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"What is American Cuisine?"


Busboy

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So, Native American ingredients (corn, tomatoes, beans, turkey, etc) are

widely incorporated into modern American cooking (whatever that is -

seems mostly Euro-derived) but

Native American cuisine does not even blip on the radar

of modern American cooking?

What about stuff like chili - not seen as American cooking?

I'm curious...

Milagai

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So, Native American ingredients (corn, tomatoes, beans, turkey, etc) are

widely incorporated into modern American cooking (whatever that is -

seems mostly Euro-derived) but

Native American cuisine does not even blip on the radar

of modern American cooking?

What about stuff like chili - not seen as American cooking? 

I'm curious...

Milagai

Oh gosh yes it is!

In the South in particular. Every time there is a BBQ, I would suspect. Every time a pot of grits is cooked, I'm sure. Every tortilla and slice of cornbread. Every turkey wrap with extra tomato. Every time cornmeal is used to keep a pizza crust from sticking. Every time a squash is baked.

Huge influence.

Edited by annecros (log)
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Just for fun, I did a bit of MapQuest analysis.

From Nice, France to Brest, France you will drive almost 900 miles. So French cuisine, as it were, covers a lot of ground.

From Brownsville, Texas to Dalhart, Texas is almost 900 miles. But that is just one out of fifty states! To truly compare American cuisine you would have to use all of Europe including Great Britain. Is there any such thing as "cuisine of the European Union?" If there is, then let the comparisons begin......otherwise.....*shrug*

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One way you can look at it would be.. American cuisine is anything that has been cooked with electricity, delivered via automobile, or airplane,ordered over a phone, cooked with charcoal, or refridgerated..

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One way you can look at it would be.. American cuisine is anything that has been cooked with electricity, delivered via automobile, or airplane,ordered over a phone, cooked with charcoal, or refridgerated..

Hehe. Or anything that was not...

:biggrin:

Big bunch of omnivores.

Edited by annecros (log)
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So, Native American ingredients (corn, tomatoes, beans, turkey, etc) are

widely incorporated into modern American cooking (whatever that is -

seems mostly Euro-derived) but

Native American cuisine does not even blip on the radar

of modern American cooking?

What about stuff like chili - not seen as American cooking? 

I'm curious...

Milagai

Oh gosh yes it is!

In the South in particular. Every time there is a BBQ, I would suspect. Every time a pot of grits is cooked, I'm sure. Every tortilla and slice of cornbread. Every turkey wrap with extra tomato. Every time cornmeal is used to keep a pizza crust from sticking. Every time a squash is baked.

Huge influence.

I agree there is a huge influence in terms of ingredients and

perhaps some technique.

I don't see it widely acknowledged.....

And what about Native American dishes as such?

Milagai

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Can you find one or two dishes that may be original to the USA and not descended from any other cusine?  Maybe.  But I can live with the concept that American cuisine is primarily a distillation.

Grilled corn on the cob and popcorn. :wink:

 

“Peter: Oh my god, Brian, there's a message in my Alphabits. It says, 'Oooooo.'

Brian: Peter, those are Cheerios.”

– From Fox TV’s “Family Guy”

 

Tim Oliver

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So, Native American ingredients (corn, tomatoes, beans, turkey, etc) are

widely incorporated into modern American cooking (whatever that is -

seems mostly Euro-derived) but

Native American cuisine does not even blip on the radar

of modern American cooking?

What about stuff like chili - not seen as American cooking? 

I'm curious...

Milagai

b

Oh gosh yes it is!

In the South in particular. Every time there is a BBQ, I would suspect. Every time a pot of grits is cooked, I'm sure. Every tortilla and slice of cornbread. Every turkey wrap with extra tomato. Every time cornmeal is used to keep a pizza crust from sticking. Every time a squash is baked.

Huge influence.

I agree there is a huge influence in terms of ingredients and

perhaps some technique.

I don't see it widely acknowledged.....

And what about Native American dishes as such?

Milagai

Hominy in all its forms, and any sort of cornbread. Open fires and similar preparation of game, thus hunks of meat. Preservation.

Unfortunately, it is not as widely acknowledged as I think it should be, but it is acknowledged. Part of the problem is that cooking methods were assimilated by European settlers, as were members of the Native American population, without the credit to the Native Americans.

(Please note, there is a posole cookoff ongoing and very interesting)

Those Native Americans ensured survival for both themselves and European settlers.

Edited by annecros (log)
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Can you find one or two dishes that may be original to the USA and not descended from any other cusine?  Maybe.  But I can live with the concept that American cuisine is primarily a distillation.

Grilled corn on the cob and popcorn. :wink:

I can't imagine America without corn on the cob. I really can't.

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...

Again, a good starting point for all this is the Knopf Cooks American series. You can't read even one of the regional books in that series and walk away thinking there's no American regional cuisine any more than you could deny that there's such a thing as Piedmontese or Burgundian cuisine. Some of the books:

Dungeness Crabs And Blackberry Cobblers: The Northwest Heritage Cookbook, by Janie Hibler

The Florida Cookbook: From Gulf Coast Gumbo to Key Lime Pie, by Jeanne Voltz and Caroline Stuart

Savoring the Seasons of the Northern Heartland, by Beth Dooley and Lucia Watson

etc.

I like this series as well. Here are some of other books in the series:

The Brooklyn Cookbook by Lyn Stallworth and Rod Kennedy Jr.

Latin American Cooking Across the U.S.A. by Himilce Novas and Rosemary Silva

Real Beer and Good Eats: The Rebirth of America's Beer and Food Traditions by Bruce Aidells

The Great American Meat Book by Merle Ellis

Barbecued Ribs, Smoked Butts, and Other Great Feeds by Jeanne Voltz

Hot Links And Country Flavors: Sausages in American Regional Cooking by Bruce Aidells

Helen Brown's West Coast Cookbook by Helen Evans Brown

Preserving Today by Jeanne Lesem

Pleasures Of The Good Earth by Edward Giobbi

Easy Family Recipes from a Chinese-American Childhood by Ken Hom

Biscuits, Spoonbread & Sweet Potato Pie by Bill Neal

Blue Corn And Chocolate by Elisabeth Rozin

We Called It Macaroni: An American Heritage of Southern Italian Cooking by Nancy Verde Barr

Jewish Cooking in America by Joan Nathan

"Under the dusty almond trees, ... stalls were set up which sold banana liquor, rolls, blood puddings, chopped fried meat, meat pies, sausage, yucca breads, crullers, buns, corn breads, puff pastes, longanizas, tripes, coconut nougats, rum toddies, along with all sorts of trifles, gewgaws, trinkets, and knickknacks, and cockfights and lottery tickets."

-- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1962 "Big Mama's Funeral"

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I agree there is a huge influence in terms of ingredients and

perhaps some technique.

I don't see it widely acknowledged.....

And what about Native American dishes as such?

Milagai

Like pemmican?

I've noticed it's made a comeback in the meat snack section of convenience stores.

Sandy Smith, Exile on Oxford Circle, Philadelphia

"95% of success in life is showing up." --Woody Allen

My foodblogs: 1 | 2 | 3

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A few years ago I was on an assignment for a couple of months in Sofia. I had expressed a desire to know more about my co-workers' regional cooking - they took me all over the place. Ate more organ meat in those two months than in my entire life...

Anyway, toward the end of my gig they suggested that the last week I was there they'd cook me a traditional Bulgarian meal with all the trimmings and I'd cook them a traditional American meal.

I had a two burner stove and a tiny oven - and there weren't any turkeys at the local Billa - so I racked my brain for a quintessential American meal I could pull off with two pots.

And then it hit me: chili and cornbread.

Only problem was it was Lent and half the staff had given up meat.

So I made two versions, one Texas Red, the other a veggie version - first time I'd worked with tofu (fortunately Billa had some). The former was pretty darned good considering. The latter was awful, but hey, none of them ever had chili before and they liked the spices.

Is there anything that says 21st century "United States of America" more than vegetarian chili?

Rich Westerfield

Mt. Lebanon, PA

Drinking great coffee makes you a better lover.

There is no scientific data to support this conclusion, but try to prove otherwise. Go on. Try it. Right now.

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To Busboy's list of "corn, tomatoes, the peanut and potatoes" I'd add chocolate and capsicum peppers. No discovery of the New World, no chocolate in France, no spicy food in China. However, many of the New World crops are from South America, not the territory that is now the United States.

Thank you for that. Chocolate and peppers immediately sprang to mind when I read Busboy's post. I would add turkey, some interesting varieties of beans, some squashes, and sunflower to the list of exports with important culinary influence as well.

I would beg to differ on crediting the bulk to the South American continent, though. Chocolate of course is the big hitter there, but remember that large parts of the Southwest were Mexico at one time not too long ago. Most of the other items were being cultivated anywhere there was arable land from the Great Lakes all the way down to the tip of South America. Native Americans were preparing hominy and cornbread in the eastern US since long before the Americas were discovered. If you want the "oldest" American food it would almost have to be some form of cornbread or a corn porridge concoction - tamales would be a great example of early American fast food.

Prepared in advance and portable, the Mississippians ( the mound builders who were widespread all over the eastern Americas) have left tamal evidence in mounds that are thousands of years old. Interesting that tamales were "reintroduced" into the Mississippi Delta by Mexicans in the early 1900s.

A nation of wanderers - both indigenous and imported. It certainly shows in the food.

Some of the best tamales I have ever had were bought off the back of a pickup truck in the Miss. Delta, Clarksdale ( Morgan Freeman's restuarant Madidi and blues club Ground Zero are there) about 20 years ago.Made by a wonderful older black couple, they would do the cooking in their home and then he would go out to a heavily populated section of 4th Street on a Sat. night and sell whatever happened to be on the menu out of a cooler in the bed of his truck. When he was out he would go home and get more until it was all sold.Some nights tamales, sometimes roast pork sandwiches with slaw and smoked sausages on buns.Always excellent food and so much for the money.My brother to this day will still make and try to duplicate the pork sand.

And this old porch is like a steaming greasy plate of enchiladas,With lots of cheese and onions and a guacamole salad ...This Old Porch...Lyle Lovett

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The Woman's day cookbooks I have (published 1964), site the following items as pure americana:

maple syrup

corn in all it's various uses

blueberry muffins

the big honking beefsteak (mywords) :smile:

strawberry shortcake

certain pies, i.e., cream pies, oyster pies

it seems that some of the foods are native to America, and some of the foods, while served elsewhere in the world, have a certain American twist to them.

The author points out that pies are served elsewhere in the world, but it's the American spin on ingredients that makes them unique to the U.S.

But, there's a reason they call us the melting pot, we have adapted and made our own foods from all cultures.

---------------------------------------

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Since I had to pull Arlo Guthrie and "You can get anything you want at Alice's Restaurant" (brown rice, anyone? :rolleyes: ) out of an old hat, here's another side of American Food:

Joe Baum. . . who invented not only uniquely American restaurants (Four Seasons, anyone? :rolleyes: ) but who also created new ways of thinking about the "restaurant business". . . those concepts then reshaping the business culture as it had previously existed.

Edited by Carrot Top (log)
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Some ideas from Larry Forgione about what American food is:

Forgione recasts such staples as Pigs in a Blanket (using buffalo or beef sausage and pretzel dough) and Philly Cheesesteak (with sirloin, aged cheddar or Crowley cheese and jalapeno while devising the likes of Baked Goat Cheese in Country Ham with Ramps and Morels. Forgione's refinements of such American classics as carpetbagger steak, a dish of Gold Rush San Francisco (an oyster-stuffed fillet) and his advice on using leftover turkey and cranberries for a new version of Native American Pemmican are a novel delight. His enthusiastic focus on American fare excuses those instances when invention runs to overload, as in Grilled Marinated Quail with Chestnuts and Wild Huckleberries served over a wild rice and hickory nut cake.
Edited by Carrot Top (log)
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Pardon me for channeling the "Cheese" thread, but:

What is "Crowley cheese"?

This is a variety I'm afraid I've never encountered.

I know there is a big dairy concern in upstate New York by that name, but I've never associated that company with a particular type of cheese.

Might the author have been referring to "Cooper sharp" -- a sharp version of American cheese that also originated in upstate New York but is now made by several different dairy firms -- by another name?

Sandy Smith, Exile on Oxford Circle, Philadelphia

"95% of success in life is showing up." --Woody Allen

My foodblogs: 1 | 2 | 3

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Pardon me for channeling the "Cheese" thread, but:

What is "Crowley cheese"?

Here's some info, Sandy: New England Cheese Companies

Crowley Cheese

Technically a Colby, but made decades before Colby was created.

Built in 1882 in tiny Healdville,Vermont, by Winfield Crowley, the Crowley Cheese Factory, a National Historic Place, is believed to be the Western Hemisphere's oldest existing cheese factory.

The last information surprised me until I realized the focus was on the word "factory". Interesting. . .

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Some ideas from Larry Forgione about what American food is:
Forgione recasts such staples as Pigs in a Blanket (using buffalo or beef sausage and pretzel dough) and Philly Cheesesteak (with sirloin, aged cheddar or Crowley cheese and jalapeno while devising the likes of Baked Goat Cheese in Country Ham with Ramps and Morels. Forgione's refinements of such American classics as carpetbagger steak, a dish of Gold Rush San Francisco (an oyster-stuffed fillet) and his advice on using leftover turkey and cranberries for a new version of Native American Pemmican are a novel delight. His enthusiastic focus on American fare excuses those instances when invention runs to overload, as in Grilled Marinated Quail with Chestnuts and Wild Huckleberries served over a wild rice and hickory nut cake.

I was lucky enough (or old enough) to have dined at Forgione's original "American Place" on Lexington Ave.

The food was wonderful and I believe he was among the first to seek out high quality artisinal products and feature them on his menu. I remember a very fine fillet of beef from a Michigan producer.

also worth noting (in addition to Chez Panisse) are Jonathan Waxman--Jams

The Coach House

Michael's (Santa Monica and New York City)--Michael McCarty

Cafe Nicholson--Edna Lewis

I am sure there are others I do not recall at the moment or are unaware of!

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This is a very interesting discussion. It seems to me that one can look at this sort of question in a variety of ways. (To make my position clear, I speak as a British person with, for reasons of personal history, quite a lot of experience of American food, mostly from the NE; I have very little experience of southern food.)

(1) The "shape of the meal". For me, differences in food culture are as much shaped by how we eat as by what we eat. Meals in France have a certain shape, those in Italy a different shape, etc. etc. Of course there is variation in this within any culture too--a restaurant meal or dinner party is not the same as a family supper.

The main characteristics of the American meal seem to me to be the following: (a) A distinct "main" course (compare, eg, Italy), (b) the main course features a "main" dish, which will normally include meat or fish, and "sides", which will usually include some sort of carbohydrate, © bread is not important, much less essential, to most meals (d) apart from the "main" course, the "secondary" course is a sweet course, (e) the salad (if served) is likely to be served as an "appetizer".

This pattern seems to me to be British/Northern European in origin. The patterns in other countries (eg France or Italy, let alone somewhere like China) are somewhat different in each of these points.

(2) Certain characteristic dishes: chilli, barbecue, meatloaf, chowder, burgers, etc etc. Plenty has been said about these already. Certain characteristic ingredients: maple syrup, blueberries, corn, etc. Ditto.

(3) A preference for a certain flavour profile, which I would describe as (on the whole) a preference for simple strong tastes (one reason why a Frenchman, say, would be likely to find American food rather "crude"). Whatever flavour food has, Americans like it to have a lot of that flavour--sweet food tends to be really very sweet (to UK tastes, for instance, American cakes are "too sweet", and American ice-cream is very sweet compared to Italian), strongly flavoured ingredients like cheese, bacon and tomato tend to be used quite extensively (compare an American pizza to an Italian one). And whatever is used tends to be used liberally. An American who decides to use garlic is likely to want to use a lot of garlic--not for him/her the subtle whisper that would satisfy a French or Northern Italian cook. American food rarely works by building up a subtle mixture of individually undetectable flavours.

(4) A particular liking for a few ingredients of flavour combinations. Quite a lot of sweet/sour (and savoury/sour) combinations (especially in condiments, but not only there). Very liberal use of cinnamon and vanilla. A particular dislike/absence of others (e.g., relatively little liking for bitter flavours).

(5) A relative emphasis on the size of the portion. This is not meant to be the usual complaint about "fat" americans; but I think it is true that to the American diner, a fairly large portion size shows "generosity" in the right sense. The good host leaves his or her diners sated, with food to spare.

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I was cooking today and the combination of bayleaves and dried thyme to me is very reminiscient of American food. It's a certain flavour profile that seems to appear very commonly in classic American dishes like chicken soup, chicken pot pie, shepards pie, stews, casseroles etc.

PS: I am a guy.

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The main characteristics of the American meal seem to me to be the following: (a) A distinct "main" course (compare, eg, Italy), (b) the main course features a "main" dish, which will normally include meat or fish, and "sides", which will usually include some sort of carbohydrate, © bread is not important, much less essential, to most meals (d) apart from the "main" course, the "secondary" course is a sweet course, (e) the salad (if served) is likely to be served as an "appetizer".

This pattern seems to me to be British/Northern European in origin. The patterns in other countries (eg France or Italy, let alone somewhere like China) are somewhat different in each of these points.

Miss Manners (Judith Martin, my preferred etiquette maven) ascribes the serving of the salad before the main course to restaurant practice: Doing so gave the patrons something to keep them occupied while the main dishes were being prepared. Most Americans have gone on to adopt the restaurant practice.

In her instructions on giving formal dinner parties, the salad follows the main course.

Sandy Smith, Exile on Oxford Circle, Philadelphia

"95% of success in life is showing up." --Woody Allen

My foodblogs: 1 | 2 | 3

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