All plants, animals, food, etc. mentioned in The Hobbit

[Iodo]

Nice work It will be very useful for planning the annual Durin's day feast

there are some things on there that I didn't expect, like coffee, for some reason I have always thought of that as something that wouldn't be in middle earth and I'm a bit disappointed to see that chocolate isn't on there, hot chocolate is one of my favorite things to brew mid trek

[Straelbora]

I was recently pondering what herbs and spices would be appropriate for an authentic kit, and after some semi-random keyword searches through the text of The Hobbit and LOTR, decided to spring for the book Flora of Middle-Earth, mentioned above by Straelbora.

Some portions redacted.

Absence of evidence may not be evidence of absence, except in a few cases; According to Flora, Tomatoes were mentioned in an earlier edition of The Hobbit, but in later revisions they were swapped for 'pickles'. It can be inferred that Tolkien didn't think that New World fruit was suitable for his emphatically old world. That leaves potatoes, sunflowers and tobacco as the only post-Columbian crops in Middle-earth, and given his intentional snubbing of tomatoes and cotton, it seems prudent to assume that these deliberate exceptions are the only ones. Sigh...there goes anything with capsaicin from my spice cabinet...

Can we infer the presence of cotton from Rosie Cotton's last name? Are there any other names that do this, among Hobbits or Men?

[SierraStrider]

there are some things on there that I didn't expect, like coffee, for some reason I have always thought of that as something that wouldn't be in middle earth and I'm a bit disappointed to see that chocolate isn't on there, hot chocolate is one of my favorite things to brew mid trek

I'm as surprised as you. It's from the first chapter of The Hobbit:

Some called for ale, and some for porter, and one for coffee, and all of them for cakes; so the hobbit was kept very busy for a while.

Coffee originates in Etheopia, and it's pretty well established that Harad is not so remote as to make commerce impossible. Cocoa is a South American plant. That said, coffee (like tea, for that matter) is a relatively recent import to Europe, and a bit anachronistic...but then, much in the Shire is. If you want to call your hot cocoa "Southron Sweet coffee" or similar, I won't tell.

Can we infer the presence of cotton from Rosie Cotton's last name? Are there any other names that do this, among Hobbits or Men?

I've sen it mentioned several times on here that the professor specifically said in a letter that cotton never made its way to Middle-earth.

That makes Rosie's surname a bit startling, I'll grant you, but here's what Behindthename.com has to say about the surname Cotton:

English: habitational name from any of numerous places named from Old English cotum (dative plural of cot) ‘at the cottages or huts’ (or sometimes possibly from a Middle English plural, coten).

Meanwhile, the plant's name is dreived, according to the Online Etymological Dictionary,

from Old French coton (12c.), ultimately (via Provenal, Italian, or Old Spanish) from Arabic qutn, a word perhaps of Egyptian origin.

I'm a bit annoyed that they don't define any of those words, but the upshot is that "Cotton" as a name has a completely different lineage than the plant.

[Elleth]

Also Tolkien explains - in the appendices of RotK I think - that many names not of Elvish derivation are mere stand-ins for the original Westron.
Pippin's "real" name as "Razanur Tûk" for instance.

Given the names of other Shire- and Bree-folk, I'd suspect the evocation he was looking for for her was "flowery tuft as one might see on cotton or a mature dandelion."
... not that I've any solid idea one way or another.

[SierraStrider]

A little more research reminds me that species of cotton were domesticated in both the old and new worlds--in India, in the case of the old. Therefore, all of those undefined words in its etymological lineage probably mean 'cotton'. Qutn, the Arabic progenitor, is of unknown origin, but may be derived from kattān, the Arabic for flax.

Pippin's "real" name as "Razanur Tûk" for instance.

...Huh. Well that's a little weird. Razanur, huh? Doesn't really have the happy-go-lucky air of Pippin, does it?

[Elleth]

The fun thing I think is that I'm fairly certain that happy-go-lucky sense of "Pippin" is in great part due to the Professor's own work and of course Billy Boyd's performance.
The name had Frankish/Carolingian regal connotations previously.

Rather like the Biblical "Nimrod" - a name which had entirely different connotations before several generations of us learned the word from Bugs Bunny.

[Iodo]

there are some things on there that I didn't expect, like coffee, for some reason I have always thought of that as something that wouldn't be in middle earth and I'm a bit disappointed to see that chocolate isn't on there, hot chocolate is one of my favorite things to brew mid trek

I'm as surprised as you. It's from the first chapter of The Hobbit:

Some called for ale, and some for porter, and one for coffee, and all of them for cakes; so the hobbit was kept very busy for a while.

Coffee originates in Etheopia, and it's pretty well established that Harad is not so remote as to make commerce impossible. Cocoa is a South American plant. That said, coffee (like tea, for that matter) is a relatively recent import to Europe, and a bit anachronistic...but then, much in the Shire is. If you want to call your hot cocoa "Southron Sweet coffee" or similar, I won't tell.

OK, at this point I'm going to decide that if coffee can get into middle earth then so can chocolate

[SierraStrider]

The fun thing I think is that I'm fairly certain that happy-go-lucky sense of "Pippin" is in great part due to the Professor's own work and of course Billy Boyd's performance.
The name had Frankish/Carolingian regal connotations previously.

Rather like the Biblical "Nimrod" - a name which had entirely different connotations before several generations of us learned the word from Bugs Bunny.

Peregrin, sure, but I think "Pippin" would give an impression of energetic cheerfulness to virtually any anglophone, even those encountering it without context. Like...can you imagine switching names with more imposing characters? "The uruk-hai march under the banner of the fallen Istar...Pippin."

I'm not saying that our impressions aren't informed by culture, but there are definitely (culturally instilled) associations with certain phonemes--for example, the Gl sound is heavily associated with light in English. Gleam, glow, glint, glimmer, glade, glossy...consequently, Glorfindel and Galadriel are readily predisposed to be entities of light.

Razanur may not objecitvely imply any different qualities than Pippin, but subjectively I could see Razanur being a fallen wizard, or an orc chieftain, or a perilous king. That's probably why Tolkien with with "Pippin" instead.

[Udwin]

I'm late to the party, so here are a bunch of responses to earlier points:

-Sierrastrider, where did you find reference to sunflowers, oranges, and cadamom? Those don't ring a bell for me.

-Chocolate, for reasons I can't quite pin down just yet, feels wrong. As far as I can tell, there is not so much as a chocolate croissant mentioned in any of Tolkien's works--much to my dismay ; ) If a creamy, flavorful drink of a similar consistency to hot-chocolate is desired, might I suggest a traditional Chai masala tea? We know tea and "spices"(TH, Ch1) were known in the Shire, and milk and honey are of course widespread.

-The origins of coffee (Ethiopia or Sudan) seem believable analogues of Far Harad...witness Pippin's description of the forces at Pelennor: "...out of Far Harad black men like half-trolls with white eyes and red tongues” which less like outdated racism, and more like a 4 foot hobbit's impression of an impressive Nubian warrior.

-"…the name Cotton ‘has of course in origin no connexion with cotton the textile material; though it is naturally associated with it at the present day. Hobbits are represented as using tobacco, and this is made more or less credible by the suggestion that the plant was brought over the Sea by the Men of Westernesse…; but it is not intended that ‘cotton’ should be supposed to be known or used at that time.”(quoted in Reader's Companion, p.612).
Lothram "Cotman" (PM:49)
Lothran "Cotton", Hobbit village name (PM:49). It contains of hlotho + rân, q.v. Spelt Hlothran in Appendix F, final notes.
luthur, luthran "down, fluff" (PM:49)

With the limited wordlist we have available, Westron is not a pretty language. Tolkien's translation scheme is such that Westron names are intended to have the same meanings as their english 'translations'. To our modern ears, Razanur seems foreign and epic (like a fallen wizard or orc chieftain, as you say), but to a native Adûni speaker, Razanur would have the same associations as Peregrin does for us. Likewise, Razar would be a double-meaning, with associations of a small red apple as well as a diminutive for Peregrin.

[Greg]

Udwin's right: Razanur is Westron for "traveler" or "stranger", and Peregrine is old English for the same. In short, Peregrine is the Professor's 20th century translation for his present-day audience of the original Westron in the Red Book. It has that double-meaning, like he said, in that Razar translates to "little Apple", and in an older form of English so does "Pippin".

[SierraStrider]

where did you find reference to sunflowers, oranges, and cadamom? Those don't ring a bell for me.

From FOTR, Chapter 1:

Inside Bag End, Bilbo and Gandalf were sitting at the open window of a small room looking out west on to the garden. The late afternoon was bright and peaceful. The flowers glowed red in the garden: snap-dragons and sunflowers.

The reference for cardamom in Flora is from The Adventures of Tom Bobmbadil, Chapter 3:

He perfumed her with marjoram and cardamom and lavendar.

Cardamom was apparently a pretty early spice in Europe, imported by the Romans and cultivated locally.

Flora talks about oranges a fair bit, but doesn't actually cite anything for them, which is why I put them in the "unable to find references" group.

[Elleth]

Aha! Happy to be proved wrong, especially with definitive a source - thank you Udwin!
Sierra - I do think you're on to something re: phonemes.

I do rather wonder why Tolkien created Westron as such a harsh tongue. I imagine he was trying to get close to what he imagined the old Phoencians might have spoken, but I've no source for that beyond the mid-century Atlantis/Thor Heyerdahl/mysterious-prehistorical-mariner fascination. Still, it's such an odd fit next to the pleasant-sounding elvish tongues.

[Darnokthemage]

Have some good mentions of food in Perry-The-Winkle:

'I steal no gold, I drink no beer,
I eat no kind of meat;

the sheep went wild when they saw his face,
and the geese flew over the walls.
Old Farmer Hogg he spilled his ale,

There were pikelets, there was buttered toast,
and jam, and cream, and cake,
and the Winkle strove to eat the most,
though his buttons all should break.
The kettle sang, the fire was hot,
the pot was large and brown,
and the Winkle tried to drink the lot,
in tea though he should drown.

till the old Troll said: 'I'll now begin
the baker's art to teach,
the making of beautiful cramsome bread,
of bannocks light and brown;
and then you can sleep on a heather-bed
with pillows of owlet's down.

They hammered upon the old Troll's door.
'A beautiful cramsome cake

and I've no pikelets, cream, or cake:

through eating of cramsome bread,
his weskit bust, and never a hat
would sit upon his head;
for Every Thursday he went to tea,
and sat on the kitchen floor,

from the Sea to Bree there went the fame
of his bread both short and long.
But it weren't so good as the cramsome bread;
no butter so rich and free,
as Every Thursday the old Troll spread
for Perry-the-Winkle's tea.

[SierraStrider]

from the Sea to Bree there went the fame
of his bread both short and long.

Now that's intriguing! Evidence for chemical levening!

[SierraStrider]

So I've been pondering this. I've had good success baking in the backcountry with breads both short and long as the poem says, but would/could I do it with archaic techniques?

A pearlash, potash or soda ash could be made or acquired. Would pack similarly to a spice, I imagine. But what about acid? Vinegar would serve, and be less perishable than a sour dairy product, but...still not imminently packable.

As for long bread, dry active yeast is too modern. Barm would be hard to transport. According to Townsends, sourdough is surprisingly modern.

Honestly, while there is plenty of evidence of levened baking in the source material, it's probably not all that plausible on the trail. Ah, the deprivations of the ancients...no hot muffins for breakfast. I'm starting to think Frodo's trip to Mordor might not have been all that fun, you guys.