FOOD IN HISTORY

By Francesca Arniotes

Food is a mirror of trade, conquest and immigration.

America owes its existence to Christopher Columbus’ attempt to find a quicker trade route to southeast Asia and China for spices. In the first millennium BCE, olive oil was introduced to Europe from the eastern Mediterranean. The desire for salt production by the Romans prompted the unparalleled expansion of that empire. In Spain, invasion by Germanic tribes led to sheep farming and the Arabs brought rice, almonds and citrus fruits. Spain then introduced these plus cattle, horses, wheat and grapes to the Americas. The New World sent Europe  tomatoes, potatoes, squash, maize and beans, peanuts, cacao and vanilla. The insatiable appetite for sugar led to the slave trade which brought over seven million Africans to the Caribbean islands and North America. Sugar production replaced the competition in the spice trade. Sugar’s abundance led to the discovery of fruit preservation and played a major role in the Industrial Revolution as workers could labor for long hours on the energy provided by eating sugar. Being presented with unfamiliar ingredients at home or as a settler in a foreign land required either some instruction or lots of imagination. In Europe, potatoes and tomatoes were shunned  as poisonous for centuries before they eventually became synonymous with Irish and Italian cuisine. The Dutch innovated the processing of cacao from the bitter energy drink of the Aztecs into sweet bars of  milk chocolate. Polenta and ratatouille are two signature dishes born of European cooks making New World ingredients their own. 

The food history of North America begins with cod fishing, giving the earliest New Englanders a good start. By contrast, after two previous attempts to settle Virginia failed, the Jamestown settlers survived only through the compassion and generosity of the native people. Although the land was rich in game, berries and fish, the settlers were argumentative, reluctant to work and incompetent with tools. They were found dispersed into Native Americans’ towns, living on handouts, according to reports from English immigrants arriving a few years later in 1607. This new wave of settlers learned from the Native people how to grow maize and how to cook it many ways. They were introduced to the clambake, digging a pit in the sand, lining it with stones which, after being heated, were covered with a layers of seaweed, clams and ears of corn, then covered with wet hides to slowcook a tender and succulent feast. 

From the Caribbean in the early 1600’s there came filtering northward cooking techniques discovered by shipwrecked sailors and runaway slaves. The Spanish had brought pigs and cattle to the islands, which surviving Carib Indians salted and smoked over a frame of green wood, which in Spanish was called barbacoa, now known as barbeque. Famous southern dishes such as hominy grits, succotash and cornpone date back to this time. As plentiful as fish, turtles, oysters, venison and geese were, pork proved to be a new favorite food of the Native Americans and, flourishing despite being prey of the wolves and bears, pigs became so prolific in Virginia that largescale preservation methods were needed. Indeed, Virginia still retains its reputation for producing fine smoked hams.

After the Revolutionary War, when the population of America began to grow and expand with immigration, so did the development of American cuisine. In the late 1700’s the city tables of the established eastern households were set with silver, coffee, white bread, imported cheeses and white sugar. Cookbooks were European until “American Cookery” by Amelia Simmons codified homegrown dishes such as Indian pudding, slapjacks and jonnycake. Poorer farm wives seasoned stews with maple syrup instead of salt, sweetened pies with molasses, cooked cornmeal mush rather than wheat bread. On journeys of westward expansion, butter was made by the jolting of the wagon, bread would proof in the heat of the day to be baked in a hand dug oven. “As American as apple pie” may be the saying, but it is an import that arrived with English immigrants. New settlers were coming from all over Europe, bringing with them their own traditional dishes. Chowder was introduced by the French, named for the kettle it was cooked in, a chaudière. Dutch settlers brought cookies (koekjes), coleslaw and waffles. The new cuisine told stories, as the names of many regional American dishes reflected immmigration, religions, wars, geography and even occupations. Shaker loaf, Kentucky Burgoo, Maryland chicken, beef jerky, ambushed asparagus, snickerdoodles, spoon bread, cowpoke beans, hushpuppies, jambalaya, pandowdy, Boston baked beans, Philadelphia pepper pot, Moravian sugar cake, Swedish meatballs, haymaker’s switch and whaler’s toddy make for fun research.

In 1800’s Philadelphia, visitors enjoyed sauerkraut, sauerbraten and frankfurters. In New Orleans, French specialties enlivened by Spanish and African influences created new traditional dishes.  Southern plantation slaves who, having some rewarding ingredients to work with, created the best of classical French cooking in America even if they themselves had to make do with “soul food” consisting of black eyed peas, turnip tops and ham hocks. In the twentieth century, the new wave of immigrants enriched American food culture with pizza and pasta, and dishes from eastern Europe and Chinese restaurants.  Along the southern border, Tex-Mex rules. Pho is everywhere, a gracious gift from a bitter chapter. America’s cuisine is a mirror of her diversity, her table is laid with history, and she requests the pleasure of your company.