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."
I really do not like maple-flavored anything.
Probably comes from a road trip to Black Water Falls, WV.
After my cousin and I got too scared to keep looking at the “mummified wolf boy” in the chicken wire cage display, my gramma bought us each a solid maple sugar thing that was in a cupcake paper.
We gnawed on them for hours and after that, I never wanted to taste another maple anything, ever again.
:)
I did that with dogs for most of my life. Last Aussie died three months after the German Shepherd, so that ended my line.
Then cats just came knocking on my door. I swear. “Oh, this looks like a good joint,” really.
Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!
OMG, I was scrolling down the page and then...
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGH!!!
/quivering
Creepy, isn’t it?
Vermont makes tremendous brand pride for quality, if it says *made in Vermont*.
Cabot cheese, B&Js Maple syrup, King Arthur flour, Green Mountain Coffee, etc.
If I can find those contacts, I know what next Halloween will be..
Oh, my goodness me. Those dead people scare me. I think they are dead people.
GMTA
I pray the day never comes, that I don’t have at least one dog.
They’re what I live for.
Indeed. An excerpt in the article itself says it’s been around only since 1980. And I’m quite certain it didn’t ship east of the Mississippi for another five years after that, and wasn’t available to Deplorable America for another five years after that. And that is one only eight flavors that “defined American cuisine”? Get the F out of here with that crap. She’s a lefty one-worlder living in a foodie echo-chamber.
If you don’t use enough tahini (basically pureed toasted sesame seeds), it’s not going to taste like hummus. There’s a little garlic, maybe some lemon juice, maybe some olive oil, but the flavor is pretty much the garbanzo beans and tahini.
Tapioca is frog eggs. I happen to like rice pudding, which according to a late uncle, is maggots.
I always forget what that acronym means. I do not know why.
Like it: yes
Consider it something that has defined American cuisine: no
It’s there today. The first two reviews are from shills who had to write that they got the book for free in return for a review.
And I was just about to add before I read the rest of your sentence...rice pudding is maggots. >;)
*That*, I will not eat.
Frog eggs, fish eyes, yum!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cn73Wtem0No
:D
“garlic ( and no, the Italians weren’t the ONLY people who cooked with that! ),”
The Japanese at least used to refer to Koreans as “garlic eaters”, not a complimentary term from their perspective.
I think the stuff we got was a solid disc of pure, crystallized maple sugar.
You could not bite a piece off...you had to alternately gnaw and suck.
A maple brick.
My teeth hurt, just thinking about it.
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