Where Our Favorite Foods
Really Come From
Every St. Patrick's Day, millions of Irish-Americans celebrate with green beer, "Kiss me, I'm Irish" buttons, and corned beef and cabbage,
the traditional fare of their Irish kinfolk. Right? Wrong. In fact,
traveling around Ireland, locals may balk if you insist this
American-Irish meal is a true representation of Irish culture. Until the
20th century, most Irish couldn't afford corned beef -- it's more
likely that people enjoyed Colcannon, a dish of boiled potatoes and
cabbage mixed with butter, milk and garlic. Corned beef and cabbage is
not the only seemingly traditional ethnic dish that got its start in a totally different place than the culture most people associate it with.
How does this happen? Lynne Olver, a reference librarian who manages
and contributes to The Food Timeline, a web site that tracks the history
of food and its origins, has some answers. "Food morphing is as old as
human kind," she says. "The glorious table is set by explorers,
invaders, crusaders, travelers, missionaries, settlers, immigrants,
outcasts, returning GIs, savvy restaurateurs and visionary chefs."
It's not news to anyone that Americans can take a cuisine, turn it on
its head, and pretend like it's always been that way. You find
hard-shell tacos at Taco Bell -- filled with some controversial beef
-- but not in Mexico. The nation may be the great melting pot, but
every culture borrows from other cultures to make something its own. Tempura,
now a Japanese staple, more likely originated in medieval Portugal with
some influence from 17-century China. Indian menu favorite chicken
tikka masala, whose origin was once up for British Parliamentary debate,
may actually have been invented in Glasgow, Scotland.
After some eye-opening research (et tu, apple pie?)
and feedback from Olver, it turns out the number of nontraditional
traditional dishes are probably countless! Now more than ever, cultures
the world over share, add, subtract, and change eating habits and
traditions until an extraordinary hybrid like gyros, French toast and
smoothies emerge. Fusion food isn't a new, trendy way to describe
obvious cross-cultural dishes. It's as old as humanity.
"We're
fighting for mom and apple pie." That's what the American GI's often
said when asked what they were fighting for during World War II.
Actually, apples aren't even native to the Americas. Remember Johnny
Appleseed?
The first known recipes for apple pie date back to medieval
Europe.
As the Americas were settled, Europeans brought apples and
planted their seeds and from those seeds the American apple pie was
born.
One
of the more surprising discoveries is that our beloved tempura shrimp
and vegetables is actually Portuguese. Sure, if we do a little Freudian
free association beginning with the word "fried" we'd most likely find
our way to Southern Europe, specifically, the Mediterranean and fried
calamari, but how did the concept make its way to Japan, where,
according to The Food Timeline, Edo period foods were rarely fried in
fat? With a little help from 17-century Chinese influence.
The
origin of the dish, spaghetti and meatballs, is really a matter of
semantics. As separate entities spaghetti and meatballs have existed
since ancient times. However, it wasn't until the birth of Little Italy
that Italian immigrant restaurateurs began topping plates of spaghetti
with meatballs to soothe savage American meat cravings.
Unless
you're Homer Simpson, you know that French fries and French kisses
aren't actually French. However, did it ever occur to anyone but a food
historian that French toast might hail from ancient Rome instead? In
ancient times, it was called Roman bread.
Since
it's the secret sauce on many a burger in America, it should come as no
surprise that Russian dressing is an American delicacy. At least,
that's what American food historians say. Europeans, however, believe
Russian dressing was invented by the French and introduced to Russia in
the 19th century. Americans argue Russian dressing was concocted from
ingredients inspired by Russian cuisine. It's one of the many debates in
food history that may never be settled
They're
basically a requirement as party favors at weddings, but Jordan
almonds, which are covered in a candy shell and likely a precursor to
M&Ms, are not Jordanian. Nope, in fact, the act of coating almonds
in some sort of preservative goes so far back in time it's hard to tell
exactly where the Jordan almond got its start.
We've been corrected many a time at many a Greek diner that gyro should be pronounced year-ro.
Well the joke's on us. Yes, it's most likely that in its current form,
gyros are a Greek-American invention, but the gyro's ancestor really
comes from the Middle East. To all those New York City diner owners, we
say year-ro and also thank you because the gyro is one delicious sammich.
Despite
our national obsession with Jamba Juice and all things smoothie,
America did not invent them. Although the exact timing of the smoothie
is hard to pinpoint, most smoothie aficionados agree that a smoothie
involves blending a milk product with fruit. In that case, many signs
point to Central and Latin America where a creamy fruit drink called a licuado has been popular for generations
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More stories from The Daily Meal:
Foods: Fact or Fiction?
