Abstract
This chapter reviews the deliberate development of cultural nationalism during the early American Republic through the lens of foodways, specifically the attempts by descendants of European settlers to conceptualize a distinctive national culinary culture in the United States. Descriptions of a national food culture were essential to defining a burgeoning American national consciousness, often at the expense however of an open and inclusive society. Early European settlers in North America instituted cultural processes that dissociated indigenous natural foodstuffs from their original Amerindian affiliations. By categorically separating certain foods and preparation techniques as either acceptable or incompatible with their own cultural and social traditions, settlers originated intellectual methodologies that ultimately helped formulate a hybridized American national identity. This process allowed later postcolonial Americans to recognize food as a powerful cultural and political tool. The classification of certain foods and cooking methods as characteristically American––particularly in contrast to other nations––allowed citizens to differentiate their supposedly superior society from other comparable examples. Therefore, the definition of a national food culture became a useful symbol of postcolonial social independence and identity formation in the early American Republic. American cuisine of the era was created more through appropriation than originality, however, as Americans absorbed dishes that originated in other cultures and only considered a select few to encompass their own national identity.
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Notes
- 1.
When discussing ingredients and foodstuffs found in North America, I use the descriptor “native” to differentiate items from their European counterparts. The North American people with ancestral claims in the continent prior to European contact, however, are described as “indigenous” peoples or the descriptor “Native Americans.” While there are other equally valid terms used to describe this population, I use these terms because of their frequent use in academic writing in the United States.
- 2.
While this chapter will focus on the American settler-colonial responses to and dismissal of certain Native American foodways, there are many other instances of similar actions perpetrated on other peoples and their cuisines. The white American response to African and African American foodways is a particularly poignant example of excluding a people while simultaneously embracing certain components of their cuisine.
- 3.
“A Federal Diet” was reprinted in The Pennsylvania Packet and Daily Advertiser on October 9, 1788; The Connecticut Journal on October 15, 1788; The New-Jersey Journal and Political Intelligence on October 15, 1788; The Massachusetts Centinel on October 18, 1788; The American Mercury (Philadelphia, PA) on October 20, 1788; The United States Chronicle; Political, Commercial and Historical (Providence, RI) on October 30, 1788; The Freeman’s Oracle Or New-Hampshire Advertiser on November 1, 1788; and The Vermont Gazette on November 24, 1788. Of these papers, only four papers give proper credit to The Pennsylvania Gazette. The New-Jersey and Political Intelligence went as far as to omit the greeting “Mess’rs Hall & Sellers” from the original article—the printers of The Pennsylvania Gazette––and added a greeting to their own printer.
- 4.
Dr Benjamin Rush would echo this sentiment in a widely published treatise on maple sugar trees. “The quality of this sugar is necessarily better than that which is made in the West-Indies,” he wrote, “whoever considers that the gift of the sugar maple trees is from a benevolent Providence, that we have many millions of acres in our country covered with them, that the tree is improved by repeated tappings, and that the sugar is obtained by the frugal labour of a farmer’s family…will not hesitate in believing that the maple sugar may be manufactured much cheaper, and sold at a less price than that which is made in the West-Indies” (Rush 1792, 9–10).
- 5.
There were a number of concoctions made to substitute imported tea during the 1760s and 1770s (often collectively called “liberty teas”) made from ground flax and other local flowers and dried herbs. None were caffeinated, however, making them rather ineffective as tea substitutes. For a detailed description of these “liberty teas” as well as the impact of boycotts on domestic life in colonial and revolutionary America, see: Siegel, Nancy. 2008. “Cooking Up American Politics,” Gastronomica 8, no. 3: 53–61.
- 6.
The descriptor of the plate stated, “Those who vomit up the tea are considered to be unfit for battle.”
- 7.
The laborious process of sap-freezing consisted of draining the maple sap into wooden buckets, waiting for the sap to freeze, and scraping off the top layers of ice that would form. This process had to be repeated multiple times to completely remove the water from the sap and reduce the concoction into a maple syrup. This method was time-consuming as it forced participants to refreeze the sap over many nights and was dependent on seasonal cold temperatures that facilitated the freezing. The colonial preference for boiling was far more efficient and less time-consuming.
- 8.
The Land of Cockaigne (an altered spelling of the Middle French term for “plenty”) was a mythical realm where peasants had unlimited access to resources, including most notably unfettered access to food. While the land was normally described in a positive manner, it was feared by certain authors that the temptation of this lavish lifestyle would lead to idleness, and Cockaigne was ultimately considered harmful to its inhabitants. The concept first originated in the tenth-century poem, The Land of Cockaygne. See: Ginzburg, Carlo. 1992. The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 84–86.
- 9.
It is of note that Browne uses the term “Indian corn” to describe the foodstuff. By the nineteenth century, the term had won out over “Turkish grain” or any other geographically erroneous monikers, and “Indian corn” was the most widely used term. This change was an example of the slow evolutionary shift towards cultural acceptance of the crop’s Native American origin in the ensuing decades.
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Mabli, P. (2022). What Belongs in the “Federal Diet”? Depictions of a National Cuisine in the Early American Republic. In: Ranta, R., Colás, A., Monterescu, D. (eds) ‘Going Native?'. Food and Identity in a Globalising World. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-96268-5_3
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