The American Plate: A Culinary History in 100 Bites

by Libby O'Connell

Overview

"Like many miniencyclopedias, this one is studded with often intriguing facts."—Kirkus

New York Post Required Reading and an Entertainment Weekly Top 3 Must-Read!

From the chief historian at HISTORY® comes a rich chronicle of the evolution of American cuisine and culture, from before Columbus's arrival to today.

Did you know that the first graham crackers were designed to reduce sexual desire? Or that Americans have tried fad diets for almost two hundred years? Why do we say things like "buck" for a dollar and "living high on the hog"? How have economics, technology, and social movements changed our tastes? Uncover these and other fascinating aspects of American food traditions in The American Plate.

Dr. Libby H. O'Connell takes readers on a mouth-watering journey through America's culinary evolution into the vibrant array of foods we savor today. In 100 tantalizing bites, ranging from blueberries and bagels to peanut butter, hard cider, and Cracker Jack, O'Connell reveals the astonishing ways that cultures and individuals have shaped our national diet and continue to influence how we cook and eat.

Peppered throughout with recipes, photos, and tidbits on dozens of foods, from the surprising origins of Hershey Bars to the strange delicacies our ancestors enjoyed, such as roast turtle and grilled beaver tail. Inspiring and intensely satisfying, The American Plate shows how we can use the tastes of our shared past to transform our future.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781492609865
Publisher:	Sourcebooks
Publication date:	09/08/2015
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	352
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Libby H. O'Connell is senior vice president of Corporate Outreach and chief historian to the History Channel. She is the author of several books, including Save Our History, White House-200th Anniversary and History of Halloween. Libby lives in New York City.

Tanya Eby has been a voice-over artist for over a decade. She is an Audie-nominated and AudioFile Earphones Award-winning narrator. Besides narrating, Tanya spends her time teaching creative writing classes at the collegiate level, blogging, and working on her own novels.

Read an Excerpt

Introduction

Imagine, for a minute, traveling to a foreign country and exploring that nation's culture. How might you hope to really understand the people-their traditions, their customs, and the flavors of their cuisine? You might visit museums, walk down city streets, or browse country markets. You would definitely eat the food there, because that is one of the best and often most surprising ways to learn about a different place.

In some respects, the past is another country as well. It has flavors of its own that are well worth exploring. Experiencing those tastes reveals a time when the people and places of our own country were radically different than they are today. Like time travelers, we can see what life was like for our predecessors by conjuring up the techniques, textures, smells, and tastes of America from two hundred, three hundred, and even four hundred years ago.

The remarkable changes in ingredients, recipes, and menus over the centuries provide a window for us to appreciate just how different life has been during the various eras of America's story. Exploring our food heritage can also heighten our sense of the differences and similarities between then and now. For example, beaver tail is likely too gamey and fatty for our modern palates, but hungry fur trappers in the colonial period dined on it happily. Conversely, warm pumpkin pudding with heavy cream still appeals to us today, just as it enticed new colonists in seventeenth-century Massachusetts. So while this book is primarily about the evolution of America's national cuisine and "foodways"-a term that includes growing, harvesting, preserving, preparing, cooking, and eating food-history provides the context for understanding the intersection of culture and cuisine.

The American Plate provides a multilayered overview of the peopling of our country, our evolving foodways, and the transformation of our palates from 1400 to today. American Indians, Anglo-American women, enslaved (and free) African Americans, Chinese, Japanese, and Indian immigrants, western and eastern European arrivals, Hispanic families, and many more have contributed the flavors of their cultures to help create the variety of international and local influences we find in modern-day American restaurants, grocery stores, and kitchen tables.

To understand how America's diverse, edible heritage developed, it's worth exploring the people and events that shaped our cuisine and left indelible marks on the foods we savor today. Where did the raw ingredients for what we think of as American food originate? Were all foods local and seasonal before the introduction of modern transportation and preservation technologies? Who cooked the food, and whose culture predominated in the kitchen? These are just a few of the many questions we'll explore in these pages.

This book serves as a guide to introduce you to both an America of long ago and a more recent and familiar one, through more than one hundred different foods (or Bites) organized by ten eras of our national history. Drawing from a variety of sources, the book aims to shed light on the myriad cultures, values, and traditions that make up the United States through stories about our food (some very short, some longer). Peppered throughout are anecdotes, images, and recipes for all sorts of American dishes-from roast beaver tail and succotash to mint juleps, shoo fly pie, and firehouse chili.

Each chapter and each Bite stands alone, so you may read this book from front to back or just start with a time period or specific food that interests you. I chose certain foods because they and their history provide a particularly clear lens through which to view our broader national history. Others exemplify or are symbolic of a specific event, such as a version of a WPA soup recipe from the Great Depression. My hope is that these narratives and recipes will inspire readers to explore America's diverse culinary heritage, whether by recreating the unfamiliar tastes of the past or simply enjoying the stories I've included here.

Throughout America's history, nature, economics, technology, and immigration have played important roles in our adaptation of indigenous foods, development of new ones, and adoption of others from different continents. Ultimately, by learning about the origins of our richly diverse culinary heritage and exploring the history of the foodways included in this book, we can develop a deeper understanding of how we became the curious and passionate eaters we are today.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xiii

Introduction xvii

Chapter 1 The Three Sisters and So Much More: American Indian Foods before Columbus 1

1 Maize 3

2 Beans 6

Recipe: Traditional Succotash 7

3 Squash 8

4 Venison 9

5 American Bison 11

Recipe: Pemmican 13

6 Blueberries 14

7 Maple Syrup 15

8 Wild Rice 17

9 Red Peppers 19

10 Salmon 21

Chapter 2 Cod, Beaver Tail, And Sassafras: Encounters and Exchanges, Old World and New 23

11 Jamaican Pepper or Allspice 26

12 Atlantic Cod 28

13 Pork 30

14 Beaver Tail 32

Recipe: Roast Beaver Tail 34

15 Sassafras 35

16 English Garden Herbs and Vegetables 36

Recipe: Cockaleekie Soup 41

17 Cow's Butter 43

18 Eel 46

Recipe: Old Eel Pie 48

19 Perry 49

20 Turkey 50

Chapter 3 Breakfast with Rum and Tea: From Colonies to Country 55

21 Corn Again! 56

Recipe: Breakfast Hoe Cakes 57

22 Doughnuts, Waffles, and Cookies 59

23 Wheat Flour 61

24 Oxtail Stew 62

Recipe: Oxtail Stew 64

25 Sugar 65

26 Syllabub 67

Recipe: Colonial Syllabub 69

27 Pie 70

Recipe: Shoo Fly Pie 71

28 Rum and Whiskey 74

29 Tea and Coffee 76

30 Green Peas 78

Chapter 4 Roast Turtles and Hangtown Fry: The Rise of a New Nation 81

31 Oysters 82

32 Roast Turtles 84

33 Ice Cream 85

34 Brunswick Stew 86

Recipe: Brunswick Stew 88

35 Cake and the Era of Andrew Jackson 89

Recipe: Election Day Cake 92

36 Spanish California Rabbit Stew 93

Recipe: Rabbit in Chile Sauce 95

37 Hangtown Fry 98

Recipe: Hangtown Fry 99

38 Irish Potatoes 101

39 Mint Juleps 103

Recipe: Classic Mint Julep 105

40 Chitlins 106

Chapter 5 Hardtack and Chop Suey: From the Civil War to the Factory (1860?1875) 109

41 Lincoln's Favorite Cake 110

Recipe: Mary Todd Lincoln's White Almond Cake 112

42 Soldiers' Rations 114

43 Fried Catfish 116

Recipe: Fried Catfish 118

44 The Rise of Thanksgiving 119

45 Railroad Workers and Chop Suey 122

46 Borden's Canned Condensed Milk 124

47 Beer and Pretzels 126

48 Pasta with Red Sauce 131

49 Lunch Pails 134

50 Rhubarb 137

Recipe: Strawberry Rhubarb Pie 139

Chapter 6 Baked Alaska and Barbecue: The Gilded Age, the Gritty Age (1870?1900) 141

51 Baked Alaska 142

Recipe: Modern Baked Alaska 145

52 Oysters Rockefeller 148

53 Beef Tenderloin 150

54 Cold Cereal 152

55 Cracker Jack 156

56 Chicken Paprikash 158

Recipe: Hungarian Chicken Paprikash 160

57 Scrapple 161

Recipe: Scrapple 163

58 Bagels and Bialys 164

59 Celery 167

60 Barbecue 169

Chapter 7 Hot Dogs, Liberty Gardens, and Bathtub Gin: The Progressive Era, World War I, and Prohibition (1900?1928) 173

61 Hot Dogs 174

62 Bananas 177

63 Commercial Canning 180

64 Peanut Butter 183

65 Home Canning and Food Conservation 184

66 Doughboy Rations during World War I 189

Recipe: Red Cross War Coke 191

67 Lace Cookies and Oreos 192

Recipe: Oatmeal Lace Cookies 196

68 Cocktails and the Roaring Twenties 197

Recipe: Gimlet 201

69 Canapés 201

70 Tostadas 203

Chapter 8 Scrambled Eggs, Hershey Bars, and Peach Cobbler: The Great Depression and World War II 205

71 Mulatto Rice 206

Recipe: Mulatto Rice 209

72 WPA Soup 210

Recipe: WPA Soup (Potato Sausage Soup) 212

73 Lamb's Quarters 213

74 Eleanor Roosevelt's Scrambled Eggs 215

75 SPAM 217

76 Meatloaf 219

77 Hershey Bars 220

78 Peach Cobbler 223

79 Navajo Fry Bread 226

80 Frozen Food 229

Chapter 9 Coca-Cola, Iceberg Lettuce, and Fast Food The Postwar, Cold War Era 231

81 Jell-O 232

82 Iceberg Lettuce 234

83 Coca-Cola 236

84 Pizza 239

85 TV Dinners 241

86 Cuban American Food 243

Recipe: Ofelia Braga's Picadillo Criollo 245

87 Jack Kennedy's Fish Chowder 246

Recipe: New England Fish Chowder 248

88 Crème Caramel 249

89 McDonald's 252

90 Southern Fried Chicken 255

Recipe: Southern Buttermilk Fried Chicken 257

Chapter 10 Microwave Popcorn, Mesclun Greens, And Salsa: 1969?2000 259

91 Microwave Popcorn 260

92 Wonder Bread 262

93 Granola 265

94 Mesclun Greens 268

95 Ginger Carrot Soup 270

Recipe: Ginger Carrot Soup 272

96 Quiche 274

97 California Vintage Wine 276

98 American Cheese 279

99 Salsa 284

Recipe: Mango Salsa 286

100 Sushi 287

Epilogue: A Few Extra Bites: American Food Today 289

101 Chili Con Carne 290

Recipe: Firehouse Chili con Carne 292

102 Super Foods and Diets 293

103 Molecularly Modified Foods 297

Notes 301

Photo Credits 315

Index 317

Index of Recipes 329

About The Author 331

Editorial Reviews

"The American Plate is an engagingly readable history of American food." ---Bee Wilson, author of Consider the For

From the Publisher