Hamburgers, frankfurters, pizza, chili, turkey, Cajun, Soul Food—what is “American food” but a series of cultural-ethnic hybrids, a melange of Thanksgivings, mixing the indigenous, the naturalized, and the (serially, successively) imported? Hyphens proliferate: “Chinese” food in the U.S. is really Chinese-American, substantially different from the rich tapestry of foods in China; “Italian” food here echos the varied foods of the Italian peninsula, but actual Italians find it, well, somewhat awkward. Over eight thousand Taco Bells and thirty-eight hundred Chipotles have institutionalized homogenized versions of Tex-Mex/Mexican cuisine across the US and elsewhere.
Folklorist and foodway expert Lucy M. Long edited the two-volume Ethnic American Food Today: A Cultural Encyclopedia (2015) and the follow-up Ethnic American Cooking: Recipes for Living in a New World (2016). The cookbook became more than a collection of recipes. Its introduction argues that it “illustrates the ways in which recipes, like identities, are fluid, adapting to new ingredients, tastes, and circumstances and are adjusted to continue to carry meaning—or perhaps acquire new ones.”
Reflecting on her role in putting together the cookbook, Long writes that as editor, she became aware of her own role in “constructing definitions and boundaries.” As a result, she worked to make the cookbook collaborative, bringing “together a diversity of voices representing not only different culinary cultures but also differing attitudes toward how to present those cultures to the general American public.” She ended up defining her own role as a mediator, working with publisher and contributors, many of whom were found through others mediators.
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The cookbook’s ultimate definition of “ethnic” turned out to broad. It encompassed Native Americans, people the publisher had not initially considered, and those who are now considered so assimilated that they are “‘American’ and not ethnic” at all, like the English.
A recipe’s inclusion was predicated on availability of ingredients in the US. Examples of things therefore not in the cookbook are Scotland’s iconic national dish, haggis, because the USDA prohibits the sale of that essential ingredient, sheep lungs; horse milk, common in Mongolia but largely unknown in the US, which also never took to horse meat; and a Polish classic, duck blood soup. “Exotic” meats like guinea pig (Ecuadorian) and llama (Bolivian) also didn’t make the cut.
The perception of what the larger American public would eat was a constraining factor. Spiciness was frequently toned down, cost was taken into account (there were suggested substitutes for saffron, for instance). There were omissions and substitutions, and also additions: “more salt, sugar, or meat were added than would otherwise be typical.” Long notes that consuming more meat is “a symbolic method for performing Americanness.”
“This presentation of American food as multiple voices could be seen as a project of culinary nationalism: the use of food to construct devotion, emotional attachment, and loyalty to a country.”
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Of course a cookbook attempting to represent every ethnic group in the US must of necessity define such culinary nationalism, not to mention national identity, as multicultural.
“Culinary nationalism” was a term coined in reference to the role of recipes in defining French cuisine. French cuisine in particular has been used as a global cultural/national brand, even a form of “soft diplomacy” (come on, who doesn’t want to be invited to a state dinner at the Élysée Palace?).
“‘Ethnic food’ is an ongoing, dynamic cultural form in which individuals are constantly negotiating between their idealized memories/perceptions of their culture or heritage and their everyday realities in the United States,” writes Long.
Instead of the classic “melting pot” or the newer “salad bowl,” Long argues that the central metaphor of American cooking—and through that culture—is a potluck: everybody brings dishes to share in a collective enterprise, working together to present starters, snacks, mains, and desserts. “Diversity is what makes a potluck work. The same should be true of a nation.”
