{"version": "1.0", "type": "rich", "title": "what if i told you that a lot of\u00a0\u201cAmericanized\u201d versions of foods were actually the product of immigrant experiences and are...", "author_name": "kontextmaschine", "author_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "provider_name": "kontextmaschine", "provider_url": "https://kontextmaschine.com", "url": "https://kontextmaschine.com/post/174070227273/", "html": "

fnord888:

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jadagul:

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madmaudlingoes:

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toospoopyformyshirt:

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emphasisonthehomo:

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voxiferous:

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memecucker:

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ace-and-ranty:

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memecucker:

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what if i told you that a lot of\u00a0\u201cAmericanized\u201d versions of foods were actually the product of immigrant experiences and are not\u00a0\u201cbastardized versions\u201d

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That\u2019s actually fascinating, does anyone have any examples?

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Chinese-American food is a really good example of this and this article provides a good intro to the history http://firstwefeast.com/eat/2015/03/illustrated-history-of-americanized-chinese-food

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I took an entire class about Italian American immigrant cuisine and how it\u2019s a product of their unique immigrant experience. The TL;DR is that many Italian immigrants came from the south (the poor) part of Italy, and were used to a mostly vegetable-based diet. However, when they came to the US they found foods that rich northern Italians were depicted as eating, such as sugar, coffee, wine, and meat, available for prices they could afford for the very first time. This is why Italian Americans were the first to combine meatballs with pasta, and why a lot of Italian American food is sugary and/or fattening. Italian American cuisine is a celebration of Italian immigrants\u2019 newfound access to foods they hadn\u2019t been able to access back home.

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(Source: Cinotto, Simone. The Italian American Table: Food, Family, and\nCommunity in New York City. Chicago: U of Illinois, 2013. Print.)

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Stuff you Missed in History Class has a really good podcast overview of\u00a0\u201cForeign Food\u201d in the US.

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here\u2019s another podcast about Chinese food from Gastropod: The United States of Chinese Food

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and there\u2019s also that beef thing that Irish American immigrants adopted from their Jewish American neighbors but no one actually eats it in Ireland. I\u2019m blanking on the name

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also California sushi roles were made by a Japanese American

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Corned beef!

England imposed a bunch of anti-Catholic laws to drive native Irish people into poverty while consolidating land ownership in the hands of English or Anglo-Irish Protestants. Beef raised in Ireland was for export back to England, and it was corned (salted) to keep it from spoiling in transit. Your typical Irish-Catholic tenant farmer had to make due with a tiny plot of land, and the main way to turn that plot into enough calories to keep your family alive was planting potatoes. The only meat most of these folks had access to was pork and bacon, since pigs can be raised on less land and with cheaper fodder than cows.

But then Irish immigrants in places like New York and Boston discovered kosher butchers and kosher delis, which didn\u2019t sell pork products for obvious reasons \u2013 but they sold corned beef brisket at an accessible price. So this \u201cluxury\u201d food replaced bacon and salt pork in Irish immigrant cooking, and Americans came to think of \u201ccorned beef and cabbage\u201d as the Iconic \u2122 Irish Dish.

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I\u2019m confused about what people thought the difference between \u201cbastardized versions\u201d and \u201cproduct of immigrant experiences\u201d was.

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The difference between corned beef and green beer.

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