p. 66 Many historians consider a smallbook of recipes published by Amelia Simmons in 1796 to be the first American cooker book because it contains American ingredients married to British culinary practices. Simmon’s recipes call for maize (still called Indian meal), pumpkins and cranberries among others. Thomas Hariot, John Smith and William Bradford among the earliest Englishmen in America would have readily taken to these dishes, but other early colonists did so only out of necessity. All spoke of the abundance of native American foods and how well people could fare upon them. Hariot declared that “Indian corn yields 100 London bushels while in England wheat yields 40 … Plus one man can in 24 hours of labor produce enough to last 12 months. .. once maize reached Europe it was destined to be food for poor backcountry folks and food animals.”
p. 67 “Nor was the corn produced in the same way as that used at least y Native peoples of New England. No patches were cut out of nutrient-rich forests, then left to fallow. Instead, corn came to be grown as a commoditized crop in larger cleared fields, sent to powered gristmills and then sold cheaply. Thus was a pattern set for America’s food and the way that it was and is produced.”
p. 239 The overwhelming majority of the millions who streamed into the United States between 1880 and 1920 came from eastern, southern, north and central Europe. Italians, mostly from south of Rome and Sicily, numbered more than 5 million. One-third returned after making enough money to purchase a farm or business back home; some of these food companies then shipped products such as olive oil to America. Two million Jews who fled pogroms and conscription in Russia, Poland, Ukraine and Messarabia found their way to America… some 1.5 million Norwegians, Swedes, Finns and Danes fled poverty and political difficulties to settle in the rural and urban upper Midwest. Greeks, mainly from the poorest upland regions of the Peloponnese, numbered about 400,000 in the same period… some traditional foodways remained within communities. Germans had the most powerful effect on American food from the mid-19th century, as in lager beer, sausage culture, bread, sauerkraut. But if it comes to numbers of dining places, then one might argue for Chinese. in the 21st century there are roughly 41,000 Chinese restaurants in America, a number far outstripping hamburger and mid-level restaurant chains. .. famous for two Americanized dishes, chop suey and chow mien… Around 1890 New Yorkers, especially the ‘Bohemian’ crowd seeking new taste sensations, began going to Chinatown for these bargain dishes. The same happened in other cities such as Chicago, where cheap Chinese eateries opened in the red light district for louche clientele.”
p. 300 Hamburger chains abound., not so with hot dogs. … perhaps it is that from their beginning as street food in the late 19th century, hot dogs have ramified into many regional and local styles, their differences celebrated by local communities and widely noted in the press… the food chain from animals to factory may be in the hands of a relatively few restaurant and processing companies, but absolute hegemony, not the cultural kind at least, does not work.”
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