is almost a 19th century proportion. Especially as those 8 new world ingredients are from two food hearths only. 

As said it is not representative but if it will turn out to be than Mr Atala suffers from a strange kind of myopia where he will plunder the Euro-Asian larder at will while ignoring large parts of the American continent. 

Here is the challenge Mr Atala! Can you or have you created a dish with only fruits and vegs from your side of the pond? 

That would be a dish that would look different on the map.

Of course: I am being light hearted. Just because the tomato was domesticated in Mexico thousands of years ago does not make the pizza anything less Italian. 

UPDATE,here is a a comment worth quoting:

Actually, jambu – to which Alex Atala's recipe refers - is Acmella oleracea, whose leaves cause very peculiar sensations in the taste buds and are widely used in the cuisine of the state of Pará, in the brazilian amazon. Instead, Syzygium cumini is known in Terra Brasilis as jamelão or jambolão, never as jambu.

"Pimentas de cheiro" is a category composed of several varieties of Capsicum chinense, with varying degrees of spiciness, but all of them have accented flavor and smell as common characteristic. They're usually - but not always - yellow.

Thanks for that! The Jambu exists in two spellings, for 'red pepper' I should have used 'capsicum' for better precision.