Some of these arrived relatively recently – probably via other European countries – such as the tomatoes and potatoes. Others, however, arrived in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries and were almost certainly brought in by the Portuguese. These included pineapples, custard apples, papaya, prickly pears, guavas, passion fruit, cashew nuts and groundnuts, cassava and maize. Most surprisingly, chillies, such a feature of the present Indian diet, also came from South America. The first known reference to them as being in India was in 1604.
