In 1778, Captain James Cook sighted the Hawaiian Islands. Within a matter of years they had become part of the world trade. From the start, new animals and plants were introduced; cows, horses, and goats, and a bewildering variety of plants. It was soon clear that apart from salt the islands had no exportable mineral resources and apart from sandalwood, which was quickly exhausted, no exportable vegetable ones either. Hawaiian food and haole food (the latter being the food of the white incomers) continued side by side with occasional input from the Chinese who also ended up in the islands. The Hawaiians added salt meat and salt salmon from the north-east to their diet; the haoles clung to the food of New England so far as they could, substituting taro for potatoes and bread, and mangoes for apples. On ceremonial occasions, there would be luaus at which largely Hawaiian food was served: poi, of course, and dried fish and shrimp, kalua pig baked in the imu, seaweed, sweet potatoes, chicken baked with coconut and taro leaves, and a dessert made of coconut milk thickened with Polynesian arrowroot. Given the mountains, many haole foods could be grown—Irish potatoes were sold to the forty-niners in California, for example.
