Paul Freedman
Appearances
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
Thank you for having me.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
Not really. I have a friend actually from Barcelona and his ambition is to open an American restaurant in Barcelona. But it really would be the first apart from, you know, fast food that's identified with America. And if you ask most foreigners, they think American food is just fast food, or maybe American food is just variety of foods.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
So yeah, that's the reason that I became interested in this subject, just to find out, you know, what is American food? And even is there such a thing? Is there such a thing? Well, I believe there is. I think there are three aspects to it. They're not like typical dishes in the sense that As you said, if you go into an Italian restaurant, you know there's going to be pasta.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
But the three elements I would identify are regional foods, kind of like a vestige of what used to be a more vigorous sense that, you know, you've got certain kinds of dishes in New England, certain kinds of dishes in the South, certain kinds of dishes in the Northwest. The second element is kind of what killed regionalism, and that is Modern food.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
Modern meaning processed, industrial, standardized. And then the third element is variety. And by variety, it means, you know, like the Tropicana orange juice comes in eight different kinds. Or, you know, the yogurt comes in 30 different kinds or the ice cream is in 28 flavors.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
And another aspect of variety is that Americans have for much longer than the rest of the world liked so-called ethnic restaurants, liked the food of foreigners and of immigrants.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
I think that there are some foods people would say are, I mean, what about apple pie or what about pot roast? But in fact, you know, if you ask people, when was the last time you actually made pot roast or When was the last time you actually saw it on a menu and ordered it? I think you'd find that it was decades. And even apple pie is not, you know, there are diners that don't have apple pie.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
So a lot of these things are kind of homogenized and they're not necessarily identified with the region. There are things like pizza that have become Americanized, donuts. You know, pretty standard items, but not necessarily American in the sense of being rooted in a particular place.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
No, that's the thing. I mean, apple pie is a version of an English apple tart. There are some things that Americans like that few other people do, like peanut butter or maple syrup. I have a friend in France who, and here you'd have to include Canadians. She had a lot of Canadian professional friends. And I remember her telling me they always bring that horrible maple syrup of yours.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
You know, this is not a popular item in the rest of the world. But American ingredients, a lot of American cuisine was based on corn, which grew better in much of New England than did wheat. So, you know, that's an ingredient. Or liquor made out of apples. Applejack was an old kind of standby. And some of these things continue to have some influence.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
Hot sauce, you know, which originates from the Southwest, that's something that Americans like a lot. Even if the basic food is bland, we like a lot of different kinds of flavorings to top it off with.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
Yes. Yes. Particularly because we like sugar and we liked it as kids. There's some tastes that we develop. Most kids don't like the combination of spicy and sweet, like barbecue sauce. I think you've got to become a teenager before that kicks in.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
I think it could also be that your kids are a little more sophisticated. And in fact, I've got to say, kids have become more sophisticated. The kind of kid who would only eat at McDonald's for his or her first 18 years still exists. But I just had a dinner party yesterday and a friend has two kids, 10 and 13, and the 10-year-old actually made a kind of bread.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
that is typical of the colonial era, you know, just like, because he wanted something to do while the adults were cooking. So that certainly wouldn't have happened when I was growing up.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
Things changed in the 1970s, I would say, or that, you know, if I had to pick a turning point. The rediscovery of actual flavor in primary foods like seasonal, local, what we now all kind of take for granted, begins in California, not only with Alice Waters and her Berkeley restaurant, Chez Panisse, but that would be the most famous example.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
And at the same time in the 1970s, although certain kinds of Immigrant food like Chinese and Italian had been popular for a long time. You see an explosion of other kinds of options. Thai food really becomes a big item in the 70s. Indian food. Mexican food becomes available in places like New York that had never had it. So in 1979, I started teaching at Vanderbilt University in Nashville.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
And at that time, the food was not only meat and potatoes, but pretty bland. And it became spicier and more varied. The spicier I remember being impressed by. And not just Thai food or Mexican food, but items like blackened redfish or buffalo chicken wings. These things have a lot of spice. And so things did change. And I would pick the 1970s as the beginning of the shift.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
Some of it is just the arrival of lots of immigrants. So in 1965, Congress voted to repeal the racist and restrictive laws about immigration that had cut immigration from all but Northern Europe since the 1920s. And then by the 1970s, you really started to get the arrival of large numbers of people, especially from Asia.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
But more than just the availability of more kinds of cuisines, I think it has to do with the kind of individualism and rejection of mass culture. So instead of everybody, you know, watching the Ed Sullivan show on Sunday evening and
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
the security of knowing that if you were having Yankee pot roast and potatoes, your neighbors were having Yankee pot roast and potatoes, probably a kind of limited dossier of dishes. People started to want to shape themselves, to make themselves a kind of different story from that of other people. And that individualism, remember the 1970s at the time was dubbed the me decade. And so the me part
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
means nonconformity or finding your own path.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
It was just horrible. Well, you know, people actually cooked in those days. You may not like what they cooked, but compare it to now where more money is spent on meals taken outside of the home than in the home. Another thing is that certain kinds of products, particularly meat, is now inferior to what was available in the 1950s. Fish as well, partly because of overfishing.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
partly because of breeding meat to have low fat, hence not very much flavor or kind of more industrialized product. So the chicken of the 1950s was better than most, except the kind of high-end chickens available now. But having said all that, yeah, the food was pretty dreadful. And you have the sense that people forgot what basic things were supposed to taste like.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
They certainly forgot what fruit was supposed to taste like,
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
what produce generally and um special effects we're supposed to make up for that special effects like you know putting it in jello or adding ketchup uh or you know some kind of weird new processed thing like you know whipped cheese or cheese from a a dispenser or flavor straws you know with chocolate flavor built into the straw even though these things are horrible um
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
I don't know, people sort of fell for them.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
I think the world has rejected a lot of our exports. like breakfast cereal. So in Britain, they eat American breakfast cereal, but a few other countries have embraced this. Sometimes countries embrace things just, you know, like Tang, this artificial orange beverage made from a powder, was a big item in the 60s because the astronauts drank Tang and it was promoted on that basis.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
Apparently, it's very big in Taiwan still, but certainly it's not big in the United States. I think the US is more a kind of transit point. So we didn't invent pizza, but we exported it to the world, not Italy. We didn't invent sushi, but the fact, you know, I do a lot of work as a medieval historian, which is my day job in Barcelona.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
So I remember when sushi arrived in Barcelona and it didn't arrive directly from Japan. It arrived, you know, around the same time that tacos did. So these things are like it gets the American seal of approval as a hit.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
Maybe it's perceived as tastier. Some of these, there's more local adaptations. So, you know, you can get beer with a McDonald's hamburger in much of Europe. It's the same thing with music, I'd say, or probably with movies as well. There's certain kinds that really export well. And in fact, many movies are made that are not so popular in the US, but become wildly popular in Europe.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
And then there's some things you can't explain. You know, sure, soccer is more popular than it used to be. But, you know, it still is the leading game of the world by far, except in the United States.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
Or where you'd find it if you decided you had a lust for it. You know, what restaurant, even a so-called, it'd have to be a very serious comfort food restaurant to feature it. Yeah, I think some of it is that it is, it's not that it's a trouble to make. But you've got to know something about cooking. You've got to be willing to use the oven.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
Every Thanksgiving, there's some kind of feature I know on NPR about, you know, we're here for you if you're having trouble putting together your Thanksgiving meal. And the reason people are having trouble putting it together is, first of all, they don't cook all that much. And they particularly don't cook old-fashioned dishes that require lots of time in the oven.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
So a lot of these things that require roasting or baking are just things that people gave up. If they cook at home, they're grilling, they're frying, they're pressure cooking or, you know, slow cooking. But, you know, if you asked people when was the last time you actually put something in the oven at 350 degrees, there'd be a lot of people who hadn't done it in months.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
I do, too. Definitely.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
It would seem logical that they would have learned that if you cook at home, you have more control over what you're eating. Both quantity, since restaurant portion size is huge, amount of salt, amount of fat. Restaurants, as Anthony Bourdain pointed out in Kitchen Confidential, the reason you like restaurant food is because we don't show any restraint about salt or butter or other fats.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
So if people are so concerned with their health,
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
To me too. I think some of it is the perception that we don't have time. And some of it is the way we live so that it is not hard to cook. What's a little hard is to have the right food without shopping every day.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
If you lived in Paris and, you know, on your way home from the metro are all sorts of food vendors and you can just decide what's in the market or what the butcher recommends and then make it, that's different from the way most of us don't live very close to where we buy food. And so we shop once a week. And if you do that, then you're going to have to freeze some stuff.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
You're going to have to plan things. You're going to have to use some processed ingredients. So that some of this is just a question of shopping more than of actual cooking. But it's also something where people perceive cooking as more difficult. And then who are you cooking for? I think we all lament the fact that families don't eat together as much as they used to.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
You know, the teenagers get their own meal and then the parents kind of graze on Other stuff and there's, you know, maybe a big deal is made of having dinner together on Sunday night or one time a week. So that also discourages things like pot roast for sure.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
Or it's just entertainment. You know, the key moment of cooking shows is success was not so much the foundation of the food network and, you know, making it 24 seven, but getting away from the instruction model or let's say segmenting the instruction model off into videos, uh, and making the actual programming entertainment.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
So, uh, the thing about that is that then it was watched by men and by kids who were not necessarily interested in how to. but simply kind of, you know, they're watching it like they might be watching wrestling or sports.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
I'd say vastly different. And that surprised me. Partly because there was more game available. There were more species of fish available. People liked organ meat. The fancy restaurants of the 19th century feature things like pig's feet with sauce poulet or calf's head with brain sauce. And, you know, this isn't poor people's food. These are restaurants like Delmonico's.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
the fanciest restaurant in New York and probably in the United States. So some of it is the tastes have changed. Some of it is that species have declined. So there are all sorts of different kinds of wild ducks available on 19th century menus. There are, you know, pigeons, passenger pigeons. There's buffalo meat. All these either became extinct or endangered.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
The most popular dishes of the 19th century in the United States are oysters, which we certainly still have, although they've become very expensive. Terrapin, which is a small turtle, now semi-endangered, and obviously people are not, this doesn't whet the appetite of the average person. So yeah, the food is radically different.
Something You Should Know
The Surprising Toll of Life’s Daily Hassles & What Exactly is American Cuisine?
However... There are some things that Americans like that few other people do, like peanut butter or maple syrup. You know, this is not a popular item in the rest of the world.