IF ONLY THE PILGRIMS HAD BEEN ITALIAN
Craughwell, Thomas J.
1 8 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 WOULD BE WILLING tobetseriousmoneythatrightnow in your kitchen you have olive oil, garlic, pasta, parmesan cheese, and dried...
...She bought a loin of beef and prepared it the way her Irish-born mother always had--by boiling it until it was well done...
...Shaker chefs also discovered that a cup or two of vegetable stock went a long way to enriching the flavor of gravy and sauces...
...Food folklore tells us that throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, Saturday night was baked beans night in Boston...
...I wish I could dismiss this as slander, but I am afraid that our ancestors did indeed boil everything from loins of beef to the turkeys that were served at the first Thanksgiving...
...It was not until the late 19th century, when the new American millionaires began importing French chefs to serve in their kitchens, that French cuisine gained some ground in the United States...
...William Henry Harrison's supporters managed to convince voters that their man was just ordinary folks, content to live in a log cabin, eat his corn mush, and wash it down with old-fashioned hard cider...
...As late as 1796, when the first American cookbook was published in Hartford, Connecticut, author Amelia Simmons declared, "Garlicks, tho' used by the French, are better adapted totheusesofmedicinethancookery...
...Here was the birthplace of the first sauerbraten in America...
...How times change...
...The Chinese gave us stir-fry, sticky rice, and dim sum...
...Alas!Itwasnotalwaysthus.Americancuisine,like BY THOMAS J. CRAUGHWELL IWhy aren't we having lobster for Thanksgiving...
...the cradle of coleslaw;thespotwhereforthefirsttimeboiledpotatoes were tossed in a warm, savory dressing of fried bacon, white vinegar, and mustard...
...AndthenthereisBostonbakedbeans,aYankeestaple that marks the only occasion in American history when the Puritans actually improved upon an existing recipe...
...Thomas J. Craughwell writes and cooks in Bethel, Connecticut...
...In other words, during their first four years in America the Pilgrims were withoutbutter,cheese,milk,andcream.Theirneighbors to the south, the Dutch on the island of Manhattan,movedmuchmorequicklytobringdiary products to America...
...As for clams and mussels, the Pilgrims fed them to their pigs...
...For all the hide-bound conservatism of Yankee cooks, they did manage to whip up some pretty tasty dishes...
...The Japanese taught us to love sushi, sashimi, and tempura...
...The first settlers learned how to bake beans from the New England Indian tribes who mixedbeanswithmaplesyrupinanearthenwarepot, addedalargepieceoffattybearmeat,thensetthepot inapitlinedwithhotstonestobakeforseveralhours...
...1 8 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 WOULD BE WILLING tobetseriousmoneythatrightnow in your kitchen you have olive oil, garlic, pasta, parmesan cheese, and dried basil (maybe even fresh basil...
...It was the Shakers who first taught American cooks to undercook vegetables...
...Blame it on our English and ScotchIrish ancestors...
...And via our friends the Turks and the Armenians,comesummer,shishkebabisaslikelyto appear on a Yankee grill as hot dogs...
...The Italians brought us the good stuffImentionedatthestartofthisarticle.Fromthe Dutch we learned how to make waffles and donuts...
...Barely a year after the Dutch established the New Amsterdam colony, the first huddled mass of Holsteins came ashore at what is now New York City's Battery Park...
...It's commonplace to say that the United States is a nation of immigrants, and each group that came to America brought its own gifts...
...If vegetables appearedonthetable,theywereboiledbeyondrecognition...
...They're ingredients we take for granted...
...I knew a Michigan woman who shortly after her wedding day in the late 1940s invited her in-laws over for dinner...
...In fact, all classes of Americans were suspicious--even hostile--when confronted with fancified food...
...Cookbooks emphasized simplicity and frugality, not meals that brought a succession of interesting flavors to the table...
...By the 1830s, a large majority of Americans had begun to see their plain food as a virtue...
...Especially if you take it out of the oven when it'smediumrare...
...I F O N L Y T H E P I L G R I M S H A D B E E N I T A L I A N 2 0 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R N O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 Cookbooksemphasizedsimplicity andfrugality,notmealsthat broughtasuccessionof interestingflavorstothetable...
...The smear worked, and the gourmandizing Van Buren lost the election...
...While helping with the dishes afterthemealwasdone,thenewhomemaker'smother-in-lawconfided,"WhenIwasfirstmarriedIboiled beef,too.Buttrustme,dear,beefismuchtastierifyou roast it...
...Under the influence of the newcomers English and Scotch-Irish cooks added some German recipes to their repertoire, but by and large they clung to their classic overcooked, under-seasoned,overlysweetenedfare...
...But their appearance in our kitchens is a relatively recent phenomenon...
...The culinary situation in colonial America improved somewhat when the first German colonists arrivedin1683.Ifthereisn'tacommemorativeplaque at the site of that little settlement at Germantown, Pennsylvania, there ought to be...
...These days, the only thing that could make a Yankee recoil from lobster is the price...
...As a people they possessed many admirable qualities...
...Believe me, those big-flavor items did not come over on the Mayflower...
...But the Pilgrims wanted meat, not fish--notevenfishassucculentaslobster.Veryquickly familiarity bred contempt: The better class of colonists scorned the crustacean as suitable only for the poor...
...Yankee self-sufficiencymayhavecomeashoreatPlymouthRock,buttasty food arrived by way of Ellis Island...
...When our French allies arrived in America to support our Revolution, they brought their flair for cuisine with them...
...I don't mean to overstate my case...
...New Englandclamchowdermaynotsoundassophisticated as bouillabaisse, but it is delicious nonetheless...
...From Eastern Europe, Jewish immigrants brought us the bagel, cheesecake, and world-class chicken soup...
...the upper classes in America held fast to the British Isles style of cooking...
...When the Pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts in 1620, lobsters were so common all you had to do was stroll down to the nearest tidal pool and pluck them out by the bushel...
...As if this prejudice against seafood weren't enough, early Yankee cuisine suffered from a severe disadvantage: The Pilgrims had brought no livestock with them...
...Then there are vegetables: Yankees didn't like them.TheYankeeideaofafinemealwasseveralvariN O V E M B E R 2 0 0 7 T H E A M E R I C A N S P E C T A T O R 1 9 During their first four years in America the Pilgrims were without butter, cheese, milk, and cream...
...But they had their reasons...
...They even adopted that American staple, corn mush sweetened with molasses, but they improved on the American recipe byaddingashotofcognacandtoppingthemushwith whippedcream.Itsoundslikeapromisingbeginning, but sad to say the French alliance had no lasting impact on Yankee cuisine...
...It's impossible to say whether the story is 100 percent accurate, but it is true that baked beans appear in the oldest Yankee cookbooks...
...It took generations, even centuries, for Americans to expand their culinary horizons to the point where just about everybody cooks Italian and orders Chinese take-out...
...ULTIMATELY, IT WAS IMMIGRATION that proved to be the making of contemporary Yankee cuisine...
...In his journal for the year 1622, William Bradford,governorofthePlymouthcolony,recorded the landing of a boatload of new colonists from England...
...Plain cuisine even became an issue in the presidential campaign of 1836...
...Although George Washington employed a French chef and Thomas Jefferson enjoyed French recipeshehadcollectedinParis,theyweretheexception...
...It is not going toofartosaythatfoodthattastedgoodarrivedinAmerica with the Germans...
...YANKEES ARE OFTEN DERIDED forboilingperfectly good meat...
...Thefirstcattle--threecowsandabull--didnotarrive in Massachusetts until 1624...
...Nothing exotic there, right...
...Infact,theEnglishsettlerslookeduponvirtually all fish (sturgeon and oysters being the exceptions) with scorn--and this in a land where the shoreline and coastal rivers were teeming with salmon, cod, flounder, shad, haddock, and sea bass...
...The American Revolution was a hope-filled era, and not just in terms of politics...
...Roasting meat over an open fire took hours, requiring someone to stand thereandturnthespit.Adultsweretoobusytodothe job, and it was hard to dragoon the children into spending three monotonous hours sweltering over a hot fire...
...eties of meat, a heaping basket of wheat bread, followed by lots of sweets for dessert...
...This sad desecration hung on among Americans ofBritishandIrishdescentwellintothe20thcentury...
...they were tough, they were independent,someofthemcouldread.Yettheoriginalsettlers of the American colonies were not famous for theirdiscerningpalate.Letmegiveyouanexample...
...If Only the Pilgrims Had Been Italian If Only the Had Been the settlements at Jamestown and Plymouth, got off to a rocky start...
...The colonists preferred molasses as a sweetener, and replaced the strong, nasty tasting bear meat with saltpork.TheresultwasaNewEnglandclassicthatis especially associated with Boston...
...Thanks to the Hungarians paprika appears in the spice rack of every Yankee kitchen...
...Their arrival was a thrilling event, yet Bradford confessed that he and his fellow Plymouth residentswerehumiliatedthattheyhadnothingbetter to offer the newcomers than lobster...
...Martin Van Buren, on the other hand, was portrayed as a foppish, Frenchified, unAmerican snob who sipped champagne from a silver goblet and liked to begin his meals with consomme...
...The simplest solution was to plunk the meat in the boiling pot and walk away...
...They took to roasting American turkey, although they added truffles to the stuffing...
...Heck, the supermarket in my little Connecticut hometown even has a sushi bar...
...Onereadssuch a statement and sighs heavily...
Vol. 40 • November 2007 • No. 9
