Italian American Food: Early Italian Influences on American Food

Although it is generally known that Italians in service of Spain, Portugal, and England were the first to lead expeditions to the Americas, it is less widely understood that Iberian exploration and colonization were also partially financed by Italian capital and that reports on the new continents—including significant botanical information and samples—went directly to Venice, Florence, and Genoa. The continents were named after Amerigo Vespucci (and not Columbus, Verrazano, or Giovanni Caboto) not because he put his name on an early map, but because his Florentine associates relayed his information to a German mapmaker.