Posted on 12/06/2016 10:33:08 PM PST by nickcarraway
Sarah Lohman has made everything from colonial-era cocktails to cakes with black pepper to stewed moose face. She is a historical gastronomist, which means she re-creates historical recipes to connect with the past.
That moose-face recipe dates back to the 19th century, and it wasn't easy. She recalls spending hours trying to butcher the moose from Alaska in her kitchen in Queens, New York. She tried scalding the face in hot water to remove the fur, but it didn't quite work and her apartment stunk of wet moose.
But "at the end of the day, people showed up and ate it, someone actually liked it, and then we ordered a pizza," she says.
Spurred by her friends' enthusiasm, she started a blog. "Every time I made something, a conversation would start. It was just this gateway ... as soon as they were eating, they were asking questions," she says. "They loved the good recipes and the schadenfreude of the bad ones."
Lohman's work got her wondering about the flavors that represent American cuisine and where they came from. That's the subject of her new book, Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine.
"Chili powder spread across the country because of entrepreneurial Texan-Mexican women who fed soldiers and tourists, and a clever German immigrant who was looking for a culinary shortcut," Lohman writes. Peter Van Hyning She made a list of common flavors from many historical cookbooks, and used Google's Ngram viewer to count how often the various flavors were mentioned in American books from 1796 to 2000. Eight popular and enduring flavors emerged: black pepper, vanilla, curry powder, chili powder, soy sauce, garlic, MSG and Sriracha.
"I didn't so much choose the flavors that appear in this book, as discover them," Lohman writes.
Researching the book "really upended my idea of these flavors that always stood on the shelf in my kitchen," she says. "I would always pick up a pepper grinder or a bottle of vanilla extract and would never think about what it was and where it came from."
Many historical recipes don't exactly work now — like one for black pepper cake from Martha Washington. Lohman says the original recipe is "really gross" because it used as much ground spice as flour.
She reworked it for our modern tastes, and says more people should be open to adapting recipes to taste rather than following instructions to the letter.
"I find when I'm teaching cooking classes ... my students are often afraid of doing something so massively wrong in the process of cooking that will be irrecoverable that they don't even try in the first place," she says. "I would love to get back to a world where we can be a little bit more relaxed and confident in the kitchen."
But Lohman quickly discovered there was much more than translating historic recipes for modern use: "I didn't realize I was going to be telling the story of disenfranchised people in America throughout history."
She says food study "wasn't really seen as a real way of looking at society and culture" until recently, because it's mostly a history of women, slaves and immigrants — "the people that have been cooking for the people that have been enfranchised for the past 200 years."
She hopes the book is "a successful ode to these people that have affected our history in this country just as much as the establishment, but up till this point, have not gotten the attention they deserved."
For instance, "vanilla is here thanks to a 12-year-old slave who figured out a botanical secret no one else knew. Chili powder spread across the country because of entrepreneurial Texan-Mexican women who fed soldiers and tourists — and a clever German immigrant who was looking for a culinary shortcut," she writes.
Slave Edmond Albius and a vanilla plant: "Vanilla is here thanks to a 12-year-old slave who figured out a botanical secret no one else knew," Lohman writes.
One story that stands out to her is the creation of Sriracha, which, according to the book, has "seen a meteoric rise in popularity" since its debut in 1980. Lohman notes sales of bottled Sriracha exceeded $60 million in 2014.
She calls it a "quintessentially American story" — founder David Tran is ethnically Chinese, but he is also a Vietnamese refugee. He combined elements of French and Thai cuisine, using peppers grown on a farm north of Los Angeles to make a hot sauce produced entirely in Southern California.
After the Vietnam War ended, the new government systematically targeted and forcibly expelled ethnic Chinese from the country, while charging each person $11,500 for the "privilege" of leaving. Tran, along with his immediate family and more than 3,000 refugees, boarded a Panamanian freighter called the Huey Fong.
After arriving in the U.S., Tran needed to support his family. He was a hot-sauce maker in Vietnam, so he decided to try that in his new home. Now Tran's company is called Huy Fong Foods.
"This ... says immigrants are our culture; they are who we are," Lohman says. "We have to broaden our idea of what an American is."
She points out the Italians, who brought us garlic, were initially "considered a separate race of people that were damaging to the climate of our country."
She says that attitude is still playing out today.
"Food is something that is often accepted in this country before we accept the immigrants themselves. ... We happily buy hummus in our grocery store, but in the meantime, they were going to ban Muslims from entering this country."
Then don’t rush out and buy a bottle of Sriacha.
For everyone else, don’t be put off by some fool food writer calling it a key American food. That said, it has replaced Tabasco for me, though my wife sticks with Tabasco.
Think of Sriacha as ketchupy Tabasco, from a texture perspective, and the spicy aspect of it has more flavor complexity than Tabasco. Good stuff, recommended (unless you don’t do spicy hot).
Nope.
Basically hillbilly corn syrup, after a fashion.
That, with real butter on hot corn bread is bliss.
:)
MSG was sold as “Accent”. Pearl Bailey did the commercials and she really did love it; all her cookbooks include it.
This must be the stupidest book published on cookery.
I have that cookbook! It’s very nice.
Oh, OK. Sounds good!
Thanks for the link. Next time I’m in the south I’ll look for it. I always try out regional stuff.
When I was younger, I used to live in Laurel...Maryland. Creepy.
I had a VERY old book on gastronomy (sp). Awesome....told the history of all the condiments and sauces. Wish I had saved it for my daughter.
King Syrup is made in New York, near Lake Erie.
I have several medieval cookbooks. Or histories of medieval cookbooks with recipes. I think I got The Forme of Curry on kindle for free. (Not exactly a read-in-bed type of book.)
But I do love the Williamsburg cookbook. Beautifully done.
Ugh, pepper. I was at a Christmas party last year, trying to talk to someone and finding myself becoming hoarse and having difficulty breathing. I couldn't figure out why until I finally found a pepper grinder nearby on the table. Once I moved it, I was fine.
I'm certain a bite of that black pepper cake would kill me.
I question sriracha as an "enduring flavor. It may have a lot of mentions in recent years, but that would be true of any fad item. To be enduring, it has to have a history of common use--which I don't think sriracha does.
Spicing aside...Every culture has its pancake, just as every culture has its egg roll.
Okay, I'm curious--how is it that most Americans mispronounce "paprika," and how is it supposed to be pronounced?
I never found paprika to have much of a taste, but I found some Spanish paprika that is nice and smoky, which is quite good.
Sad that an adult woman didn’t know you scald moose head - outside - in an oversized pot over a pit fire. (Honestly, city Yankees, how do you live day to day?)
And the levels of bigotry in this article are extreme to the level of hate speech.
How long ago did we start importing Chinese people to build things? I can totally believe we have been using soy sauce for that long. The Europeans have been trading with China for hundreds of years, so soy sauce could have been brought by European immigrants just as well as Chinese ones. I love soy sauce.
You probably know why Connecticut is called the Nutmeg State, then.
:)
That’s not real MD.
That’s DC/Balto ‘burbs.
Bleah!
Was Baltimore.
No idea, now.
Can’t eat sugar really so those halcyon days are gone.
:(
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