Luke's Take on the Cake

Recently I have visited a bakery that housed a quite unsavory chocolate cake. The bakers had gotten the ingredient proportions wrong! Sure, the bakers got all the ingredients right: cacao, eggs, milk, sugar, vanilla and flour, but there was way too much cacao in there. It ended up tasting like a bitter chocolate brick despite a spongy and moist core. Also, the amount of flour put into the cake was insufficient. This resulted in brick having a consistency of Jell-O. Transporting it was a problem, and eating it was a challenge. It lacked a foundation and suffered in its structural performance. Plus, I think I got food poisoning from something. I'm assuming it was the yolky clumps that were assorted throughout the cake. Imagine my surprise when I took a wide bite on a slice, only to be met with a beige-colored pudding-like cluster inside. I probably got the disease from that.

Speaking of which, most of these ingredients were components of the Columbian Exchange, a trading system involving plants, animals and disease between Afro-Eurasia and the Americas. Cacao, during the Columbian Exchange, was traded from the New World to the Old World. Cacao, having a distinct sweet flavor, was cultivated around the humid areas of the Mesoamerican region.

Eggs also were part of the Exchange. Chickens were traded from the Old World to the New World. They also probably carried animal diseases along with them. The chickens provided extra food to people in America, increasing the population. However, it also probably brought disease, thus wrecking the people and causing a decrease in population.

 

Luke Muehring