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."
When my first grandbabies came along I was ecstatic, nothing like it :)
I worked 50+ hrs/wk then, took vacation time with them etc. You’d think it might get old but it doesn’t. Just work at home now, partly disabled, every grandkid is just as special and now I have more time to love them in person :)
Just for clarity, 6 of those kids are adopted. Four of those were already old enough to be in school but all are just as precious.
We’ve drifted about as far away from our state Constitution as we have from the Federal one.
I believe the nick came from the Fundamental Orders which provided the framework for the first formal Connecticut gov’t.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut#Constitutional_history
Great cast, great author and yet, I've never heard of it. :-(
Have you seen it?
She's a complete IDIOT and I bet that she can't cook worth a damn.
You know about THE VERMONT COUNTRY STORE, don’t you ? :-)
Yes, we do! :-)
Go to it every month, the one in Rockingham.
We go *grazing* ...better than Whole Foods grazing on a Tuesday. >:P
I never even heard of it, until this century and I now live on the East Coast, in the tri-state area!
The moron lives in QUEENS...in QUEENS! Not even in hippster Brooklyn, nor in foodie heaven Manhattan! She's a poser and an imbecile.
Obviously, I read those reviews and they are NOT for real. ;^)
True. :-)
Yup.
Back when it first came out on VHS.
When I was almost 8, my parents went to New Hampshire, on vacation. They brought me a big box of maple candy and yes, they are hard, shaped into different things ( flowers, animals, birds, etc. ) and far too damned sweet; sweeter than sucking on or chewing a sugar cube. I hated them and only sort of ate one of ‘em. YUCK!
I like some, what I'd call "spicey" food.
I don't like a lot of BLAND things, like chicken a la king, creamed spinach, nor SOS.
She forgot the 2 favorite food groups of America — ketchup and butter. They go on everything!
When it comes to food and things connected to food, I know far more than the idiot author of this ridiculous, stupid book! I should do; it is something I have been interested in all of my life.
How are the cookery classes going?
We are now on hiatus until I take up my classes this fall. I’ve taken off spring because it was exhausting. I’m not a spring chicken anymore, lol! But not ready to be pan-roasted, either.
She wrote cookbooks?
Okay, I just learned something. :-)
If not THE stupidest cookery book, one of them.
If you want great Indian food outside of India - go to London! I live in an area that has the largest Indian contingent in America and the food is not even as good as the famous 6th Street in NYC. And yet, in London, you can get delicate Indian food with floral notes from rose water that will make you wish you lived in Calcutta. I think the cheapest people from India moved here bringing their cheapskate food. I imagine the most creative folks left India for Great Britain 50 years ago and England is the better for it.
A friend of mine, currently on B’way, wrote a show about Pearlie May. As an opening night gift, I gave her several of Bailey’s cookbooks. They’re not at all bad - she grew up in the northeast but brought her family’s southern traditions to her cooking. No housekeeper for her! She cooked for her husband and adopted kiddies every night. But she was loyal to Accent and it’s pretty much included in every recipe, lol.
So impressed with her cooking was I, I picked up a bottle of Accent and was amused to see it was basically MSG!
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