HOMEMADE FOOD HOMOGENEITY

226 CHAPTER 21 HOMEMADE FOOD HOMOGENEITY Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are. Brillat Savarin – Physiologie du Goût A man accustomed to American food and American domestic cookery would not starve to death suddenly in Europe; but I think that he would waste away and eventually die. Mark Twain – A Tramp Abroad AMERICA’S HEAD START in food globalization was a function of industrialized agriculture – and the concomitant growth of a large indus- trial agribusiness – both serious components of the Industrial Revolu- tion. 1 The production of labor-saving machinery for the farm was given something of a fi llip early on by the Gold Rush. After 1848, hired help deserted farms to head west, and thousands of farmers replaced their workers with the new McCormick reaper. Following this, industrialized agriculture began the inexorably painful process of replacing family farming. By the beginning of the twentieth cen- tury, the introduction of many more such labor-saving machines (with the tractor just a decade away) had already halved the number of individuals depending on the land for a living. Despite a shrinking farm labor force, however, millions of additional acres were brought under cultivation, and American farmers were industriously adding to the nation’s abundance at a time when the threat of famine hung over Europe – such food shortages Homemade Food Homogeneity 227 just one more factor helping to evict those who became immigrants to the United States. Between 1839 and 1909, American wheat production increased eight times as the center of the nation’s agricultural production moved some 800 miles westward from Wheeling, West Virginia, to the Iowa/Nebraska borderlands. 2 Such food production was crucial in feeding not only the new immigrants from abroad but the other new migrants as well – ex-farmers chased off their lands to become urban laborers. 3 But even those who remained on the land to produce national abun- dance did not prosper; rather, they were increasingly beset by a range of diffi culties from low farm prices, disproportionately high taxes, and railroad shipping costs to governmental policies of high tariffs and defl ation. Such grievances led to a the formation of the Populist Party, but the country’s only agrarian revolt faded in the face of a lost election, a collapse of the Populist-Democrat coalition, the distraction posed by war with Spain and, perhaps most importantly, a new fi n de siècle prosperity for agriculture as well as for much of the nation. Other agrarian revolts in much of the world effectively preserved small holdings, (which reinforced ethnic cuisines). America’s revolt, which was barely a whimper, did not. The twentieth century dawned with 60 percent of the world’s shipping done in steamships and, with more effi cient transportation, other countries began relying on the United States for cheap grain. Yet, if the Europeans were impressed with American food productivity, they were less impressed with what Americans did with (and to) their foods. Some Americans were also unhappy with American cuisine, beginning a long tradition of poking fun at U.S. foods and foodways. In large part this was the result of a British culinary heritage that Americans were thought to have diffi culty shedding. 4 And there is no question that, like the cuisine of the British, that of America suffered qualitative, although not quantitative, diffi culties. In 1923, vita- min discoverer Elmer McCollum estimated that 90 percent of the diet of most Americans consisted of white bread, butter, meat, potatoes, coffee, and sugar. 5 At about the same time a food commentator complained that “American cookery lags the very last of our arts” and called for Americans to jettison their “Puritan stomachs” as well as their “Puritan minds.” 6 The ensuing dietary educational campaign took place in an atmosphere of increasing vitamin awareness that signifi cantly raised public consciousness about the importance of a varied diet that included more in the way of fruits and vegetables. 7 Yet, half a century later, food historians Waverly Root and 228 A Movable Feast Richard de Rochemont once again chided Americans for rejecting “ . . . any foods incorrigibly foreign to the eating habits imported from the British Isles” and criticized America for not being a “culinary melting pot.” 8 At fi rst blush these charges seem silly. Throughout the century, diets had improved and many Americans had searched restlessly for novelty in cuisine. The middle and upper classes had long served fruit for breakfast and had experimented with salads and sandwiches at lunch or dinnertime, depending on when the family took its lighter meal: the Caesar salad was invented in the 1920s, the Cobb salad in 1937, and the club sandwich was known as early as 1899. Nor were foreign food eschewed, including mayon- naise, carried to France by a naval offi cer battling Britain near the the port of Mahon in Minorca (hence it was known at fi rst as Mahonaise) in the eigh- teenth century, and made popular in America by Richard Hellman in the early twentieth century. Casseroles for the heavier meal were inspired by immigrant Italians, Greeks, and Hungarians – this despite a brief attempt by the New England Kitchen and other programs to teach immigrants to cook “Yankee-style” as a part of their assimilation. 9 What happened instead was that dishes like spaghetti with meat sauce or meat balls became American favorites, as did macaroni with meat or cheese and chop suey. 10 Moreover, following World War II, Americans had adopted foreign food infl uences with a vengeance, as refl ected in a spate of cookbooks, the appearance of magazines like Gourmet, and the countless contributions of Mexicans, Germans, Scandinavians, Italians, Greeks, Slavs, Chinese, and Japanese to what was becoming an American fusion cuisine. By contrast, the countries with which America’s foodways were unfavorably contrast- ed, such as Germany, Italy, and, especially France, had cuisines that varied by region, to be sure, but were hardly experimental. Rather, they were conservative regional cuisines that eschewed “foreign” foods. 11 Food critics, of course, seldom see eye to eye, and while Root and de Rochemont were lambasting Americans for their hopelessly “British” tastes in the decade of the 1970s, food critic John Hess and food historian Karen Hess leveled the contradictory charge that Americans were caught up in a “gourmet plague” – a quest for the fancy, the foreign, the elegant – that had consigned “good food in America” to “little more than a memory and a hope.” 12 The Hesses then were blaming foreign infl uences and food homog- enization for a decline in America’s culinary standard of living, but despite an obvious polarity, the two sets of authors may have been driving at the same points. Homemade Food Homogeneity 229 If we substitute “food globalization” for phrases like “culinary melt- ing pot” or “food homogenization” it becomes clear that one set of critics deplored that it had not been achieved, whereas the other was upset that it had. But their angst ran deeper. Both were troubled by the “American- ization,” of foreign foods as foreign dishes were modifi ed to fi t American tastes. And at an even deeper level, both had a problem with the technol- ogy that has facilitated such food Americanization. It is probably wise at this point to deal briefl y with the concept of “melting pots.” When Root and de Rochemont used the term “culi- nary melting pot,” the reference was to America as a melting pot of peoples and cultures – a cherished American myth, but a myth none- theless. Immigrants were not asked to make cultural contributions to their adopted land; rather, during an age of intense nationalism, they were expected to transmute themselves culturally into Americans by jettisoning their language in favor of English and obeying Anglo-Saxon, not Roman, law. Their children, in particular, were forced by a homog- enizing public school system to surrender, not contribute, their cultural distinctiveness. Similarly, as syndicated columnist, TV host, and noted cookbook writer James Beard astutely observed, foreign dishes, like immigrants, were (and are) transmuted to an American model. In his words “ . . . very few foreign dishes survive in their pure form when they become nationally popular; they take on the stamp of the American kitchen so quickly that in many cases they cease to be exotic and are accepted as casually as a plate of ham and eggs.” 13 It was this “stamp” of the American kitchen that both sets of critics objected to – a stamp that includes signifi cant technological input, which was also deplored. The just mentioned ham now comes from pigs bred to be lean; the eggs from huge automated egg factories; and when under- girded by an English muffi n and topped with hollandaise sauce, the ham and eggs are transformed into “Eggs Benedict.” This is a dish widely viewed as sophisticated and assumed to be foreign (although it probably originat- ed in Manhattan’s old Delmonico’s restaurant), but one that has become “casually accepted.” No Parisian would recognize the Creole cuisine of New Orleans as “French” food any more that someone from Japan would feel at home in an American Japanese steak house; nor would an Italian be immedi- ately comfortable with an American pizza. Much of the “Americanization” 230 A Movable Feast process has been a function of American abundance, the addition of great amounts of animal protein to foreign dishes, particularly since the begin- ning of what Look Magazine in 1954 called the “Protein Era.” Americans embraced Russian foods like kebabs and Beef Stroganov (named after the Russian Count Pavel Stroganov), which most Russians seldom tasted. They did the same with the English Beef Wellington (the name honoring Arthur Wellesley, the Duke of Wellington); and great amounts of meat were added to Chinese dishes that were low in protein when they fi rst crossed the nation with Chinese railroad workers. American pizzas have been loaded with so much meat and cheese that visiting Europeans rou- tinely complain about them. But none of this means that America was not, and is not, in the forefront of food globalization or that Americans are still chained to English tastes, if they ever were outside of New England. With food globalization, it is the foreign infl uence compelling the adoption of new foods and the ways of preparing them that matters, and not the dish that Americanization ulti- mately molds. Moreover, the critics notwithstanding, Americans are hardly afraid of foreign foods. To be a bit facetious, witness the hot dog and the hamburger, which despite their German ancestry are, along with French fries, still in the fast lane of the fast food revolution. And certainly names such as “Swiss steak,” “French,” “Italian,” and “Russian” dressings, “negimaki,” “cioppino,” “tetrazzini,” “vichyssoise,” even “Cornish game hen” – all indi- cating a foreign origin for what are actually American inventions – are not suggestive of an aversion to things foreign. Rather, despite their American origin, such dishes came into being exactly because they were perceived to be foreign. The process of adopting foreign dishes for American adaptations is a complicated one that has much to do with exposure. And that exposure generally begins in the restaurants. RESTAURANTS We may live without friends; we may live without books; but civilized man cannot live without cooks. (Owen Meridith) The homogenization of foreign food infl uences was well underway in New York City “restaurants” (French for “restore” – in this case, the din- ers’ strength) before the nineteenth century had run its course where Homemade Food Homogeneity 231 Service à la Russe, (meals served in courses of individual dishes), popular in Victorian England had fi nally caught on. But the predominant infl uence was French, and Lorenzo Delmonico was the most infl uential of the French restauranteurs. At the time of his death in 1881, it was said that Delmonico’s restaurant – founded in 1825 – had, in several subsequent locations, hosted every president from Jackson to Garfi eld, as well as a stream of foreign dig- nitaries. The restaurant helped to popularize green undercooked vegetables and salads, and despite its French food orientation, is credited as the fi rst in the United States to feature the “hamburger steak.” 14 Delmonico’s was an establishment where the rich brought their edu- cated tastes. Many of them had seen something of the world and its various cuisines, and such individuals are often in the gourmand vanguard. Dorés, which began business in 1862, was Delmonico’s only serious rival until Sherry’s opened its doors in 1891. Most other restaurants in the city at the time served more pedestrian fare. Sweet’s, for example, located close to the Fulton Fish Market, featured chowders, fresh fi sh, and shellfi sh whereas Cavanaugh’s specialized in oysters, lobster, crabmeat, and turtle steak, as well as roast beef and fi let mignon. Diners also went to Keen’s English Chop House (founded in 1885 and still in existence) for thick mutton chops; to Lüchow’s or Luger’s in Brooklyn for German wiener schnitzel and hasenpfeffer, and, after 1902, to Angelo’s in Little Italy for osso buco, risotto, and a score of other Italian dishes. New York had hundreds more restaurants to choose from, including neighborhood ethnic eateries, among them numerous Chinese restaurants. But so did many other American cities and towns. By the 1880s, virtually every major one in America had Chinese restaurants. Caucasian palettes found chop suey, chow mein, egg rolls, and egg foo yong acceptable, and no wonder. Most of these dishes, although infl uenced by Chinese cookery were, in fact, American in origin. Another cuisine that became a part of the New York dining scene early on catered to Jews, many of whom were among the new arrivals from Eastern Europe. Delicatessens were established to accommodate those who kept Jewish dietary laws, which prohibited cooking on the Sabbath. The highly spiced delicatessen meats along with chicken soup, borscht, gefi lte fi sh, smoked fi sh, beef briskets, breakfast beef, unleavened bread, dark rye bread, and complex kosher dishes also appealed to gentiles. By the turn of the twentieth century, kosher foods had become an industry, turned out by fi rms such as Manischewitz in Cincinnati and Hebrew National Foods of 232 A Movable Feast New York City. And by the end of World War I, Ratner’s restaurant in New York had become famous for its Jewish cuisine. 15 In New York during the early decades of the twentieth century, a plethora of restaurants serving ethnic foods to the rich and famous started business, and in 1911 the renowned French chef Auguste Escoffi er arrived to take charge of the kitchen for the opening of the new Ritz Carlton hotel. Seven years later Louis Diat, the French chef who stayed on to run that kitchen, invented vichyssoise, which became another American dish with a foreign name. 16 Mama Leone’s was established in 1915, and Sardi’s Restaurant followed in 1922, both specializing in Italian-American foods. L’Aiglon opened in 1919 to serve both French and Italian dishes, and Lindy’s, aiming at the sweet tooth with crullers and cheesecake, began business in 1922. On the opposite coast, foreign food infl uences were ushered into San Francisco by the gold rush. In 1849, the nation’s fi rst recorded Chinese restaurant, Macao and Woosung, opened its doors, followed in 1850 by the Poulet d’Or – fi rst a saloon but soon an elegant French restaurant. Jack’s began business in 1864 with jackrabbits on the menu, along with English mutton chops and royal kidneys. San Francisco’s Far East Café was established to continue the city’s offering of Cantonese-American dishes in the twentieth century at about the same time that California’s Nut Tree Restaurant began serving Chinese and Mexican dishes. By the 1950s, thanks to James Mitchner’s Tales of the South Pacifi c, the musical South Pacifi c, and the Kon-Tiki expedition, the South Seas were big news in California, and establishments like Hollywood’s Don the Beachcomber and San Francisco’s Trader Vic’s led the way in a leap from Cantonese- American to fusion cuisine. Early restaurants in New Orleans dished up that city’s version of French cuisine. Antoine’s opened its doors in 1840 with specialties such as Oysters en Brochette and Chicken Rochambeau (and after 1899, Oysters Rock- efeller, so named because they were so rich). Commander’s Palace opened in 1880, Galatoire’s in 1905, and Arnaud’s in 1919, and all three remain vigorous competitors. An exception to the New Orleans Creole focus was Kolb’s, an elaborate German restaurant established in 1909. The Volstead Act of 1919 prescribed Prohibition which began the fol- lowing year with a funeral for John Barleycorn, presided over by none other than the Reverend Billy Sunday. 17 The law against alcohol was hard on the upscale restaurant business, and Delmonico’s, its most famous fatality, closed in 1923 after 96 years. Perhaps this folding was premature Homemade Food Homogeneity 233 because opposition to Prohibition was mounting and just a couple of years later Collier’s became the fi rst major magazine to demand an end to it. After this that end seemed only a matter of time. This emboldened some entrepreneurs to open ethnic restaurants in cit- ies other than New York before the 13 years, 10 months, 19 days, 17 hours, and 32 minutes of Prohibition had run their course. The doors of one of these, Haussner’s in Baltimore, swung open in 1926 to serve German and Hungarian specialties like sauerbraten, goulash, and spätzle, and the fol- lowing year Lender’s Bagel Bakery was founded in New Haven, Connecti- cut. In Los Angeles, Les Frères Taix dished up French cuisine in 1928, and following the end of the “great experiment,” Don the Beachcomber served Hawaiian specialties on Hollywood Boulevard in the middle of the Great Depression. In nearby Beverly Hills, Dave Chasen’s began as a chilli parlor in 1936, and in Chicago the Pump Room, with its European and South Asian cuisine, opened in 1938 PREPARED FOODS, FROZEN FOODS, FAST FOODS, AND SUPERMARKETS For the hoi polloi, however, exposure to new cuisines came not from expen- sive restaurants but from Mason jars and tin cans. Hammers and chisels were the tools for can opening prior to 1865, after which thinner steel made the job a little easier. It got much easier and cleaner after can-top rims inspired the invention of the can opener (patented in 1870) that sub- stituted a cutting wheel for the hand tools. 18 Life became more pleasant for the housewife, canned foods increased in popularity, and technological improvements transformed the canning industry. At fi rst the canning concentration was on American foods. Baked beans had been a virtual monopoly of New England – but no longer after B&M Baked Beans were fi rst canned in 1875. Corned beef was canned in 1885 by Libby, McNeill, and Libby, and after 1890, the meat was more accessi- ble thanks to “a key opening device for rectangular cans.” 19 Residence near maple trees was no longer a requirement for enjoying maple syrup after 1887, when cans of Log Cabin Syrup were available (a blend of maple and cane syrups). But “foreign” foods also began to fi nd their way into cans. In 1887, Franco-American began canning frankly “Americanized” spaghetti, and in 1911 chilli con carne and tamales were canned for the fi rst time in San 234 A Movable Feast Antonio. Pineapple, an exotic fruit for North Americans despite its New World beginnings, was tasted for the fi rst time by many in 1902 as James D. Dole’s Hawaiian Pineapple Company began operation; pineapple juice from Dole followed in 1933. Libby, McNeill, and Libby began marketing canned sauerkraut in 1904, and in 1907 bottled A-1 Sauce was introduced from England. Contadina tomato sauce was available in cans at the end of World War I, at the same time that Old El Paso brand Mexican foods started operation to develop a line of refried beans and sauces. In the late 1920s, Progresso Foods in New Orleans was importing Sicilian olive oil and soon expanded to produce tomato sauce, marinated artichoke hearts, and pignoli. 20 In 1932, a Mexican recipe for tortilla fritas was turned into Frito Corn Chips in San Antonio, Texas, and Goya Foods (established in 1936) actively promoted Hispanic foods and ultimately distributed some 750 items. The year 1937 saw more “Italian” offerings with the appearance of the Kraft Macaroni and Cheese Dinner and Ragú spaghetti sauce. La Choy fi rst canned bean sprouts in 1920, although chop suey and chow mein had to await the establishment of the Chun King Corporation in 1947 to fi nd a home in a can. One reason for the increasing availability of “foreign” canned foods was the increasing shelf space in the food markets. In 1916, the year that Piggly Wiggly of Memphis became the nation’s fi rst full service supermarket, U.S. grocery stores carried about 600 items; the supermarkets of the late 1930s and early 1940s offered several thousand. Paradoxically, supermarkets were mostly launched during the depression years of the 1930s. The venerable Great Atlantic and Pacifi c Tea Company ( A&P) founded in 1869 had no supermarket outlets until competition from Kroger, Safeway, Publix, Pig- gly Wiggly, and Big Bear forced Charles Merrill (controlling stockholder of A&P and later, founder of Merrill Lynch) to begin in 1937 to open them in wholesale fashion. Not coincidentally, this was the same year that the shopping cart was invented. Behind the supermarket excitement of the 1930s lay a good number of food globalizing technological advances. The opening of the Panama Canal in 1914, just as World War I got underway in Europe, meant that fresh agricultural produce and wines from California were now only 20 days away from Eastern U.S. markets. Another canal, this one the Houston Ship Canal, was also opened to traffi c in 1914 – its 50 miles of waterway making that city a deep-water port and a major shipper of U.S. grain. 21 And 1914 Homemade Food Homogeneity 235 was the year that frozen foods had their commercial beginning as Clarence “Bob” Birdseye pioneered in freezing fi sh. After further experimentation with frozen foods, in 1924 Birdseye became one of the founders of the General Seafoods Company, which sold frozen fi sh fi llets. Then, in 1929, General Seafoods merged with Postum Company to become General Foods, which marketed other frozen foods besides fi sh under the Birdseye label. At fi rst, these were mostly vegetables and fruits (including juices) that looked and tasted better than those from a can, and they were convenient. Like their canned predecessors, they eliminated problems of seasonal avail- ability. During the early years of frozen foods, many took their purchases home, thawed them, and ate them the same day. But by mid-century, some 90 percent of urban homes and 80 percent of farm households had mechanical refrigeration so that families were able to refrigerate foods and maintain those that were frozen. Swanson’s, building on experience gained in shipping foods to the troops during the war, began experimenting in 1945 with frozen poultry, and a decade later was producing frozen individual whole meals. These were espe- cially welcomed by women entering the workforce and by mothers with baby boom offspring. As televisions were added to living rooms, so were TV trays, introduced in 1953. 22 The fi rst Swanson “ TV dinner” debuted the following year. It was turkey with cornbread dressing, sweet potatoes and buttered peas – an all-American dinner – but choices soon came to include “foreign” foods such as beef goulash and chicken cacciatore, along with a plethora of pizzas. A couple of decades later the microwave oven came along to deal with frozen foods and, like the latter, revolutionized food processing. By 1988, U.S. food processors had introduced 962 microwavable products and some 90 percent of American homes had a microwave oven. 23 To satisfy a growing American taste for the exotic was also a mission of the fast food industry. True, its beginnings were in marketing the (by now) “American” hamburger, later joined in the 1950s by “all American” fried chicken as the fast food industry took off. But Lum’s, with its frankfurt- ers steamed in beer and sauerkraut, was also born in the 1950s, and pizza parlors spearheaded by Pizza Hut, Little Caesar’s, and Domino’s spread across the country. In the 1960s, Taco Bell marketed its Tex-Mex cuisine; the Golden Wok and Teriyaki Express did the same with Asian food; and Au Bon Pain was created as a chain of French-style bakery-cafes. El Pollo Loco joined the “foreign” fast food list in the 1970s. 24 [...]... foreign foods increasingly interesting, they began paying some attention to food critics, television cooks with 100 megawatt personalities, and cooking magazines and cookbook writers who were introducing variations on French, Chinese, and Italian foods to sophisticated cooks and beginners alike Their next step was to move beyond these to unveil a window on foods the world over, and window-shopping these foods... vegetables to Old El Paso products, while their freezer sections house a United Nations of ethnic foods from Eastern European pirogies to Italian polenta and, of course, the ubiquitous pizza And today those dining outside the home can find foreign foods for almost any budget Indeed, it is hard to avoid foreign foods even if one so desired For although there are plenty of French, Italian, Greek, German,... Greek, German, Polynesian, Chinese, and Japanese restaurants, there are relatively few that call themselves “American” restaurants, although chains such as Cracker Barrel and Bob Evans clearly are Homemade Food Homogeneity 237 ... contention that will not be gnawed on here Suffice it to say that the war exposed millions of Americans to foods in foreign lands, and the successive waves of service men and women who followed the World War II generation also gained culinary experience in Europe and Asia, returning home with tastes of exotic foods fresh in their mouths So did millions of American tourists, especially during the foreign travel... become a breeze with the Internet Dominating this early food consciousness-raising were culinary giants James Beard (who operated cooking schools and authored twenty-two cookbooks) and Julia Child (pioneer hostess of Boston’s public television cooking show The French Chef in the early 1960s) In 1969 and 1970 alone, best-selling cookbooks focused on the foods of France, the British Isles, the Caribbean Islands,... and following the Immigration Act of 1965 (which took effect in 1968) millions of immigrants from a range of locations from China to the Caribbean, and from the Middle East to Mexico, brought still more foodways to America.26 No longer did Fannie Merritt Farmer’s 1896 Boston Cooking-School Cook Book rule the kitchen, although it had sold over 3 million copies in the United States alone; nor did The Joy... France, the British Isles, the Caribbean Islands, Germany, Spain and Portugal, China, Russia, and Japan.27 Such efforts nurtured a growing cosmopolitism, making Americans ever more receptive to foreign food influences and initiating a surging globalization of the American diet that shows no permanent sign of abating despite the chilling events of September 11 To be sure they temporarily dampened the nation’s . the same points. Homemade Food Homogeneity 229 If we substitute food globalization” for phrases like “culinary melt- ing pot” or food homogenization”. at a time when the threat of famine hung over Europe – such food shortages Homemade Food Homogeneity 227 just one more factor helping to evict those who