Chilis, tobacco and tomatoes are all in the same family (nightshades). And they are all "New World" plants. Which means Europe had to live without them until 1600 or so. If you can call that living.

And coffee didn't make the jump until around the same time, either. No wonder Europeans wanted to be anywhere on the planet except Europe.

Coffee in Europe predates 1492 I think.

Coffee was around in Ethiopia and Yemen before that, but it didn't really spread in the Muslim world before 1500, and didn't spread from there to Europe until even later.

Don't forget the potato! Europe before the potato seems like a miserable place

yeah before potato they had lots of lots of turnips and rutabagas, it is little wonder they went out exploring the world looking for anything better to eat. the new world gave tonnes of food not just nightshade family plant mentioned earlier (gp left out eggplant btw) corn, sweet potato, chocolate, sunflowers, and pumpkins, squash, peanuts, pineapple, cranberry and turkey.

Eggplant is actually an old-world nightshade! Arabs brought it to Spain as early as the 8th century, probably from Southeast Asia

I've often had the mental image of Galileo trying to order a pizza and being very disappointed at the garlic bread that turned up.

Imagine Indian food without chilies… it’d be as dull as Russian food.