America's Favorite Foods: A Brief (But Agreeable) History

When it comes to our national cuisine, America sets off a global wave of eye rolls. Even as a proud citizen, it can be difficult to disagree. We are, after all, the culture that made it okay to eat a three layered hamburger out of your lap while driving to work at 8AM. Other criticisms resonate: the vegetables taste like styrofoam, chicken breasts are suspiciously large, E. Coli makes you sick, Rachael Ray is annoying.

But, I draw the line when (continental Europeans and northern Californians) complain that we have no culinary tradition at all. Anyone who is curious, can rectify this assessment by road-tripping it down the east coast from Portland to Charleston starting with lobster rolls and ending with shrimp and grits. Not only has our cuisine been informed by thousands of immigrant sensibilities and their interplay, but by all wacky outlooks and philosophies for which America is such fertile soil. Dishes like peanut soup and jambalaya can trace their heritage back to Africa, Spain and France, while cornflakes owe their success to a cultish wellness center founded by Mr. Kellogg in the 19th century. This Independence Day, we wanted to celebrate some quintessential American dishes. But for the sake of being useful, we decided to omit Mrs. Kellogg's, er, beloved recipe for bran jelly.

The Hamburger

How could we skip it? Whether it's pumped full of foie gras and minced short ribs or wrapped in a pocket of waxed paper at a roadhouse in Montana, the hamburger is an icon. And, like all icons, its origins are more legend than fact. A very geeky website devoted to the hamburger insists that it can be traced to the Mongolians and their quest to take over the world —while riding around on their horses, they stashed raw, ground beef under their saddles for a (fetid, smelly) warpath snack.

The hamburger's escape from under the butts of Mongolian doesn't really bear repeating. Suffice to say that over the course of hundreds of years, someone decided that the meat would taste better cooked. Once it makes it to our shores, however, the stories abound. Some people claim that in the mid-eighteen hundreds, two sausage makers in Hamburg, New York were forced to use ground beef in the absence of pork. Because ground beef was decidedly déclassé in those days, they shoved it between two pieces of bread with lettuce and tomato.

In one particularly lame legend, , claims that it invented the hamburger at the turn of the last century when a man came in requesting lunch in a hurry. Not quite sure what to do with such a monumental request, Louis took a Salisbury steak that he'd been pushing around the griddle, placed it in a bun and sent the man on his way.

None of our investigations into the history of the hamburger were conclusive, but we did find the formula for a perfect burger in this Wednesday's dining section in the New York Times. And don't forget the cheese. We love Chef Franklin Becker's because it's stuffed with melted Widmer's Wisconsin aged cheddar inside and on top. The information provided there will probably make you more popular at this year's cookout than the knowledge that Mongolian warlords used to eat minced meat that had been rotting under their horses' saddles...

The Hot Dog

Like the hamburger, the hot dog's history is highly contended. Because it is such an obvious cousin of German sausage, we can trace it there. But, that's where the certainty ends. In the United States, even the most unlikely sources lay claim to the invention of the hot dog (note: most of this information was sourced online...).

It seems, however, that the hot dog's popularity really started to gather steam in the late eighteen hundreds. During this period the great pundit H.L. Mencken argued prophetically that "[i]n place of the single hot dog of today there should be a variety as great as that which has come to prevail among sandwiches. There should be dogs for all appetites, all tastes, all occasions. They should come in rolls of every imaginable kind and accompanied by every sort of relish from Worcestershire sauce to chutney." Today's hot dogs come slathered in everything from kimchee to tzatziki. In honor of Mencken, our top three favorite hot dogs:

1. Superdawg: Chicago's classic hot dog, dressed in pickles, lettuce, tomato, mustard and a few shakes of celery salt on a poppy seed bun

2. Hot Doug's Hot Dog: Chicago's un-classic, renegade hot dog made with foie gras (which has been outlawed in the city)

3. PDT Chang Dog: New York City scenester hot dog named for celebrity chef David Chang. Wrapped in bacon, deep fried and bathed in kimchee, you might be better off with an intravenous drip of fatback

Peanut Butter

Peanut butter is so diffuse in American culture that we tend not to include it on the list of American contributions to gastronomy. But, no one else in the world eats peanut butter the way we do. Sure, the Senegalese have a riff, but try finding a jar of Skippy in Italy.

If you remember anything from grade school American history classes, it was George Washington Carver who first thought of pureeing peanuts and spreading the result between two slices of bread. Born into slavery, Caver became a famous consultant on the uses of agricultural products. His recipe for peanut butter was an effort to expand the legume's market. To the best of our knowledge, though, it did not catch on as a meat substitute...

Macaroni and Cheese

Thomas Jefferson is often credited with inventing macaroni and cheese because, apparently, some very bored historians found an account written by one of his contemporaries saying that he brought a macaroni mold back from France. Other equally bored historians argue that he did not invent the dish, although they concede that his cousin Mary Randolph wrote a recipe for it in her cookbook The Virginia Housewife. In a final example of useless academia, food and drink historian John Marioni claims that macaroni and cheese wasn't introduced until the 19th century.

Anyway. Kraft invented the powdered variety in 1937, completely changing the way that Americans perceived the dish and saving hundreds of thousands of college kids from starving to death in the process. Today, the product sells over a million boxes a day in the United States alone. While that blue box will always hold a special place in my heart (and my digestive tract), modern, gourmet twists on the dish definitely take the classic cheese dish up a notch (or three). The Waverly Inn's John Delucie has famously (and delectably) doctored this comfort-cuisine with shaved truffles. My favorite macaroni and cheese recipe comes from Marion Cunningham's Fannie Farmer Cookbook.

Ingredients:
1/2 pound macaroni, cooked
2 cups cheese sauce
1/2 cup grated sharp cheddar cheese
1/2 cup freshly made buttered breadcrumbs

Preparation:
Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Butter a 1 1/2-quart casserole. Put the cooked macaroni into the casserole, pour the cheese sauce over it and mix gently with a fork. Sprinkle the grated cheese evenly over the top and spread the crumbs over the cheese. Bake, uncovered, until the top is golden and the sauce is bubbling, about 30 minutes.

Apple Pie

Obviously, we could not write a very brief history of American food without including this delicious cliché of national dish. The thing is, there's nothing particularly American about the recipe for apple pie —settlers brought apple seeds over from the Old World and the French and English had been making variations on the pie for centuries. It's the spirit of apple pie that makes it such a poetic American icon.

In his essay The Tyranny of Pie, nineteenth century British journalist George Augustus Sala writes on the American obsession, noting that "[t]he tramp and the scalawag...impetuously demand nickel cents wherewith to purchase it; and the president of the United States...can enjoy no more festive fare." Like the hamburger, the hot dog and macaroni and cheese, it is apple pie's utter unpretentiousness that makes it the perfect symbol of democracy. Happy 4th!

— Written by Cecilia Estreich

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