I'm basing it on personal experience, with grandparents and further back recipes.
I don't think something like avocados even existed here, or any type of spicy pepper.
I'm a spicehead, and nothing has any at all. Or much say, umami. Meat and potatoes. Meat and green beans. Add salt or bland spice, if you're lucky. It's basically all I ate growing up.
Today I can buy Nashville hot spice in a can, for example.
I'm sure you can find examples of some things existing in some places. But the silk road didn't run through rural midwest.
Edit to add:
Speaking of avocados, and complex favors...imagine a perfect guacamole. With avocados, and spicy peppers, garlic, onion, etc. Does a recipe exist for such a thing before say, 1960?
In regards to your edit, avocados and chili peppers both originate in Mexico. Guacamole was a native dish so it's been around for centuries, but the modern version with onions and cilantro couldn't have existed until the Spanish brought those ingredients to Mexico
Excellent points, but at what time would all of that been written in English and American measurements for American consumers, with ingredients available? I only guessed 1960s, but it very well could have been decades later.
I don't think something like avocados even existed here, or any type of spicy pepper.
I'm a spicehead, and nothing has any at all. Or much say, umami. Meat and potatoes. Meat and green beans. Add salt or bland spice, if you're lucky. It's basically all I ate growing up.
Today I can buy Nashville hot spice in a can, for example.
I'm sure you can find examples of some things existing in some places. But the silk road didn't run through rural midwest.
Edit to add: Speaking of avocados, and complex favors...imagine a perfect guacamole. With avocados, and spicy peppers, garlic, onion, etc. Does a recipe exist for such a thing before say, 1960?