America in context

Americans at the Table

Numerous influences have affected the development of cuisine in the United States. The absence of royalty, a motivating force for culinary inventiveness in other countries, coupled with the "stoic, utilitarian sensibility" of the Puritan Ethic, may have hindered development of fine cuisine during the country's early decades, but adoption and adaptation of dishes brought by new waves of immigrants over the decades have sparked a richness and diversity in the fare on America's dinner tables and in its restaurants.

We Are What We Eat: We are a Nation of Immigrants!
David Rosengarten

American food has been woefully misunderstood around the world by those who view it from a distance only. Americans eat hamburgers, no? would be the typical perspective overseas on what Americans consume—and it wouldn be wrong! We do love our hamburgers, and our hot dogs, and other simple, emblematic treats. However, we love many other things as well. And with ever-growing good reason. For the vast patchwork of comestibles that is American cooking today is one of the most vital cuisines in the world, owing its vitality, in large part, to the same element that built the strength of America in other ways—the arrival on these shores of immigrants from virtually all over the globe, immigrants who were able to combine the talents and perspectives they brought from other countries with the day-to-day realities and logistics of American life. Finally, today, food-savvy people everywhere are recognizing the high quality of whats now being cooked in America—but it took many years for that level of quality, and that recognition, to develop.

Why? Well, truth be told, the deck has historically been stacked against gastronomic America.

For starters, the Native Americans, the long-time inhabitants of this continent who established their American civilization well before the first Europeans arrived, were not ideally positioned to begin building a national cuisine. The very size of this country, and the spread-out nature of Native-American culture, militated against culinary progress, which is so dependent on the cross-fertilization of ideas. In old France, for example, a culinary idea could blow into Paris with the weekly mail from Lyon—but the likelihood of culinary ideas from the Seminoles in Florida and the Pueblos in the Rocky Mountains merging into something national was far more remote. The absence of great cities in the landscape of the Native Americans also worked against gastronomic development—because time has proven that the rubbing of shoulders in a large urban environment is beneficial to the rise of great cooking.

Additionally, American cooking always lacked the motivating drive of royalty (which is part of our national charm!). Cuisines in France, in Italy, in Spain, in Persia, in northern India, in Thailand, in Beijing were all heavily inspired by the necessity of creating national food for the royal court. This not only unified the cooking in those countries, but also boosted its complexities—as chefs attempted to outdo each other in pursuit of royal approval. Though the masses in 1788 certainly were not eating what Louis XVI ate (as his famous wife acknowledged in her most famous utterance), the cooking ideas and dishes that developed at Versailles and other royal venues over many centuries were later incorporated into what every Frenchman eats everywhere in France.

Pervasiveness of Corn

Lacking such a galvanizing force, before the European arrivals American food never merged into a unified coast-to-coast phenomenon. Of course, the Native Americans made major ingredient contributions to what we eat today, particularly corn. Its fascinating to think that so many things that we do consider part of our national gastronomic life—such as corn on the cob, creamed corn, corn dogs, corn flakes, grits, tortilla chips, even our cheap American beer brewed from corn—are grounded in this ingredient preference of the early Native Americans. But did that preference lead to a national cuisine? By looking at neighboring Mexico—where it did lead to one—I think we can see that the answer is no. The Spaniards who started arriving in Mexico in the 16th century didn merely grab a good ingredient and do something else with it; they truly blended their ideas with the Native Mexican Indian ideas. Tacos al carbon? The Spaniards brought the pork; the Indians supplied the tacos. When you eat in Mexico today, youll find every table laid with modern versions of Indian ingredients, and Indian culinary ideas for those ingredients. You cannot say the same about the modern American table.

Later in America, other factors, deeply grounded in the modern American spirit, further conspired to stall a national culinary growth. When the Europeans first arrived, the battle for sustenance of any kind was the motif that informed the kitchen, not the quest for creativity; you cannot be inventing a grand cuisine when you
e worried about which tree bark might be edible so that you can survive another day. Picture the French citizen in 1607 in Paris—grounded, entrenched, ready to inherit a cooking tradition and help it evolve. Now picture the Jamestown inhabitant, starting from scratch, permanently preoccupied with more elemental concerns.

Of course, as American civilization grew, the pioneer spirit played its own role in the delay of culinary refinement. Theres a ridge over there—weve got to see whats beyond it. And, indeed, there were many ridges between Virginia and California. Not all Americans were moving across the country in stage coaches during the 18th and 19th centuries—but the still-extant flavor of American restlessness, of American exploration, of a kind of life at odds with the our family has been sitting near this hearth for 400 years mentality of Europeans of the same day, once again cut against the set of values and interests that normally lead to the development of great cuisine.

Some Quirky Aspects

It is this spirit, of course—an ethos of eating to live rather than living to eat—that has led to other quirky aspects of the traditional American food world. We have certainly led the planet in the development of convenience foods—both because we have had the technological ingenuity to do so, but also because we have so many citizens who don have time to cook. Lets face it—rice that cooks in a minute, or soup that only needs a minute in the microwave, is not going to play a role in the development of American haute cuisine.

Lastly, it has been the poor fortune of gastronomic America to have fallen under the sway, for so many years, of a mainstream American value system—the so-called Puritan Ethic. A great deal of industry and good has arisen from this set of values—but no one can ever accuse the Puritans and their descendants of fomenting the positive development of the arts, particularly the culinary arts. I remember older people in my youth—this breed is mostly gone now—who considered it grossly impolite to talk about food, even at the dinner table. You received your sustenance and you ingested it, so that you could live another day. Why would any right-thinking person discuss the way something tastes, other than for reasons of vanity? And so it played out, for hundreds of years, in New England and elsewhere—a stoic, utilitarian sensibility at the table, hardly conducive to the development of fine cuisine.

Had this nation stalled after the influx of the original Europeans in the 17th and 18th century, our culinary story may have stalled as well. However, shortly after this period, other immigrants began to arrive—and it is to these groups that we owe the rescue of the American palate, as well as the honing of the American palate into one of the finest culinary instruments in the world today.

One of our greatest national disgraces ever was also the source of many of our nations early gastronomic triumphs: the awful transformation of free African citizens into bound American slaves. From that tragedy, however, arose a strong sensibility that had a powerful influence on the development of American culture—not to mention American cuisine. The Africans brought intriguing ingredients with them to these shores—okra, yams, peanuts (which originated in Peru, then came to North America from Africa). They dined low on the hog—with the slave owners taking the best parts of the pig, and the slaves left to their ingenuity to make the leftover parts tasty. And, they had a natural camaraderie with slaves who arrived from the Caribbean—who brought to this country a whole new set of spices that added tremendous zest to American cooking. The slaves and former slaves were on the scene in Charleston, South Carolina, as that city became a major spice-trading port. They were there in New Orleans, aiding in the development of one of Americas most distinct regional cuisines. And they manned barbecue—or BBQ— pits all over the South, helping to develop what I surely believe to be Americas most significant contribution to world cuisine.

If all of that early gastronomic activity was generated by immigrants coming in through the Southeast, a parallel activity was occurring in the Southwest—where Mexican Indians and Spanish settlers were bringing their flavors up through Mexico to Texas and New Mexico. What we ended up with in our own American Southwest was not very like what the original immigrants ate in Mexico, or in Spain—but it became a crucial element in our national dining picture, with enchiladas and fajitas as truly American as any other dish eaten every day across America.

Chinese and Italian Dominance

By the latter half of the 19th century, the stage was set for the most important period of gastro-immigration in American history—when the Chinese immigrants and the Italian immigrants arrived. I call it supremely important, for if you go to any American city today, and open the phone book to check on the restaurants, you will find that Chinese restaurants and Italian restaurants, despite the rise in popularity of many other ethnic cuisines, still dominate the restaurant culture.

Chinese food in America, of course, has a secondary position behind Italian. It came to this country with the Chinese immigrants who arrived to work on the railroad in the West—or, rather, who came to feed those who were working on the railroad. The cooks didn have much to work with, but they imaginatively threw together little bits of meat and vegetables in their large pans and gave it a name: chop suey. As this type of cooking hit the big cities, and spread across the country, a whole new cuisine emerged: Chinese-American, replete with Egg Rolls, Wonton Soup, Fried Rice, Chicken Chow Mein, and Spare Ribs. It never had quite the reach of the Italian-American food that was spawned a little bit later—because, though most Americans ate this food, they didn usually try to cook it at home. However, it did accomplish something extremely significant—it opened up the minds and palates of almost every 20th-century American to the exotic allure of Asian food, paving the way for the absorption of many Asian cuisines into our national eating habits.

A bit later came the big one: Italian-American food. Around 1880, the first wave began—immigrants from Naples, arriving at Ellis Island. Before long, they were living around Mulberry Street in Manhattan, where they desperately tried to reproduce the food of their homeland. They failed, because they could not obtain the ingredients that they used back in the old country. Through sheer ingenuity, however, they made do with what they had. So what if the new dishes used dried herbs instead of fresh, canned tomatoes instead of fresh, more sauce on the pasta than is traditional, and more meat in the diet? The Italian-American cuisine that they created was magnificent—though, if you were born after 1975, youd never know it, because the best Italian chefs in America today eschew Italian-American cuisine, preferring to climb ever-higher mountains of radicchio, anointed with ever-older bottles of balsamic vinegar.

But the real triumph of the cuisine is in the American home—where pizza, lasagna, manicotti, meatballs, veal parmigiana, through frozen food, or delivery food, or home cookin, play a tremendously vital role in the everyday fare of Americans. And, I daresay, what we learned from Italian-American food is extremely important—that food with origins in another country can not only become an interesting diversion here, but solidly part of our mainstream fare.

The New Immigration

This got proved again and again. The rest of the 20th century saw the arrival of multiple immigrant groups—and, with a national palate softened up by the twin triumphs of Chinese-American cuisine and Italian-American cuisine, the gradual acceptance of many ethnic cuisines into our everyday lives. Though the immigration to America of such European groups as Greeks and French and Scandinavians, for example, was not in numbers approaching the Italian immigration, we still find gyro and souvlaki and shish kebab stands on many an urban corner, we still celebrate the French way of approaching food as a cornerstone of our American kitchen, and we still give Danish pastry a solid position in the world of the American breakfast.

Beyond Europe, foods from the rest of the world too have merged into the American menu. Has any restaurant type, after the pizza parlor, conquered our cities as the sushi bar has in recent years? Have you noticed, of late, the rapid rise of South American grilling restaurants, with Brazilian churrascarias and Argentine parrilladas paving the way? And what of the smaller-than-a-movement but bigger-than-a-quirk ethnic eateries of all descriptions that are mushrooming—from Afghan kebab houses to Korean BBQs, from Ethiopian injeera joints to Cuban pork places, from Indian curry parlors to Thai noodle houses?

But thats not all, in gastronomic America. Whats especially compelling about all of this gastronomic activity on these shores is the melting pot factor. Yes, at the neighborhood ethnic spots, Thai food doesn fuse with Cuban, Polish cuisine doesn get hitched to Philippine. But let an American housewife take home from the Thai restaurant a taste for coconut milk in stews, and before long—helped by the extraordinary boom in grocery availability—shes combining Uncle Georges Hungarian paprikash with Thai red curry. And at the higher levels of cooking, this kind of cross-fertilization goes on at an even more furious pace—with high-profile American chefs raiding the culinary stockpiles of scores of ethnic cuisines from around the world, creating, night after night, hybridized gastronomic flings that the world has never seen before.

It is, in America, always a transformative process.....and what always comes out is always American food.

FOOD TALK

Food has provided many idioms to the English language. Here are just a few examples.

To sow wild oats - to have a good time as a young person before settling down to adult responsibilities.
Like many young men, John wanted to sow some wild oats after graduating from college.

From soup to nuts - everything imaginable
The bridal shop has everything from soup to nuts when it comes to weddings

To be a peach! - to be great!
My friend Susan was a peach to lend me ten dollars when I found I didn have enough money for lunch.

Peachy keen - fantastic
All the kids agreed that the movie was peachy keen.

To separate the wheat from the chaff - to separate the good from the bad, or the useable from the useless
The revised evaluation process was designed to separate the wheat from the chaff.

To work for peanuts - to have a low salary
Tired of working for peanuts, Tom applied for and obtained a better job.

Sour grapes - resentment and jealousy
Some people reacted negatively to Maureens promotion, but she thought that it was just sour grapes.

A lemon - an automobile that is always breaking down because of poor workmanship
Convinced that his car was a lemon when it broke down for the third time in a month, Bill decided to return it to the dealer from whom he bought it.

To have your cake and eat it, too - a desire to have something both ways at once
Margaret, who enjoyed the convenience of living with her parents but longed for the independence of living in her own apartment, finally accepted the fact that she could not have her cake and eat it, too.

Crying over spilled milk - pointless regret over something that cannot be changed
Nicholas was upset that he had overslept and missed his job interview, but he decided that it was pointless to cry over spilled milk.

To spill the beans - to unwittingly reveal information
Tiffany had planned a surprise party for her husbands birthday, but her sister spilled the beans by mentioning it to him when she saw him at the market.

To bring home the bacon - to support ones family adequately
One of the reasons why Annes parents approved of her new husband was the fact that he really brought home the bacon.

Apple of ones eye - a source of enormous pride
Her new baby is the apple of Marions eye.

As easy as pie - very easy
Nicholas had expected to have great difficulty in learning the rules of American football, but he was surprised to find that it was as easy as pie.

Cream of the crop - the best
These puppies are the cream of the crop, said the breeder.

A finger in every pie - involved in everything, often to the annoyance of others
The new boss irritated some employees by seeming to want to have a finger in every pie.

Cool as a cucumber - maintaining calm in difficult circumstances
Debbie was nervous when the examination began, but her friend Sarah was as cool as a cucumber.

Cup of tea - something that appeals to ones personal taste
Peter declined the invitation to play cards, saying that it just wasn his cup of tea.

To use your noodle - to use your brain, i.e., think
It wouldn seem so hard if you would just use your noodle, the teacher told the student.

To butter up - to flatter
When Sylvia constantly praised her supervisor, some of her co-workers thought that she was just trying to butter him up.

To go bananas - to lose ones composure
Tony was worried that his parents would go bananas when they found out that he had put a dent in their car.

Like taking candy from a baby - an absurdly easy task
The dishonest salesman was so good at cheating customers that it was almost like taking candy from a baby.

To bear fruit - to succeed
The Wright brothers worked diligently on their aeronautical research for years, confident that their hard work would eventually bear fruit.

Two peas in a pod - exactly alike
Barry and his brother Gary looked so much alike that people often told them they were like two peas in a pod.

To eat humble pie - to admit a mistake
The arrogant scientist had to eat humble pie when his efforts to invent a better rocket fuel caused an explosion.

In a nutshell - briefly summarized
In a nutshell, the overall position of the company has improved greatly in the past year, said the company president as he began his speech to the board of directors.

In the soup - in trouble
Rachel knew that if she did not finish her project on time, she would be in the soup.

In a pickle - in a difficult situation
Bob was in a pickle when his car broke down in a pouring rainstorm.

Big enchilada - an important person
Elizabeths election as president of her sorority confirmed the opinion of her friends that she was a big enchilada.

Cauliflower ear - an ear deformed by friction
The wresting coach insisted that his wrestlers always wear headgear, in order to avoid developing cauliflower ears.

Flat as a pancake - very flat
The Great Plains are often described as flat as a pancake.

Nutty as a fruitcake - very eccentric or bizarre
The elderly mans behavior became so unusual that some of his neighbors considered him to be as nutty as a fruitcake.

About the Author:

David Rosengarten is an authority on food, wine, and cooking, and the author of the award-wining cookbook, Taste. He is a frequent host on the Food Network, a cable channel shown around the world, and producer of the Rosengarten Report, a newsletter about food.