Transcript INTRODUCTION - wallawallafandc

INTRODUCTION
CLASSIC AMERICAN FOODS

AMERICAN HISTORY IS CHARACTERIZED
BY TEN FOODS:

What are they?

Corn or maize was first domesticated in
Mexico, then reached the United States about
800 years ago. This classic food has a unique
history in America from antiquity to modern
times. It is said that American humor is
"corny." Americans speak of a "corn belt" that
stretches from Indiana, westward through
Illinois and Missouri, into Kansas. Corn has
more than 800 different culinary uses in
America today, and collectively, Americans
eat nearly 50 pounds of corn products yearly.
MAIZE

For many Native American nations, maize
remains central to diet. Many Native
Americans believe maize has a spiritual
origin. Maize lies at the center of tribal
and personal religious beliefs. Maize is
honored and in telling the story of maize,
ethnic identity is reinforced and
maintained.....

The word maize comes from the Taino
language? Taino was the dialect spoken by
the Arawaks, the Caribbean people who first
greeted Columbus in 1492. The word corne,
spelled today as corn, comes from the old
English dialect term for grain and specifically
is used to designate wheat. When the
English-speaking Pilgrims encountered maize
for the first time, they called it Indian Corne
because they did not know or recognize the
plant, but they knew it was a grain.

Native Americans planted maize, beans,
and squash together in the same field.
They used fish to fertilize the soil. As the
seeds grew, the beans twined around the
maize stalks while the broad squash
leaves covered the ground and kept the
soil moist. Eaten together, maize, beans
and squash provide a balanced diet
without meat.

The founding fathers considered whether or
not the wild turkey should be America's
national emblem. While the wild turkey lost
to the American bald eagle, turkey has
continued to play roles in American folksongs and slang. Turkey remains an enduring
American food through association with
Thanksgiving and with other holiday festivals,
so much so that the average American eats
nearly 15 pounds of turkey and turkey
products annually.
TURKEY

Amelia Simmons wrote the first cook book
in America and published it in 1796? It is
the first book that developed recipes for
foods native to America. Her pumpkin
puddings were baked in a crust and
similar to present day pumpkin pies.

Her stuffed turkey recipe has changed
very little in over 200 years:To stuff a
turkey --- Grate a wheat loaf, one quarter
of a pound butter, one quarter of a pound
salt pork, finely chopped, two eggs, a
little sweet marjoram, summer savory,
parsley and sage, pepper and salt (if the
pork be not sufficient) fill the bird and sew
up
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Beans offer excellent nutrition and have
achieved a unique place in American
culinary tradition. More than 100 varieties
of beans are cultivated in America, with
most produced in Michigan, North Dakota,
Nebraska, and Colorado.
BEANS

Whether dry (kidney, navy, and pinto), or
fresh (string/snap or wax), American
farms yield 1,500,000 tons annually.
Beans occupy places in American slang
and fads, from "spilling-the-beans," to
"bean-bag chairs", to "Beanie-Babies,®"
and one bean dish is classic American.

Boston baked beans is a classic American
dish consisting of navy beans cooked
slowly with molasses and salt pork.
Several historical sources report that early
American colonists did not bake beans,
and that slow cooking technique was
Native American in origin and
subsequently adopted by the New
England colonists.
Boston Baked Beans

Other scholars argue, however, that baked
beans had long been a traditional Sabbath
dish among North African and Spanish
Jews, who called this food "skanah." They
suggest that sea captains introduced the
concept of baked beans to New England
ports after long voyages along the coast
of north Africa and the Mediterranean.

Regardless of origin, recipes for baked
beans are closely associated with the city
of Boston, Massachusetts, where Colonial
Puritan women baked beans on Saturday,
to avoid cooking on the Sabbath, and
served them for Saturday dinner and as
left-overs for Sunday breakfast and lunch.
So ingrained is the association between
Bostonians and beans, that the city is
sometimes known as "bean town."
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Thomas Jefferson introduced the waffle
iron to America? He also introduced
Neapolitan "macaroni" (i.e. spaghetti) to
America and served "French fries" with
beefsteak. Some say that while he was in
France, Jefferson obtained recipes for ice
cream, although Dolly Madison frequently
gets credit for introducing ice cream to
the White House.
During this time…
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Friendly Native Americans taught pioneers
crossing the American desert to eat insects.
Hungry pioneers fried Rocky Mountain locusts
in oil until crisp, then seasoned them with
salt. One recipe for locust stew was: Boil
prepared Rocky Mountain locusts in salted
water. Add assorted cut-up vegetables,
butter, salt, and vinegar to the broth and
cook until the vegetables are tender. Serve
as thick soup or over boiled rice as a main
dish.
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Apple pie and Mom: what could be more
American? The problem is: apple pie was
a British invention and English colonists
brought apples to America. The unique
American aspect of apples, are the
varieties developed here: Golden and Red
Delicious, Jonathan, and McIntosh.
APPLES
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More than 2,500 varieties of apples grow
in America today, and 4,300,000 tons are
produced annually. From "an apple a day,"
to icon of the computer industry....
American apples have unique stories

According to some accounts, the first
apple tree in the Pacific Northwest sprang
from a seed brought from London in 1824
by Captain Aemilius Simpson. The story
goes that at a farewell banquet held in his
honor, a young lady -- as a joke -- gave
him the core of the apple she had eaten
and asked him the plant the seeds in the
American wilderness.
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When Captain Simpson arrived at Fort
Vancouver in what is now Washington state,
he gave the seeds to Dr. John McLoughlin,
then Chief Agent for Hudson's Bay Company
in the Pacific Northwest. Delighted by the
gift, Dr. McLoughlin entrusted the seeds to
his gardener, who planted and nurtured them
in a glass house. A single tree grew from
McLoughlin?s seeds and was carefully
protected: the first year it bore one fruit, but
the second year the apples flourished.
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By the 1850's, production was high
enough to begin exporting apples to
California. Apples were shipped to San
Francisco in theft-proof iron bound crates
and fetched incredible prices. One account
dated to 1853 reported that four bushels
of apples were sold in San Francisco for
$500.
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Because of the potential for profit by
selling apples to Gold Rush miners,
Californians began to plant their own
orchards. Ultimately, the demand for
Pacific Northwest apples declined and
prices dropped sharply. Construction of
the Northern Pacific Railroad in 1893,
however, made it possible to ship Pacific
Northwest apples to eastern markets and
the industry prospered once again.
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Traditional American cooking is basically
British. Americans may dine out at French
or Greek restaurants, but at home,
Americans essentially are British. Early
immigrants were stubborn, and refused
new foods. They brought familiar foods
from England. We say, "as American as
apple pie" --- but apple pie is British.
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Pork and beans, fried bacon, and ribs -hearty food for hungry Americans.
Imagine a time without pigs in America:
Spanish explorers brought pigs with them
and some escaped. These mean, wild
"razor backs" even became the nick-name
of some American athletic teams.
PORK
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From pork barrel politics to Super Bowl
pigskin, pork-related slang and
terminology has a long colorful history.
Today, nearly 60 million pigs are raised in
America and the average American eats
46 pounds of pork annually.
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In 17th and 18th century Europe, bread
was the staple food of poor people.
Americans, however, fed their grain to
animals, then ate the animals -- instead
of the grain. Geographically, America had
enough land to make this approach
possible, and pigs were among the easiest
animals to keep.
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Pigs foraged for their food, and their meat
could easily be preserved as bacon, ham,
or salt pork. There evolved an American
saying..... "to scrape the bottom of the
barrel." It means even today to be out of
resources, and in actuality the saying
refers to a "pork barrel."

Foreign visitors to America often referred
to frying as the typical American method
of preparing food? The frying pan became
popular through association with frying
pork, which provided fat for cooking other
foods.
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Beef is the core, the essence of American
food history. Oxen pulled covered wagons
westward; cows produced milk for pioneer
families; cowboys and cowgirls punched
herds along the Chisholm Trail. The story
of beef IS American history: a story of
challenge, survival, invention, and hard
work.
BEEF
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From steaks to hamburgers; from classic
beef stew to up-scale flavored jerky.
Americans have chewed on beef for nearly
400 years and today, average annual
consumption by Americans is estimated at
112 pounds.
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The word hamburger probably existed by
the end of the Middle Ages. In 1802 the
Oxford English Dictionary defined
"Hamburg steak" as salt beef. Referring to
ground beef as "hamburger" dates to the
invention of the mechanical meat grinder
during the 1860s.
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"Filet de boeuf a la Hambourgeoise," was sold
in Boston in 1874, while Hamburger Beef
Steak appeared on the Lookout House
Restaurant menu in Cincinnati, Ohio, in the
mid-1870s. During the last years of the 19th
century ground round or hamburger became
associated with a hot sandwich, and early
20th century illustrations depict hamburger
served on sliced white bread or toast.
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"Hamburger Steak, Plain" and
"Hamburger Steak, with Onions," was
served at the Tyrolean Alps Restaurant at
the 1904 Saint Louis World's Fair.
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The modern hamburger (on a bun)
appears during World War I. The White
Castle restaurant chain was established in
1916 at Wichita, Kansas and by the early
1920s sold hamburgers. Some scholars
say the first hamburger served on a bun
appeared in 1917 at Drexel's Pure Food
Restaurant, Chicago.
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Wheat fields in America, turning gold in the
late afternoon sun --- amber waves of grain.
Wheat has been transformed from hand
cutting to mechanical harvesting. The
American wheat belt beckons from Texas
northward through Oklahoma, into Kansas,
from eastern Washington state to central
Montana. Wheat bread and wheat cakes,
from pancakes and waffles to wedding
cakes.... wheat holds a special, prominent
place in the American food pattern.
WHEAT
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Sourdough ranks among the world's most
passionately debated foods. Like fried
chicken or spaghetti sauce, it has its factions
and fanatics, and each claims to know more
about it than the next person. Some believe
that the only effective sourdough starter is
made from hops, water and flour, and must
be several decades old -- a sort of eternal
flame of cooking that should never be
extinguished.
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Others are convinced that potato water
makes a better starter than hops, while
still others use only raw milk. Whatever
the sourdough starter source, there is
universal agreement that it should be
kept in an earthenware pot, not in a metal
container, since metal corrodes and would
spoil the starter.

Wheat was introduced to Arizona and
California in the 18th century by Spanish
missionaries? Wheat did not become an
important American crop, however, until
planted successfully in the Mississippi
Valley in 1718.
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A standardized diet of beef, potatoes,
white bread and milk was served to
American soldiers during World War I.

This limited food pattern played an
important role in the "nationalizing" of
American food tastes, and ethnic diets
changed as more Americans adopted a
more traditional "British pattern."
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Potatoes: prominent in peace and critical
during wartime. Potatoes, whether baked
or boiled, dehydrated or fried, have
presented opportunities to American chefs
for more than 200 years.
POTATOES
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American inventiveness created the
potato chip, and what high-energy
breakfast is complete without hashbrowns? Nearly 460 million pounds of
potatoes reach American markets yearly,
and Americans on average eat 49 pounds
of potatoes per year.
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INVENTION OF THE POTATO CHIP:
While dining at Moon's Lake House,
Saratoga Springs, New York, a finicky
patron repeatedly returned his order of
french fried potatoes. Chef George Crum
became enraged, sliced some of the
potatoes paper-thin, returned the plate to
the guest, who loved them, and the
potato chip was born.
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Potatoes were only eaten boiled during
the early 18th century in North America
since they were thought to be toxic?
Cooks assumed that boiling removed the
toxins.
During the late 19th and early 19th
centuries, many Americans put hot baked
potatoes in their pockets during winter to
help keep their hands warm?
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Chicken in every pot; chicken strips, even
Chicken Little. During the 1930s most
chickens were raised in America for egg
production. Fried chicken served at
Grandmother's Sunday mid-day dinner
was a rare, special treat.
CHICKEN
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Then customs changed. After World War
II, an elderly man named Sanders -dressed in a white suit -- changed
American food patterns forever. By 1998,
Americans were eating nearly 50 pounds
of chicken annually.
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SOUTHERN-STYLE FRIED CHICKEN
According to many food historians
southern fried chicken may be the ideal
all-purpose, all-occasion American food.
Served hot or cold, it is enjoyed by young
and old and appreciated at both formal
and casual meals. Southern-fried chicken
frequently is complemented by biscuits,
corn-on-the-cob, beans, or Cole slaw.
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Chicken à la king was prepared at the
suggestion of Mr. Foxhall Keene, son of
Wall Street operator, Jim Keene. Over
time, the term changed and became
chicken a la king. Some scholars suggest
that this dish was invented in 1923, while
others argue that it has been popular in
America since 1912.
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Buffalo wings [i.e. chicken wings] served
with a hot sauce were created in 1964 at
the Anchor Bar, Buffalo, New York.
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Greens and salad vegetables are being
munched and crunched by Americans to
the tune of 23 pounds per year. Crisp
salads, textured cress and endive,
specialty lettuce, and a host of exotic
greens regularly add flavor and fiber to
American diet. Good taste and sound
nutrition in combination.
GREENS
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Lettuce was first domesticated and grown
as a food crop in ancient Egypt. Paintings
and carvings inside ancient Egyptian
tombs depict lettuce plants associated
with Min, the god of vegetation and
procreation. In ancient times the leaf was
eaten as today, but lettuce seeds also
were used. Lettuce seeds were pressed to
extract oil, or crushed and prepared as
bread.
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Lettuce sometimes is called Green Gold in
California? Lettuce is the most important
vegetable grown in California, and about
70% of lettuce grown in America is
produced in the "golden" state
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Pot likker is juice left in the pot after
vegetables are cooked? American folklore
assigns a magical, nutritive value to pot
likker. Both cooked and fresh turnip
greens are associated with Southern-style
home cooking. What Southerners call a
bowl of wild greens commonly contains
leaves of cowslip, cress, dandelion,
pigweed, and turnip greens.
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Caesar Salad, made using romaine
lettuce, garlic, olive oil, croutons,
Parmesan cheese, Worcestershire sauce,
egg yolks, lemon, and anchovies, was first
created by Caesar Cardini in the 1920's in
Mexico. Tradition holds that the Caesar
Salad was introduced to Americans dining
in San Diego, California.