American cuisine

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Apple pie is a prominent symbol of Americana.

A sirloin steak dinner served with sauteed onion, fries, broccoli florets, cut
carrots, whole snow peas, and garnished with whole chives
American cuisine is primarily Western in origin, but has been significantly
influenced by native American Indians, African Americans, Asians, Pacific
Islanders, and many other cultures and traditions, reflecting the diverse history
of the United States.

Though some of American cuisine is fusion cuisine reflecting global cuisine, such
as Mexican-American, Italian-American cuisine, and American Chinese cuisines, many
regional cuisines have their own deeply rooted ethnic heritages, including Cajun,
Louisiana Creole, Native American, New England Algonquian, New Mexican,
Pennsylvania Dutch, Soul food, Texan/Tex-Mex, and Tlingit.

Early Native Americans utilized a number of cooking methods in early American

cuisine that have been blended with the methods of early Europeans to form the
basis of what is now American cuisine. The European settlement of the Americas
introduced a number of ingredients, spices, herbs, and cooking styles to the
continent.
American cuisine is very diverse and has various styles of cuisine. It continued
expanding well into the 19th and 20th centuries, proportional to the influx of
immigrants from many different nations; this influx nurtured a rich diversity in
food preparation throughout the country.

The American colonial diet varied depending on the region settled. Commonly hunted
game included deer, bear, bison, and wild turkey. A number of fats and oils made
from animals served to cook much of the colonial foods.

Prior to the American Revolution, New Englanders consumed large quantities of rum
and beer, as maritime trade provided them relatively easy access to the goods
needed to produce these items: rum was the distilled spirit of choice, as the main
ingredient, molasses, was readily available from trade with the West Indies.

In comparison to the northern colonies, the southern colonies were quite diverse in
their agricultural diet, as the growing season was longer.

Contents
1 History
1.1 Native Americans origins: American cuisine before 1600
1.1.1 Fish and Crustaceans
1.1.2 Cooking methods
1.2 Colonial period
1.2.1 Common ingredients
1.2.1.1 Livestock and game
1.2.1.2 Fats and oils
1.2.1.3 Alcoholic drinks
1.2.1.4 Southern variations
1.3 Post-colonial cuisine
1.4 Nineteenth-century American farmhouse
1.5 Twentieth Century
1.5.1 Ethnic influences
1.5.2 New American
2 Regional cuisines
2.1 Northeast
2.1.1 New England
2.1.2 Delaware Valley and Mid-Atlantic
2.2 Midwest
2.3 Southern United States
2.3.1 Early history
2.3.2 Common features
2.3.3 Desserts
2.3.4 Cajun and Creole Cuisine of Louisiana
2.3.5 African American influences
2.3.6 Florida cuisine
2.3.7 Other small game
2.4 Cuisine in the West
2.4.1 Northwest
2.4.2 Southwest and Southern California
2.5 Pacific and Hawaiian cuisine
2.6 Common dishes found on a regional level
3 Ethnicity-specific and immigrant influence
3.1 Early ethnic influences
3.2 Later ethnic and immigrant influence
4 Notable American chefs
5 See also
6 References
6.1 Works cited
7 Further reading
8 External links
History
Native Americans origins: American cuisine before 1600
See also: Native American cuisine

Iroquois planting the Three Sisters

Nearly all regions and subregions of the present day cuisine have roots in the
foodways of Native Americans, who lived in tribes numbering in their thousands.
Prior to 1600, native peoples lived off the land in very diverse bioregions and had
done so for thousands of years, often living a nomadic life where their diet
changed with the season.

Many practiced a form of agriculture revolving around the Three Sisters, the
rotation of beans, maize, and squash as staples of their diet; in the East, this
was documented as early as the 1620s in Of Plimoth Plantation, evidenced by the
pages William Bradford wrote regarding Squanto: he showed them the traditional
regional method of burying a fish or eel in a mound with seeds for maize to improve
the soil; this itself is also part of the widely practiced phenomenon of companion
planting.[1][2]

Other tribes across the land were practicing an iteration of using the same three
staples, evidenced by 100 years of archaeological investigations in every region.

Wild game was equally a staple of nearly every tribe: generally speaking, deer,
elk, and bison were staples as were rabbits and hare of every kind. The Cherokee of
the Southern Appalachians used blowguns made of an indigenous type of bamboo to
hunt squirrels.[3]

Northern tribes like the Ojibwe of what is now the state of Michigan and the
peoples of the Wabanaki of what is now the state of Maine would stalk and hunt
moose, whereas their Southern counterparts, like the Choctaw or Catawba, hunted
snapping turtles and other testudines,[4][5] possums,[6][7] and young alligators[8]
in the subtropical swamps of Louisiana and South Carolina.

Many tribes would preserve their meat in the form of pemmican, needed greatly on
long journeys or to survive harsh winters.

Fish and Crustaceans

Blue crab was used on the eastern and southern coast of what is now the U.S.
mainland.
As with hunted game, the biome in which one lived often dictated what was available
to catch. For example, the Apache and Navajo peoples of the Southwest, whose
territories each would have included swathes of New Mexico and Arizona, generally
do not eat fish because in both cultures it's taboo, as well as often inconvenient.

The Navajo believe that fish have a part in the story of creation,[9] the Apache
were in general afraid of water since they associated it with thunder,[10] and the
arid desert climate made fish a rarity.[11]

However, in the culture of the Lenape, the tribe that originally lived in New
Jersey, on the Delaware River, and the area that now comprises New York City, fish
and shellfish were a staple in their diet and it was such a revered part of the
culture that there is a documented and still practiced harvest dance called the
Fish Dance.[12]

Originally it would have been done to celebrate the bringing in of fish from places
like the Delaware or Raritan River or even the estuary around Manhattan Island and
the completion of smoking them as a source of food for the long winter ahead.[13]

Eastern tribes would have eaten cod,[14][15] particularly groups that spoke the
Algonquian languages of New England as far south as present day Connecticut, winter
flounder[16] and other flatfish,[17] species of herring like the alewife,[18] shad,
[19] Atlantic herring, and Atlantic menhaden,[20][21] They also would have consumed
the Atlantic sturgeon[22] and drum.

In the West, Pacific several species of sturgeon, like the white sturgeon[23] and
green sturgeon,[24] olachen[25] and several autochthonal fish of the Oncorhynchus
family including the rainbow trout,[26] cutthroat trout,[27] coho salmon,[28][29]
[30] kokanee salmon,[31] and chinook salmon. The last makes an appearance in the
accounts of Lewis and Clark as being fished for in the Columbia River Basin, and
this specific species is named for a family of tribes of the Pacific Northwest,
indicating very strongly its important role in that specific food culture.

Pacific gray whales and humpbacks were hunted by American Indians off the Northwest
coast, especially by the Makah, and used for their meat and oil.[32] Catfish was
also popular among native people throughout the land, over many types of terrain.

Crustaceans included shrimp, lobster, crayfish, and dungeness crabs in the

Northwest and shrimp, lobster and blue crabs in the East. Other shellfish include
abalone and geoduck on the West Coast, while on the East Coast the surf clam,
quahog, and the soft-shell clam. Oysters were eaten on both shores, as were mussels
and periwinkles.[33]

Cooking methods
Early American Natives used a number of cooking methods in early American Cuisine
that have been blended with early European cooking methods to form the basis of
American Cuisine. Grilling meats was common. Spit roasting over a pit fire was
common as well. Vegetables, especially root vegetables, were often cooked directly
in the ashes of the fire.

As early Native Americans lacked pottery that could be used directly over a fire,
they developed a technique causing many anthropologists to call them "stone
boilers". They heated rocks in a fire, then added the rocks to a pot filled with
water until it came to a boil to cook the meat or vegetables.

In what is now the Southwestern United States, they also created adobe ovens,
dubbed hornos by the Spanish, to bake products such as cornmeal bread. Other parts
of America dug pit ovens, which were also used to steam foods by adding heated
rocks or embers.

One example performed extensively by New England tribes was adding seaweed or corn
husks on top of the layers of stones to steam fish and shellfish as well as
vegetables.

A later addition was potatoes, a garden plant that came to New England by the 18th
century, added while still in skin with corn while in-husk, later to be referred to
as a clambake by colonists.[34]

Colonial period
Main article: Cuisine of the Thirteen Colonies

Tender, juicy roast turkey—the main attraction—with old-fashioned gravy, cranberry

sauce, mashed potatoes, green beans, sweet and sour cod, steamed rice, achara
(pickled green papaya relish), leche flan, pig in a blanket, apple crisp
Map of the 13 American Colonies in 1775
When European colonists came to Virginia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and any of
the other English colonies on the eastern seaboard of North America, their initial
attempts at survival included planting crops familiar to them from back home in
England. In the same way, they farmed animals for clothing and meat.

Through hardships and eventual establishment of trade with England, the West Indies
and other regions, the colonists were able to derive a cuisine similar to what they
had previously consumed in Britain and Ireland, while also introducing local
animals and plants to their diet.

American colonists followed along the line of British cookery up until the
Revolution, when a desire to distinguish themselves from Britain led Americans to
create "American" styles of cookery.[35]

In 1796, the first American cookbook was published, and others followed.[36] There
was a general disdain for French cookery, even with French Huguenot settlers in
South Carolina and French-Canadian emigrants in America. One of the cookbooks that
proliferated in the colonies was The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1747) by
Hannah Glasse, who referred to "the blind folly of this age that would rather be
imposed on by a French booby, than give encouragement to a good English cook!" Of
the French recipes given in the text, she speaks out flagrantly against the dishes
as she "... think[s] it an odd jumble of trash."[37]

The expulsion of the Acadians from Acadia led many of them to Louisiana, where they
left a French influence in the diet of those settled in Louisiana, and among the
Acadian Francophones who settled eastern Maine and parts of what is now northern
Vermont at the same time they colonized New Brunswick.[38]

Some of the Jews who fled from the Inquisition with other Sephardic Jews in the
15th century had previously settled in Recife, Brazil and the West Indies, where
their cuisine was influenced by new local ingredients like molasses, rum, sugar,
vanilla, chocolate, peppers, corn, tomatoes, kidney beans, string beans and turkey.

In 1654, twenty three Sephardic Jews arrived in New Amsterdam bringing this cuisine
with them to the early colonial United States. Early American Jewish cuisine was
heavily influenced by this branch of Sephardic cuisine. Many of the recipes were
bound up in observance of traditional holidays and remained true to their origins.
These included dishes such as stew and fish fried in olive oil, beef and bean
stews, almond puddings, and egg custards.

The first kosher cookbook in America was the Jewish Cookery Book by Esther Levy,
published in 1871 in Philadelphia and includes many of the traditional recipes.[39]

Common ingredients

A New England clam bake consists of various steamed shellfish.

The American colonial diet varied depending on the settled region in which someone
lived. Local cuisine patterns had established by the mid-18th century. The New
England colonies were extremely similar in their dietary habits to those that many
of them had brought from England.

A striking difference for the colonists in New England compared to other regions
was seasonality.[40] While in the southern colonies, they could farm almost year-
round, in the northern colonies, the growing seasons were very restricted. In
addition, northern colonists' close proximity to the ocean gave them a bounty of
fresh fish to add to their diet.

Wheat, the grain used to bake bread back in England, was almost impossible to grow,
and imports of wheat were far from cost productive.[41][dubious – discuss]
Substitutes in cases such as this included cornmeal. The Johnnycake was a poor
substitute to some for wheaten bread, but acceptance by both the northern and
southern colonies seems evident.[42]

As many of the New Englanders were originally from England, game hunting was useful
when they immigrated to the New World. Many of the northern colonists depended upon
their ability to hunt, or upon others from whom they could purchase game. Hunting
was the preferred method of protein consumption, as opposed to animal husbandry,
which required much more work to defend the kept animals against raids.[citation
needed]

Livestock and game

Commonly hunted game included deer, bear, buffalo, and wild turkey. The larger
muscles of the animals were roasted and served with currant sauce, while the other
smaller portions went into soups, stews, sausages, pies, and pastries.[43] In
addition to game, colonists' protein intake was supplemented by mutton.

The Spanish in Florida originally introduced sheep to the New World, but this
development never quite reached the North, and there they were introduced by the
Dutch and English. The keeping of sheep was a result of the English non-practice of
animal husbandry.[44] The animals provided wool when young and mutton upon maturity
after wool production was no longer desirable.[45] The forage-based diet for sheep
that prevailed in the Colonies produced a characteristically strong, gamy flavor
and a tougher consistency, which required aging and slow cooking to tenderize.[46]

Fats and oils

A plate of scrapple, a traditional dish of the Delaware Valley region made of pork
and cornmeal, still eaten today
Fats and oils made from animals served to cook many colonial foods. Many homes had
a sack made of deerskin filled with bear oil for cooking, while solidified bear fat
resembled shortening.

Rendered pork fat made the most popular cooking medium, especially from the cooking
of bacon. Pork fat was used more often in the southern colonies than the northern
colonies as the Spanish introduced pigs earlier to the South. The colonists enjoyed
butter in cooking as well, but it was rare prior to the American Revolution, as
cattle were not yet plentiful.[47]

Alcoholic drinks
Prior to the Revolution, New Englanders consumed large quantities of rum and beer,
as maritime trade provided them relatively easy access to the goods needed to
produce these items. Rum was the distilled spirit of choice, as the main
ingredient, molasses, was readily available from trade with the West Indies.

Further into the interior, however, one would often find colonists consuming
whiskey, as they did not have similar access to sugar cane. They did have ready
access to corn and rye, which they used to produce their whiskey.[48]

Until the Revolution, many considered whiskey to be a coarse alcohol unfit for
human consumption, as many believed that it caused the poor to become raucous and
unkempt drunkards.[49] In addition to these alcohol-based products produced in
America, imports were seen on merchant shelves, including wine and brandy.[50]

Southern variations
In comparison to the northern colonies, the southern colonies were quite diverse in
their agricultural diet. The uplands of the Piedmont and the coastal lowlands made
up the two main parts of the southern colonies.
The diet of the uplands often included wild game, cabbage, string beans, corn,
squashes and white potatoes. People had biscuits as part of their breakfast, along
with healthy portions of pork.[51] The lowlands of Louisiana included a varied diet
heavily influenced by the French, Spanish, Acadians, Germans, Native Americans,
Africans and Caribbeans. Rice played a large part of the diet in Louisiana. In
addition, unlike the uplands, the lowlands subsistence of protein came mostly from
coastal seafood. Much of the diet involved the use of peppers, as it still does to
this day.[52][53]

Post-colonial cuisine
During the 18th and 19th centuries, Americans developed many new foods. Some, such
as Rocky Mountain oysters, stayed regional; some spread throughout the nation but
with little international appeal, such as peanut butter (a core ingredient of the
peanut butter and jelly sandwich); and some spread throughout the world, such as
popcorn, cola, fried chicken, cornbread, unleavened muffins such as the poppyseed
muffin, and brownies.

Nineteenth-century American farmhouse

During the 1800s, American farms were mostly self-sufficient; but, certain staples
like salt, coffee, sugar and baking soda would be purchased at the town general
store. If the family didn't grow wheat, then flour would also be purchased.

Another luxury was canned salmon, which was sometimes eaten for Sunday dinner.
Items purchased at the general store would be paid for with eggs, butter or some
other food from the farm.

Women were responsible for much of the processing of food like straining fresh
milk, churning butter, making molasses from sorghum, grinding corn into cornmeal or
cleaning whole chickens.

Fresh picked apples were pressed into cider, which could be fermented to make apple
cider vinegar. Fruits and vegetables were preserved by various means like canning,
drying or pickling.

One contemporary writer from Michigan described October as cider season, when apple
butter would be made. Her writings mention johnnycakes, and, as winter fare,
buckwheat cakes.[54]

Typical farmhouse fare included fried chicken, simmered green beans, boiled corn,
chicken and dumplings, fried ham, boiled beans and beets, stewed tomatoes,
potatoes, and coleslaw made of shredded cabbage. Pon haus, similar to the scrapple
of the Pennsylvania Dutch, was a typical breakfast dish among the Germans who had
settled Indiana in the 19th century.

Pork scraps and corn meal were cooked into a thick porridge and molded in loaf
pans. Once solidified, the mixture would be cut and fried. During the fall months,
pork might be replaced with fried apples or potatoes. It was served with buttered
biscuits, jam, jelly, milk gravy or sorghum syrup. Fruit butter might be made from
apples, plums or peaches to accompany the meal.[54]

"A whole new class of city dwellers, harried, worried, furtive, hungry-looking
people, have come into being in the wake of the kitchenette, and no modern
influence has had so great a part in affecting the morals, health and spiritual
well-being of a generation as has this ill-shapen, ill-planned adjunct of modern
living"

Jane Pride, New York Herald

Twentieth Century
Pork was a staple of the rural diet through the Southern and Midwestern United
States. Lard was used for baking, frying and even as a seasoning.

The cookware of the period was made of cast iron and these were thoroughly seasoned
with pork fat. Fried salt pork with gravy was an indulgent fat-laden dish often
served with a side of boiled potatoes. In the Appalachian region a dish called
"killed lettuce" was made with pokeweed, dandelion and assorted wild greens that
were drizzled with hot bacon grease until wilted or "killed".[54]

Pie could be served up to three times a day and many varieties were prepared
depending on the season. During the spring months, pies would be made of rhubarb
and strawberry; in summer peach, cherry, blackberry, blueberry, elderberry and
grape; and in fall apple.[54]

The staples of the urban diet were bread, dairy and canned goods. Dinner might be
tomato bisque from a can topped with cream or a salad made of canned string beans
and mayonnaise. Many preferred to purchase food at delicatessens, rather than
attempt to prepare meals in the cramped kitchenettes.

German delicatessens in cities like New York and Milwaukee sold imported cold cuts,
potato salads, schmierkase, wienerwurst, North Sea herring, assorted pickles
(pickled cucumber) and other prepared foods.

Jewish immigrants from Germany soon followed suit, replacing pork dishes with
corned beef (salt-cured beef) and pastrami. Ice cream soda was served at soda
fountains, along with various other early "soda water" recipes like the Garden Sass
Sundae (rhubarb) or the Oh-Oh-Cindy Sundae (strawberry ice cream topped with
chocolate syrup, chopped nuts, whipped cream and candied cherries).[54]

During that same time frame, grain-feeding of cattle during low pasture months made
milk increasingly available year-round. The invention of milking machines lowered
production costs. Pasteurization, homogenization, evaporation, condensation, and
refrigeration along with glass milk bottles, wax-paper cartons, and then plastic
bottles made milk increasingly available and safe for urban consumers.[55]

Milk became a staple food item and an increasingly important ingredient in American
cuisine. Examples include the root beer float and the milkshake.

A strawberry and a chocolate shake, each topped with whipped cream, sprinkles, and
a maraschino cherry
Major railroads featured upscale cuisine in their dining cars.[56] Restaurant
chains emerged with standardized decor and menus, including the Fred Harvey
restaurants along the route of the Santa Fe Railroad in the Southwest.[57]

Fast-food restaurants with standardized product and franchised service models began
to appear and spread with the development of the highway system. White Castle
(1916) was one of the first examples. Franchising was introduced in 1921 by A&W
Root Beer. The McDonald brothers created their "Speedee Service System" in 1948.
Other examples include Burger King, KFC, Wendy's, Pizza Hut, Little Caesars,
Domino's Pizza and Papa John's Pizza.[citation needed]

At the universities, nutritionists and home economists taught a new scientific

approach to food. In the early 1900s muckraking journalists raised public concern
about the wholesomeness of industrialized food products that contained various
preservatives and adulterants of unknown safety.

From 1902 to 1912 Harvey Washington Wiley, a chemist at the U.S. Department of
Agriculture, supervised "hygienic table trials" to test the safety of food
additives and preservatives. His work contributed to the enactment of the Pure Food
and Drug Act of 1906. He became the first commissioner of the FDA and later led the
laboratories of Good Housekeeping Magazine.[58]

During World War I the Progressives' moral advice about food conservation was
emphasized in large-scale state and federal programs designed to educate
housewives. Large-scale foreign aid during and after the war brought American
standards to Europe.[59]

From 1912 to the end of the 1930s researchers discovered and popularized the role
of various vitamins and minerals in human health. Starting with iodized salt in
1924, commercially distributed food began to be fortified with vitamins and
minerals. In 1932, milk began to be fortified with viosterol, a purified vitamin D2
product. Synthetic thiamin (vitamin B1) first became available after 1936 and
bakers began voluntarily enriching bread with high-vitamin yeast or synthetic
vitamins in the late 1930s.

The Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Science established the
first set of "Recommended Dietary Allowances" in 1941. In 1943, the US War Foods
Administration issued the War Food Order No. 1, which made enriched bread the
temporary law of the land.[60]

In 1945 George Stigler published an article on "The cost of subsistence" which

described the so-called Stigler diet, his solution to the problem of providing a
diet that met the RDA at a minimum cost.

The logistical requirements of the US military during WW2 and the Korean War
spurred the development and growth of the processed foods industry in the US.[61]
These wars encouraged production of shelf-stable ingredients processed on a vast
industrial scale. Examples include powdered milk, powdered eggs, potato flakes, and
frozen concentrated orange juice.

After the war, low-cost, highly processed foods became one of the foundational
elements of an era of mass prosperity.[62] Many companies in the American food
industry developed new products requiring minimal preparation, such as frozen
entrees.[63] One such example is the TV dinner in which a multi-course meal was
assembled in aluminum packaging in a food factory and flash frozen, then reheated
at home in a thermal oven to be served while watching TV.[64] Convenience foods of
the era were designed to simplify home preparation.

One example is macaroni & cheese created using a powdered artificial cheese product
that is reconstituted at home with fresh milk. Newspapers and magazines ran recipe
columns, aided by research from corporate kitchens, which were major food
manufacturers like General Mills, Campbell's, and Kraft Foods. For example, the
General Mills Betty Crocker's Cookbook, first published in 1950, was a popular book
in American homes.[65][66]

Highly processed foods of the mid-20th century included novelty elements like
multi-colored Jell-O using various chemical food colorings, prepared breakfast
cereals marketed to children with large amounts of sugar and artificial colors
(e.g. Froot Loops).[67] Fruit-flavored punches made with artificial fruit
flavorings (e.g. Tang, Hi-C). Mid-20th-century foods also added novelty packaging
elements like spray cheese in an aerosol can, pimento-stuffed olives, and drink
pouches.

The development of the microwave oven resulted in the creation of industrial food
products and packaging intended to take advantage of the opportunities and overcome
the unique challenges of that technology.[68] Microwave popcorn is an example of
such a product.
Throughout the second half of the 20th century the US commercial food system has
become increasingly dependent on subsidized maize (corn) production to provide feed
for livestock and ingredients for human foods such as high-fructose corn syrup.[69]
It is estimated that the typical American gets 70 percent of his/her carbon intake
from maize (corn) sources.[70]

The last half of the 20th century saw the development of controversial
technological innovations intended to lower the cost of, improve the quality of, or
increase the safety of commercial food including: food irradiation,[71] genetically
modified organisms, livestock treated with antibiotics/hormones, and concentrated
animal feeding operations. Activists have raised concerns about the wholesomeness,
safety, or humaneness of these innovations and recommend alternatives such as
organic produce, veganism/vegetarianism, and locavore diets.

Ethnic influences

A cheeseburger served with fries and coleslaw

One signature characteristic of American cooking is the fusion of multiple ethnic
or regional approaches into completely new cooking styles. For example, spaghetti
is Italian, while hot dogs are German; a popular meal, especially among young
children, is spaghetti containing slices of hot dogs.[72][73] Since the 1960s Asian
cooking has played a particularly large role in American fusion cuisine.[74]

Eggs Benedict, an American breakfast dish made with poached eggs and hollandaise
sauce, served in this variation with smoked salmon

Some dishes that are typically considered American have their origins in other
countries. American cooks and chefs have substantially altered these dishes over
the years, to the degree that the dishes now enjoyed around the world are
considered to be American. Hot dogs and hamburgers are both based on traditional
German dishes, but in their modern popular form they can be reasonably considered
American dishes.[75]

Pizza is based on the traditional Italian dish, brought by Italian immigrants to

the United States, but varies highly in style based on the region of development
since its arrival. For example, Chicago style has focus on a thicker, taller crust,
whereas a "New York Slice" is known to have a much thinner crust which can be
folded. These different types of pizza can be advertised throughout the country and
are generally recognizable and well-known, with some restaurants going so far as to
import New York tap water from a thousand or more miles away to recreate the
signature style in other regions.[76]

Some dishes that Americans think of as being of "foreign" in origin and/or

associated with a particular immigrant group were in fact invented in America and
customized to American tastes. For example General Tso's chicken was invented by
Chinese or Taiwanese chefs working in New York in the early 1970s.[77] The dish is
unknown in China, except for a distant resemblance to a much spicier dish from Hong
Kong said to have influenced the American version. The fortune cookie was likewise
invented in California in the early 1900s and is known in Asia only as an American
style food.[78]

A modern dish consisting of traditional roasted turkey, sweet potatoes, and grilled
vegetables prepared with modern fusion ingredients
A wave of celebrity chefs began with Julia Child and Graham Kerr in the 1970s, with
many more following after the rise of cable channels like Food Network. By the
beginning of the 21st century, regional variations in consumption of meat began to
reduce, as more meat was consumed overall.[79] Saying they eat too much protein,
the 2015–2020 Dietary Guidelines for Americans asked men and teenage boys to
increase their consumption of underconsumed foods such as vegetables.[80]

New American
Main article: New American cuisine
During the 1980s, upscale restaurants introduced a mixing of cuisines that contain
Americanized styles of cooking with foreign elements commonly referred as New
American cuisine,[81] a type of fusion cuisine combining flavors from the melting
pot of traditional American cooking techniques with those from other cultures,
sometimes adding molecular gastronomy components.[82][83]

Regional cuisines
See also: List of American regional and fusion cuisines and List of regional dishes
of the United States
In the present day, the modern cuisine of the United States is very regional in
nature. Excluding Alaska and Hawaii, the terrain spans 3,000 miles (4,800 km) from
east to west and more than 1,000 miles (1,600 km) from north to south.

Northeast
New England
Main article: Cuisine of New England

New England clam chowder

New England is a Northeastern region of the United States bordering the Maritime
Provinces of Canada and portions of Quebec in the north. It includes the six states
of Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont,
with its largest city and cultural capital Boston, founded in 1630.

Native American cuisine became part of the cookery style that the early colonists
brought with them. Tribes like the Nipmuck, Wampanoag, Passamaquoddy and other
Algonquian cultures were noted for slashing and burning areas to create meadows and
bogs that would attract animals like moose and deer, but also encourage the growth
of plants like black raspberries, blueberries, and cranberries.[84]

In the forest they would have collected nuts of species like the shagbark hickory,
American hazel, and American chestnuts and fruits like wild grapes and black
cherries.[85] The Wabanaki tribal nations and other eastern woodlands peoples have
made nut milk and infant formula made from nuts and cornmeal.[86][87][88]

All of these eventually showed up in the kitchens of colonial New England women[89]
and many were sent back to England and other portions of Europe to be catalogued by
scientists, collectors, and horticulturalists.

The style of New England cookery originated from its colonial roots, that is to
say, frugal, and willing to eat anything other than what they were used to from
what they previously consumed in England.[90]

Most of the initial colonists came from East Anglia in England, with other groups
following them over the ages like francophone regions of Canada (this was
especially true of Northern New England, where there are still many speakers of a
dialect of French), from Ireland, from Southern Italy, and most recently from
Haiti, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, and Portugal. The oldest forms of the
cuisine date to the early 17th century and in the case of Massachusetts, out of the
entire country only the state of Virginia can claim recipes that are older.

East Anglian cookery would have included recipes for dishes like suet puddings,
wheaten breads, and a few shellfish delicacies, like winkles, and would have been
at the time of settlement simple Puritan fare quite in contrast to the fineries and
excesses expected in London cavalier circles. Most of the cuisine started with one-
pot cookery, which resulted in such dishes as succotash, chowder, baked beans, and
others.[91]

Starches are fairly simple, and typically encompass just a handful of classics like
potatoes and cornmeal, and a few native breads like Anadama bread, johnnycakes,
bulkie rolls, Parker house rolls, popovers, ployes, and New England brown bread.

Because of the influence of New Englanders who include Sylvester Graham, this
region is fairly conservative with its spices, but typical spices include nutmeg,
ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and allspice, especially in desserts, and for savory
foods, thyme, black pepper, sea salt, and sage. Typical condiments include maple
syrup, grown from the native sugar maple, molasses, and cranberry sauce.

The fruits of the region include the Vitis labrusca grapes used in grape juice made
by companies such as Welch's, along with jelly, Kosher wine by companies like Mogen
David and Manischewitz along with other wineries that make higher quality wines.

Though not anywhere near as productive a region as the top three apple-producing
regions, apples have been a staple of New England foodways since at least the
1640s, and it is here that a very high amount of heirloom varieties are found, many
of them gaining renewed interest as part of locavore movements and the re-emergence
of cider as a beverage of choice.

Apples from New England would include varieties imported from their earliest in
Europe and a few natives, like Baldwin, Lady, Mother, Pomme Grise, Porter, Roxbury
Russet, Rhode Island Greening, Sops of Wine, Hightop Sweet, Peck's Pleasant, Titus
Pippin, Westfield-Seek-No-Further, and Duchess of Oldenburg.

Historically New England and the other original 13 colonies were major producers of
hard cider and the only reason why this changed were that immigrants from Western
and Central Europe preferred beer, especially lagers, to apple based alcohol.

In more recent years cider has made a roaring comeback nationwide, with New England
being the first to break out of the box and with many pomologists scouring the
woods for abandoned apple trees and heirloom varieties to add to the cider press.
Angry Orchard is a local commercial brand that began in New Hampshire but has since
skyrocketed in sales, with other large marques following suit around the land.[92]

Beach plums a small native species with fruits the size of a pinball, are sought
after in summer to make into a jam. Cranberries are another fruit indigenous to the
region, often collected in autumn in huge flooded bogs. Thereafter they are juiced
so they can be drunk fresh for breakfast, or dried and incorporated into salads and
quickbreads.[93]

Winter squashes like pumpkin and butternut squashes have been a staple for
generations owing to their ability to keep for long periods over icy New England
winters and being an excellent source of beta carotene; in summer, they are
replaced with pattypan and zucchini, the latter brought to the region by immigrants
from Southern Italy a century ago.

Blueberries are a very common summertime treat owing to them being an important
crop, and find their way into muffins, pies and pancakes.

Typical favorite desserts are quite diverse, and encompass hasty pudding, blueberry
pie, whoopie pies, Boston cream pie, pumpkin pie, Joe Frogger cookies, hand-crafted
ice cream, Hermit cookies, and the chocolate chip cookie, invented in Massachusetts
in the 1930s.
New England is noted for having a heavy emphasis on seafood, a legacy inherited
from coastal tribes like the Wampanoag and Narragansett, who equally used the rich
fishing banks offshore for sustenance. Favorite fish include cod, salmon, winter
flounder, haddock, striped bass, pollock, hake, bluefish, and, in southern New
England, tautog. All of these are prepared numerous ways, such as frying cod for
fish fingers, grilling bluefish over hot coals for summertime, smoking salmon or
serving a whole poached one chilled for feasts with a dill sauce, or, on cold
winter nights, serving haddock baked in casserole dish with a creamy sauce and
crumbled breadcrumbs as a top so it forms a crust.[94]

Clam cakes, a savory fritter based on chopped clams, are a specialty of Rhode
Island. Also, a hard shell clam is unique to Rhode Island called the Quahoag which
is used in clear chowders. Farther inland, brook trout, largemouth bass, and
herring are sought after, especially in the rivers and icy finger lakes in upper
New England where New Englanders will fly fish for them in summertime.

Meat is present though not as prominent, and typically is either stewed in dishes
like Yankee pot roast and New England boiled dinner or braised, as in a picnic ham;
these dishes suit the weather better as summers are humid and hot but winters are
raw and cold, getting below 0 °C for most of the winter and only just above it by
March.[95]

The roasting of whole turkeys began here as a centerpiece for large American
banquets, and like all other East Coast tribes, the Native American tribes of New
England prized wild turkeys as a source of sustenance and later Anglophone settlers
were enamored of cooking them using methods they knew from Europe: often that meant
trussing the bird and spinning it on a string or spit roasting.

Today turkey meat is a key ingredient in soups, and also a favorite in several
sandwiches like the Pilgrim. For lunch, hot roast beef is sometimes chopped finely
into small pieces and put on a roll with salami and American or provolone cheese to
make a steak bomb.[96] Bacon is often maple cured, and often bacon or salt pork
drippings are an ingredient in corn chowder, a cousin of the clam chowder.[97] Veal
consumption was prevalent in the North Atlantic States prior to World War II.[79]

A variety of linguiça is favored as a breakfast food, introduced by Portuguese

fishermen and Brazilian immigrants.[98] In contrast with some parts of the United
States, lamb (although less so mutton or goat) is a popular roasted or grilled meat
across diverse groups in New England.

Dairy farming and its resultant products figure strongly on the ingredient list,
and homemade ice cream is a summertime staple of the region: it was a small
seasonal roadside stand in Vermont that eventually became the internationally
famous Ben and Jerry's ice cream.

Vermont is known for producing farmhouse style cheeses, especially a type of

cheddar.[99] The recipe goes all the way back to colonial times when English
settlers brought the recipe with them from England and found the rocky landscape
eminently suitable to making the cheese.[100] Today Vermont has more artisanal
cheese makers per capita than any other state, and diversity is such that interest
in goat's milk cheeses has become prominent.[101]

Crustaceans and mollusks are also an essential ingredient in the regional cookery.
Maine and Massachusetts, in more recent years, have taken to harvesting peekytoe
crab and Jonah crab and making crab bisques, based on cream with 35% milkfat, and
crabcakes out of them: often these were overlooked as bycatch of lobster pots by
fishermen of the region, but in the past 30 years their popularity has firmly
established them as a staple. They even appear on the menu as far south as to be
out of region in New York, where they are sold to four star restaurants in the form
of cocktail claws.

Squid are heavily fished for and eaten as fried calamari, and often are an
ingredient in Italian American cooking in this region. Whelks are eaten in salad,
and lobster, which is indigenous to the coastal waters of the region and are a
feature of many dishes, baked, boiled, roasted, and steamed, or simply eaten as a
sandwich, chilled with mayonnaise and chopped celery in Maine and Massachusetts, or
slathered with melted butter on Long Island and in Connecticut.

Shellfish of all sorts are part of the diet, and shellfish of the coastal regions
include little neck clams, sea scallops, blue mussels, oysters, soft shell clams,
and razor shell clams. Much of this shellfish contributes to New England tradition,
the clambake. The clambake as known today is a colonial interpretation of an
American Indian tradition.[102]

In summer, oysters and clams are dipped in batter and fried, often served in a
basket with french fries, or commonly on a wheaten bun as a clam roll. Oysters are
otherwise eaten chilled on a bed of crushed ice on the half shell with mignonette
sauce, and are often branded on where they were harvested. Large quahogs are
stuffed with breadcrumbs and seasoning and baked in their shells, and smaller ones
often find their way into clam chowder. Other preparations include clams casino,
clams on the half shell served stuffed with herbs like oregano and streaky bacon.

Southern New England, particularly along the coast, shares many specialties with
the Mid-Atlantic, including especially dishes from Jewish and Italian-American
cuisine.

Coastal Connecticut is known for distinctive kinds of pizza, locally called apizza
(pronounced locally as abeetz), differing in texture (thin and slightly blackened)
and toppings (such as clams) from pizza further south in the so-called pizza belt,
which stretches from New Haven, Connecticut southward through New York, New Jersey,
and into Maryland.

Delaware Valley and Mid-Atlantic

Main articles: Cuisine of Philadelphia, Cuisine of New York City, and Cuisine of
the Mid-Atlantic United States

New York strip steak topped with mushrooms and onions

The mid-Atlantic states comprise the states of New York, New Jersey, Delaware,
Pennsylvania, and Northern Maryland. The oldest major settlement in this area of
the country is found in the most populous city in the nation, New York, founded in
1625 by the Dutch. Today, it is a major cultural capital of the United States.[103]

The influences on cuisine in this region are extremely eclectic owing to the fact
that it has been and continues to be a gateway for international culture as well as
a gateway for new immigrants.[104] Going back to colonial times, each new group has
left their mark on homegrown cuisine and in turn the cities in this region disperse
trends to the wider United States. In addition, cities like New York and
Philadelphia have had the past influence of Dutch,[105] Italian, German,[106]
Irish,[107][108] British,[109] and Jewish cuisines,[110] and that continues to this
day. Baltimore has become the crossroads between North and South, a distinction it
has held since the end of the Civil War.

A global power city,[111] New York is well known for its diverse and cosmopolitan
dining scene.[112] Its restaurants compete fiercely for good reviews in the Food
and Dining section of The New York Times, online guides, and Zagat's, the last of
which is widely considered the premier American dining guide, published yearly and
headquartered in New York.
New York–style cheesecake with strawberries. Other variations include blueberry or
raspberry sauce.
Many of the more complicated dishes with rich ingredients like Lobster Newberg,
waldorf salad, vichyssoise, eggs benedict, and the New York strip steak were born
out of a need to entertain and impress the well-to-do in expensive bygone
restaurants like Delmonico's and still standing establishments like the Waldorf-
Astoria Hotel.[113][114] Modern commercial American cream cheese was developed in
1872.[115]

Since the first reference to an alcoholic mixed drink called a cocktail comes from
New York State in 1803, it is not a surprise that there have been many cocktails
invented in New York and the surrounding environs. Even today New York bars are
noted for being highly influential in making national trends. Cosmopolitans, Long
Island iced teas, Manhattans, Rob Roys, Tom Collins, Aviations, and Greyhounds were
all invented in New York bars, and the gin martini was popularized in New York in
speakeasies during the 1920s, as evidenced by its appearance in the works of New
Yorker and American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Like its neighbor Philadelphia,
many rare and unusual liquors and liqueurs often find their way into a mixologist's
cupboard or restaurant wine list.

New York State is the third most productive area in the country for wine grapes,
just behind California and Washington. It has AVA's near the Finger Lakes, the
Catskills, and Long Island,[116] and in the Hudson Valley has the second-most
productive area in the country for growing apples, making it a center for hard
cider production, just like New England.[117][118] Pennsylvania has been growing
rye since Germans began to emigrate to the area at the end of the 17th century and
required a grain they knew from Germany.[119] Therefore, overall it is not unusual
to find New York grown Gewürtztraminer and Riesling, Pennsylvania rye whiskey, or
marques of locally produced ciders like Original Sin on the same menu.

Philadelphia cheesesteak with Cheez Whiz

Since their formative years, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore have welcomed
immigrants of every kind to their shores, and all three have been an important
gateway through which new citizens to the general United States arrive.[120]
Traditionally natives have eaten cheek to jowl with newcomers for centuries as the
newcomers would open new restaurants and small businesses and all the different
groups would interact.

Even in colonial days this region was a very diverse mosaic of peoples, as settlers
from Switzerland, Wales, England, Ulster, Wallonia, Holland, Gelderland, the
British Channel Islands, and Sweden sought their fortune in this region.[121][122]
This is very evident in many signature dishes and local foods, all of which have
evolved to become American dishes in their own right.

The original Dutch settlers of New York brought recipes they knew and understood
from the Netherlands and their mark on local cuisine is still apparent today: in
many quarters of New York their version of apple pie with a streusel top is still
baked. In the colony of New Amsterdam, their predilection for waffles in time
evolved into the American national recipe and forms part of a New York brunch. They
also made coleslaw, originally a Dutch salad, but today accented with the later
18th-century introduction of mayonnaise.[105][123][124]

The doughnut began its life originally as a New York pastry that arrived in the
18th century as the Dutch olykoek, with later additions from other nations of
Europe like the Italian zeppole, the Jewish/Polish pączki, and the German Berliner
arriving in the 19th century to complete the variety found in modern doughnuts
today.[125]

Crab cake, popular in Maryland, Delaware and New Jersey, is often served on a roll.
Crab cakes were once a kind of English croquette, but over time as spices have been
added they and the Maryland crab feast became two of Baltimore's signature dishes.
Fishing for blue crab is a favorite summer pastime in the waters off Maryland, New
Jersey, and Delaware where they may grace the table at summer picnics.

Other mainstays of the region have been present since the early years of American
history, like oysters from Cape May, the Chesapeake Bay, and Long Island, and
lobster and tuna from the coastal waters found in New York and New Jersey.[126]
[127] Philadelphia Pepper Pot, a tripe stew, was originally a British dish but
today is a classic of home cooking in Pennsylvania alongside bookbinder soup, a
type of turtle soup.

In the winter, New York pushcarts sell roasted chestnuts, a delicacy dating back to
English Christmas traditions,[128] and it was in New York and Pennsylvania that the
earliest Christmas cookies were introduced: Germans introduced crunchy molasses-
based gingerbread and sugar cookies in Pennsylvania, and the Dutch introduced
cinnamon-based cookies, all of which have become part of the traditional Christmas
meal.[129][130]

Scrapple was originally a type of savory pudding that early Pennsylvania Germans
made to preserve the offal of a pig slaughter.[131] The Philadelphia soft pretzel
was originally brought to Eastern Pennsylvania in the early 18th century, and
later, 19th-century immigrants sold them to the masses from pushcarts to make them
the city's best-known bread product, having evolved into its own unique recipe.
[132]

New York–style pizza is the pizza eaten in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut.
After the 1820s, new groups began to arrive and the character of the region began
to change. There had been some Irish from Ulster prior to 1820, however largely
they had been Protestants with somewhat different culture and (often) a different
language than the explosion of emigrants that came to Castle Garden and Locust
Point in Baltimore in their masses starting in the 1840s.

The Irish arrived in America in a rather woeful state, as Ireland at the time was
often plagued by some of the worst poverty in Europe and often heavy
disenfranchisement among the masses. Many of them arrived barely alive having
ridden coffin ships to the New World, very sick with typhus and gaunt from
prolonged starvation.

In addition, they were the first to face challenges other groups did not have: they
were the first large wave of Catholics. They faced prejudice for their faith and
the cities of Philadelphia, New York, and Baltimore were not always set up for
their needs.

For example, Catholic bishops in the U.S. mandated until the 1960s that all
Catholics were forbidden from eating red meat on Fridays and during Lent,[133] and
attending Mass sometimes conflicted with work as produce and meat markets would be
open on high holy days; this was difficult for Irishmen supporting families since
many worked as laborers.

Unsurprisingly, many Irishmen also found their fortunes working as longshoremen,

which would have given their families access to fish and shellfish whenever a
fisherman made berth, which was frequent on the busy docks of Baltimore and New
York.[134][135]
Though there had been some activity in Baltimore in founding a see earlier by the
Carrolls, the Irish were the first major wave of Catholic worship in this region,
and that meant bishops and cardinals sending away to Europe for wine. Wine, with
water, is consecrated as part of the Catholic Mass.

Taverns had existed prior to their emigration to America in the region, though the
Irish brought their particular brand of pub culture and founded some of the first
saloons and bars that served Dublin style stout and red ale; they brought with them
the knowledge of single-malt style whiskey and sold it.

The Irish were the first immigrant group to arrive in this region in massive
millions, and these immigrants also founded some of the earliest saloons and bars
in this region, of which McSorley's is a still operating example.

Philadelphia-style soft pretzel

It was also in this region that the Irish introduced something that today is a very
important festival in American culture that involves a large amount of food, drink,
and merry making: Halloween. In England and Wales, where prior immigrants had come
from, the feast of All Hallows Eve had died out in the Reformation, dismissed as
superstition and excess having nothing to do with the Bible and often replaced with
the festival of Guy Fawkes Night. Other immigrant groups like the Germans preferred
to celebrate October 31 as Reformation Day, and after the American Revolution all
of the above were less and less eager to celebrate the legacy of an English
festival given they had fought against Great Britain for their independence.

The Catholicism of the Irish demanded attendance at church on November 1 and

charity and deeds, not just faith, as a cornerstone of dogma, and many of their
older traditions survived the Reformation and traveled with them. Naturally, they
went door-to-door to collect victuals for masked parties as well as gave them out,
like nuts to roast on the fire, whiskey, beer, or cider, and barmbracks; they also
bobbed for apples and made dumb cakes. Later in the century they were joined by
Scots going guising, children going door-to-door to ask for sweets and treats in
costume.

From the Mid-Atlantic this trend spread to be nationwide and evolved into American
children trick-or-treating on October 31 wearing costumes and their older
counterparts having wild costume parties with various foods and drinks such as
caramel apples, candy apples, dirt cakes, punch, cocktails, cider (both alcoholic
and non,) pumpkin pie, candy corn, chocolate turtles, peanut brittle, taffy, tipsy
cake, and copious buckets full of candy; children carving jack-o-lanterns and
eating squash derived foods derive from Halloween's heritage as a harvest festival
and from Irish and Scottish traditions of carving turnips and eating root
vegetables at this time of year.

Bobbing for apples has survived to the present day as a Halloween party classic
game, as has a variation on the parlor game of trying to grab an apple hanging from
the ceiling blindfolded:[136] it has evolved into trying to catch a donut in one's
teeth.[137]

Immigrants from Southern Europe, namely Sicily, Campania, Lazio, and Calabria,
appeared between 1880 and 1960 in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Eastern
Maryland hoping to escape the extreme poverty and corruption endemic to Italy.

Typically none of them spoke English, but rather dialects of Italian and had a
culture that was more closely tied to the village they were born in than the high
culture only accessible to those who could afford it at this time; many could not
read or write in any language.
They were employed in manual labor or factory work but it is because of them that
dishes like spaghetti with meatballs, New York-style pizza, calzones, and baked
ziti exist, and Americans of today are very familiar with semolina based pasta
noodles.

Their native cuisine had less of an emphasis on meat, as evidenced by dishes they
introduced like pasta e fagioli and minestrone, but the dishes they created in
America often piled it on as a sign of wealth and newfound prosperity since for the
first time even cheap cuts of it were affordable. The American recipe for lasagna
is proof of this, as mostly it is derived from the Neapolitan version of the dish
with large amounts of meat and cheese.[citation needed]

Carts selling frankfurters, the predecessor to hotdogs, in New York circa 1906. The
price is listed as "3 cents each or 2 for 5 cents".
New York-style hot dogs came about with German-speaking emigrants from Austria and
Germany, particularly with the frankfurter sausage and the smaller wiener sausage;
Jews would also contribute here by introducing the kosher version of these
sausages, made of beef rather than pork.[138] Today, the New York-style hot dog
with sauerkraut, mustard, and the optional cucumber pickle relish is such a part of
the local fabric, that it is one of the favorite comestibles of New York and both
the pork and the beef versions are beloved. Hot dogs are a typical street food sold
year round in all but the most inclement weather from thousands of pushcarts.

As with all other stadiums in Major League Baseball they are an essential for New
York Yankees and the New York Mets games though it is the local style of
preparation that predominates without exception.

Hot dogs are also the focus of a televised eating contest on the Fourth of July in
Coney Island,[139] at Nathan's Famous, one of the earliest hot dog stands opened in
the United States in 1916 by Nathan Handwerker. Handwerker was a Jewish man who
emigrated from what is now Ukraine in 1912 and whose influence is felt today around
the world.

Coney Island is most famous for being a traditional boardwalk amusement park and
the site of the world's first rollercoaster, a precursor of modern theme parks. Hot
dogs are a staple of amusement parks 100 years later.[140]

A summertime treat, Italian ice, began its life as a sweeter adaptation of the
Sicilian granita that was strictly lemon-flavored and brought to New York and
Philadelphia. Its Hispanic counterpart, piragua, is a common shaved-ice treat
brought to New York by Puerto Ricans in the 1930s. Unlike the original dish which
included flavors like tamarind, mango, coconut, piragua is evolving to include
flavors like grape and cherry, fruits which are impossible to grow in the tropical
Puerto Rican climate and get exported back to the island from New York.[141]

Taylor Ham, a meat delicacy of New Jersey, first appeared around the time of the
Civil War and today is often served for breakfast with eggs and cheese on a kaiser
roll, a variant of a roll brought to the area by Austrians in the second half of
the 19th century, now commonly used for sandwiches at lunchtime, often topped with
poppyseeds. This breakfast meat is generally known as pork roll in southern New
Jersey and Philadelphia, and Taylor Ham in northern New Jersey.

Nighthawks, a painting of a diner, one type of eatery still common in the Mid-
Atlantic. Each state of the region has its own signatures, and the range extends
from the Canadian border in the North to Delaware Bay in the South.
Other dishes came about during the early 20th century and have much to do with
delicatessen fare, set up largely by Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe who came
to America incredibly poor, often illiterate in any other language but Yiddish, and
often banished from mainstream society in their place of origin for centuries. Most
often they were completely unable to partake in the outdoor food markets that the
general population utilized as most of the food for sale was not kosher.

The influence of European Jewry before their destruction in the Holocaust on modern
mid-Atlantic cooking remains strong and reinforced by their many descendants in the
region.[142] These currently form the largest concentration of Jews outside Tel
Aviv and very integrated into the local mainstream of New York in particular.

American-style pickles, now a common addition to hamburgers and sandwiches, were

brought by Polish Jews,[143] and Austro-Hungarian Jews brought a recipe for almond
horns that now is a common regional cookie, diverting from the original recipe in
dipping the ends in dark chocolate.[144][145]

New York-style cheesecake has copious amounts of cream and eggs because animal
rennet is not kosher and so could not be sold to a large number of the deli's
clientele.

New York inherited its bagels and bialys from Jews, as well as Challah bread.
Pastrami first entered the country via Romanian Jews, and is a feature of many
sandwiches, often eaten on marble rye, a bread that was born in[clarification
needed] the mid-Atlantic.

Whitefish salad, lox, and matzoh ball soup are now standard fare made to order at
local diners and delicatessens, but started their life as foods that made up a
strict dietary code. Rugelach cookies and hamentashen are sweet staples still sold
to the general public, but came to New York over a century ago with Ashkenazi Jews
along with Jewish rye.[146][147]

Buffalo wings with blue cheese dressing, served with lager beer
Many of their dishes passed into the mainstream enough that they became standard
fare in diners by the end of the 20th century, a type of restaurant that is now the
most common in the region, and the subject matter of the artist Edward Hopper.

In the past this sort of establishment was the haven of the short-order cook
grilling or frying simple foods for the working man. Today typical service includes
staples from this large region like beef on weck, Manhattan clam chowder, the club
sandwich, Buffalo wings, Philadelphia cheesesteak, the black and white cookie,
shoofly pie, snapper soup, Smith Island cake, blackout cake, grape pie, milkshakes,
and the egg cream, a vanilla or chocolate fountain drink with a frothy top and
fizzy taste.

As in Hopper's painting from 1942, many of these businesses are open 24 hours a
day.

Midwest
Main article: Cuisine of the Midwestern United States
Midwestern cuisine today is a very eclectic and odd mix and match of foodways,
covering everything from Kansas City-style barbecue to the Chicago-style hot dog,
though many of its classics are very simple, hearty fare.

This region was mostly untouched by European and American settlers until after the
American Civil War, and excepting Missouri and the heavily forested states near the
Great Lakes, was mainly populated by nomadic tribes like the Sioux, Osage, Arapaho,
and Cheyenne.
As with most other American Indians tribes, these tribes consumed the Three Sisters
of beans, maize, and squash, but also for thousands of years followed the herds of
bison, hunting them on foot and later on horseback, typically using bow and arrow.

There are buffalo jumps dating back nearly 10,000 years and several photographs and
written accounts of trappers and homesteaders attesting to their dependence on the
buffalo and to a lesser degree elk.

After nearly wiping out elk and bison, this region has taken to raising bison
alongside cattle for their meat and at an enormous profit, making them into burgers
and steaks.

This region today comprises the states near the Great Lakes and also the Great
Plains; much of it is prairie with a very flat terrain where the blue sky meets a
neverending horizon. Winters are bitterly cold, windy, and wet.

Often that means harsh blizzards especially near the Great Lakes where Arctic winds
blow off of Canada, where ice on rivers and lakes freezes thick enough for ice
hockey, and for ice fishing for pike, walleye and panfish to be ubiquitous. In
Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, they often become part of the local fish fry.

Population density is extremely low away from the Great Lakes and small towns
dominated by enormous farms are the rule, larger cities being the exception.
Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Minneapolis,
and St. Paul dominate the landscape in wealth and size, owing to their ties with
manufacturing, finance, transportation, and meatpacking.

Smaller places like Omaha, Tulsa, and Kansas City are the local capitals, but the
king is Chicago, third-largest city in the country, on the shores of Lake Michigan.

Persimmon pudding
Non-American Indian settlement began in Illinois, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Ohio,
Indiana, and Michigan earlier than anywhere else in the region, and thus the food
available here ranges from the sublime to the bizarre.

As with all of the Midwest, the primary meats here are beef and poultry, since the
Midwest has been raising turkeys, chickens, and geese for over 150 years. Chickens
have been common for so long that the Midwest has several native breeds that are
prized for both backyard farming and for farmer's markets, such as the Buckeye and
Wyandotte. One, Billina, appears as a character in the second book of the Oz series
by L. Frank Baum.

Favorite fruits of the region include some native plants inherited from Native
American tribes like the pawpaw, and American persimmons are also highly favored.

As in the American South, pawpaws are the region's largest native fruit, about the
size of a mango, often found growing wild come September; they are made into
preserves and cakes and command quite a price at farmer's markets in Chicago.[148]

The American persimmon is often smaller than its Japanese cousin, about the size of
a small plum, but in the Midwest and parts of the East it is the main ingredient in
a steamed pudding called persimmon pudding, topped with crème anglaise.

Other crops inherited from the Native Americans include wild rice, which grows on
the banks of lakes and is a local favorite for fancy meals and today often used in
stuffing for Thanksgiving.

Typical fruits of the region are cold-weather crops. Once it was thought that its
winters were too harsh for apples, but a breeder in Minnesota produced the Wealthy
apple and it became the third-most productive region for apple growing in the land,
with local varieties comprising Wolf River, Enterprise, Melrose, Paula Red, Rome
Beauty, Honeycrisp, and the Red Delicious.

Cherries are important to Michigan and Wisconsin grows many cranberries, a legacy
of early-19th-century emigration of New England farmers. Crabapple jelly is a
favorite condiment of the region.

The influence of German, Scandinavian, and Slavic peoples on the northern portion
of the region is very strong; many emigrated to Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan,
Ohio, and Illinois in the 19th century to take advantage of jobs in the meatpacking
business as well as being homesteaders and tradesmen.

Bratwurst is a very common sausage eaten at tailgate parties for the Green Bay
Packers, Chicago Bears, or Detroit Lions, often served boiled in lager beer with
sauerkraut, different than many of the recipes currently found in Germany.

Polish sausage, in particular a locally invented type of kielbasa, is essential for

sporting events in Chicago: Chicago today has approximately 200,000 Polish speakers
and has had a similar population for over 100 years.[149]

When Poles came to Chicago and surrounding cities from Europe, they brought with
them long ropes of kielbasa, cabbage rolls, and pierogis. Poles that left Poland
after the fall of the Berlin Wall and descendants of earlier immigrants still make
them, and they remain common in local diners and delis.[150]

Today alongside the pierogi, the sausage is served on a long roll with mustard like
a hot dog or as a Maxwell Street Polish, a sandwich with caramelized onions. In
Cleveland, the same sausage is served in the form of the Polish boy, a sandwich
made of french fries, spicy barbecue sauce, and coleslaw.

Unlike cities in the East where the hot dog alone is traditional, fans of the
Cleveland Indians, Detroit Tigers, Chicago Cubs, and Milwaukee Brewers favor two or
three different kinds of sausage sold in the pushcarts outside the stadium.

The hot dogs themselves tend to follow the Chicago style, loaded with mustard, and
pickled vegetables.

In Cincinnati, where the Cincinnati Reds play, there is a competitor in Cincinnati

chili. Invented by Macedonian immigrants, it includes spaghetti as its base, chili
with a Mediterranean-inspired spice mix, and cheddar cheese; the chili itself is
often a topping for local hot dogs at games.

In the Midwest and especially Minnesota,[151] the tradition of the church potluck
is a gathering where local foods reign, and has been since the era of the frontier;
pioneers often needed to pool resources to have a celebration in the 19th century
and that simply never changed.[152]

Nowhere is this more clear than with the hotdish, a type of casserole believed to
have derived from a Norwegian recipe, it is usually topped with potatoes or tater
tots.[153] Next to the hotdish at potlucks usually glorified rice is found, a kind
of rice pudding mixed with crushed pineapple and maraschino cherries. Next to that
is the booyah, a thick soup made of meat, vegetables, and seasonings that is meant
to simmer on the stove for up to two days.

Lefse, traditionally a Scandinavian flatbread, has been handed down to descendants

for over a hundred years and is common on the table. Behind that is venison, a
popular meat around the Great Lakes and often eaten as steaks, sandwiches, and
crown roasts for special events.[154][155] Within Wisconsin, Minnesota and the
Dakotas, tiger meat, a dish similar to steak tartare, is common.

Last on the table are the dessert bars and brownies, created originally in 1898 in
Chicago, now a global food and international favorite.[156]

Booyah, a popular chunky stew of the Midwest that is often served to large numbers
of people
Further South, barbecue has its own style in places in Kansas and St. Louis
different from the South and American West. Kansas City and St. Louis were and are
important hubs for the railroad that connected the plains with the Great Lakes and
cities farther east, like Philadelphia.[157]

At the turn of the 19th century, the St. Louis area, Omaha, and Kansas City had
huge stockyards, waystations for cattle and pigs on their way East to the cities of
the coast and North to the Great Lakes.[158][159] They all had large growing
immigrant and migrant populations from Europe and the South respectively, so the
region has developed unique styles of barbecue.

St. Louis-style barbecue favors a heavy emphasis on a sticky sweet barbecue sauce.
Its standbys include the pork steak, a cut taken from the shoulder of the pig,
grilled then slowly stewed in a pan over charcoal; crispy snoots, a cut from the
cheek and nose of the pig that is fried up like cracklins and eaten dipped in
sauce; pork spare ribs; and a mix of either beer-boiled bratwurst or grilled
Italian sausage, flavored with fennel.

Dessert is usually something like gooey butter cake, invented in the city in the
1930s.

Kansas City-style barbecue uses several different kinds of meat, more than most
styles of American barbecue—turkey, mutton, pork, and beef to name a few—but is
distinct from St. Louis in that the barbecue sauce adds molasses in with the
tomato-based recipe and typically has a more tart taste.

Traditionally, Kansas City uses a low-and-slow method of smoking the meat in

addition to just stewing it in the sauce. It also favors using hickory wood for
smoking and continual watering or layering of the sauce while cooking to form a
glaze; with burnt ends this step is necessary to create the "bark" or charred outer
layer of the brisket.

Southern United States

Chicken and waffles

Nashville hot chicken with potato salad

Sweet tea
Main article: Cuisine of the Southern United States
When referring to the American South as a region, typically it should indicate
Southern Maryland and the states that were once part of the Old Confederacy, with
the dividing line between the East and West jackknifing about 100 miles west of
Dallas, Texas, and mostly south of the old Mason–Dixon line. Cities found in this
area include New Orleans, Atlanta, Washington, D.C., Memphis, Charleston, and
Charlotte with Houston, Texas being the largest. The Florida Panhandle is usually
considered part of the South, but the peninsula (especially its lower half) is not.

These states are much more closely tied to each other and have been part of US
territory for much longer than states much farther west than East Texas, and in the
case of food, the influences and cooking styles are strictly separated as the
terrain begins to change to prairie and desert from bayou and hardwood forest.

Peach cobbler is a popular Southern dessert.

This section of the country has some of the oldest known foodways in the land, with
some recipes almost 400 years old.

Native American influences are still quite visible in the use of cornmeal as an
essential staple[160] and found in the Southern predilection for hunting wild game,
in particular wild turkey, deer, woodcock, and various kinds of waterfowl; for
example, coastal North Carolina is a place where hunters will seek tundra swan as a
part of Christmas dinner; the original English and Scottish settlers would have
rejoiced at this revelation owing to the fact that such was banned amongst the
commoner class in what is now the United Kingdom, and naturally, their descendants
have not forgotten.[161][162]

Native Americans also consumed turtles and catfish, specifically the snapping
turtle, the alligator snapping turtle, and blue catfish. Catfish are often caught
with one's bare hands, gutted, breaded, and fried to make a Southern variation on
English fish and chips and turtles are turned into stews and soups.[163][164]

Native American tribes of the region such as the Cherokee or Choctaw often
cultivated or gathered local plants like pawpaw, maypop and several sorts of
squashes and corn as food.[165] They also used spicebush[166] and sassafras as
spices,[167] and the aforementioned fruits are still cultivated as food in the
South.[168]

Maize is to this day found in dishes for breakfast, lunch and dinner in the form of
grits, hoecakes, baked cornbread, and spoonbread, and nuts like the hickory, black
walnut and pecan are commonly included in desserts and pastries as varied as mince
pies, pecan pie, pecan rolls and honey buns (both are types of sticky bun), and
quick breads, which were themselves invented in the South during the American Civil
War.

Peaches have been grown in this region since the 17th century and are a staple crop
as well as a favorite fruit, with peach cobbler being a signature dessert.

Early history
European influence began soon after the settlement of Jamestown in 1607 and the
earliest recipes emerged by the end of the 17th century. Specific influences from
Europe were quite varied, and remain traditional and essential to the modern
cookery overall.

German speakers often settled in the Piedmont on small farms from the coast, and
invented an American delicacy that is now nationally beloved, apple butter, based
on their recipe for apfelkraut, and later they introduced red cabbage and rye.

From the British Isles, an enormous amount of influence was bestowed upon the
South, specifically foodways found in 17th- and 18th-century Ulster, the
borderlands between England and Scotland, the Scottish Highlands, portions of
Wales, the West Midlands and Black Country. Settlers bound for America fled the
tumult of the Civil War, Ulster and the Highland Clearances.

Often ships' manifests show their belongings nearly always included cookpots or
bakestones and seed stock for plants like peaches, plums, and apples to grow
orchards which they planted in their hundreds. Each group brought foods and ideas
from their respective regions.
Settlers from Ireland and Scotland were well known for creating peatreak and
poitín, strong hard liquor based on fermenting potatoes or barley. In time they
came up with a method for distilling a corn mash with added sugar and aging in
charred barrels made of select hardwoods, which created a whiskey with a high
proof. This gave birth to American whiskey and Kentucky bourbon, and its cousins
moonshine and Everclear.

Closer to the coast, 18th-century recipes for English trifle turned into tipsy
cakes, replacing the sherry with whiskey and their recipe for pound cake, brought
to the South around the same time, still works with American baking units: 1 pound
sugar, one pound eggs, one pound butter, one pound flour.

Common features

Biscuits and gravy

Pork is the popular choice in 80% of Southern style barbecue and features in other
preparations like sausages and sandwiches. For most Southerners in the antebellum
period, corn and pork were staples of the diet.[79] Country sausage is an
ingredient in the Southern breakfast dish of biscuits and gravy. Country ham is
often served for breakfast and cured with salt or sugar and hickory-smoked.[169]

Accompanying many meals is the southern style fluffy biscuit, where the leavening
agent is baking soda and often includes buttermilk, and for breakfast they often
accompany country ham, grits, and scrambled eggs.

Desserts

Sweet potato pie

Desserts in the South tend to be quite rich and very much a legacy of entertaining
to impress guests, since a Southern housewife was (and to a degree still is)
expected to show her hospitality by laying out as impressive a banquet as she is
able to manage.[170]

Desserts are vast and encompass Lane cake, sweet potato pie, peach cobbler, pecan
pie, hummingbird cake, Jefferson Davis pie, peanut brittle, coconut cake, apple
fritters, peanut cookies, Moravian spice cookies, chess pie, doberge cake, Lady
Baltimore cake, bourbon balls, and caramel cake.

American style sponge cakes tend to be the rule rather than the exception as is
American-style buttercream, a place where Southern baking intersects with the rest
of the United States. Nuts like pecan and hickory tend to be revered as garnishes
for these desserts, and make their way into local bakeries as fillings for
chocolates.

Cajun and Creole Cuisine of Louisiana

Shrimp gumbo is a popular Cajun and Creole dish.

In Louisiana, cooking methods have more in common with rustic French cuisines of
the 17th and 18th century than anything ever found at the French court in
Versailles or the bistros of 19th- and 20th-century Paris; this is especially true
of Cajun cuisine.

Cajun French is more closely related to dialects spoken in Northern Maine, New
Brunswick, and to a lesser degree Haiti than anything spoken in modern France, and
likewise their terminology, methodology, and culture concerning food is much more
closely related to the styles of these former French colonies even today.

Unlike other areas of the South, Cajuns were and still are largely Catholics and
thus much of what they eat is seasonal; for example pork is an important component
of the Cajun boucherie (a large community event where the hog is butchered,
prepared with a fiery spice mix, and eaten snout to tail) but it is never consumed
in the five weeks of Lent, when such would be forbidden.

Cajun cuisine tends to focus on what is locally available, historically because

Cajuns were often poor, illiterate, independent farmers and not plantation owners
but today it is because such is deeply imbedded in local culture.

Boudin is a type of sausage found only in this area of the country, and it is often
by far more spicy than anything found in France or Belgium. Chaudin is unique to
the area, and the method of cooking is comparable to the Scottish dish haggis: the
stuffing includes onions, rice, bell peppers, spices, and pork sewn up in the
stomach of a pig, and served in slices piping hot.

Crayfish are a staple of the Cajun grandmother's cookpot, as they are abundant in
the bayous of Southern Louisiana and a main source of livelihood, as are blue
crabs, shrimp, corn on the cob, and red potatoes, since these are the basic
ingredients of the Louisiana crawfish boil.

Dishes typical of Louisiana Creole cuisine

New Orleans has been the capital of Creole culture since before Louisiana was a
state. This culture is that of the colonial French and Spanish that evolved in the
city of New Orleans, which was and still is quite distinct from the rural culture
of Cajuns and dovetails with what would have been eaten in antebellum Louisiana
plantation culture long ago.

Cooking to impress and show one's wealth was a staple of Creole culture, which
often mixed French, Spanish, Italian, German, African, Caribbean and Native
American cooking methods, producing rich dishes like oysters bienville, pompano en
papillote, and even the muffaletta sandwich.

However, Louisiana Creole cuisine tends to diverge from the original ideas brought
to the region in ingredients: profiteroles, for example, use a near identical choux
pastry to that which is found in modern Paris but often use vanilla or chocolate
ice cream rather than custard as the filling, pralines nearly always use pecan and
not almonds, and bananas foster came about when New Orleans was a key port for the
import of bananas from the Caribbean Sea.[171]

Gumbos tend to be thickened with okra, or the leaves of the sassafrass tree.
Andouille is often used, but not the andouille currently known in France, since
French andouille uses tripe whereas Louisiana andouille is made from a Boston butt,
usually inflected with pepper flakes, and smoked for hours over pecan wood.

Other ingredients that are native to Louisiana and not found in the cuisine of
modern France would include rice, which has been a staple of both Creole and Cajun
cooking for generations, and sugarcane, which has been grown in Louisiana since the
early 1800s.[172]

The maypop plant

Ground cayenne pepper is a key spice of the region, as is the meat of the American
alligator, something settlers learned from the Choctaws and Houma. The maypop plant
has been a favorite of Southerners for 350 years; it gives its name to the Ocoee
River in Tennessee, a legacy of the Cherokees, and in Southern Louisiana it is
known as liane de grenade, indicating its consumption by Cajuns. It is a close
relative of the commercial passionfruit, similar in size, and is a common plant
growing in gardens all over the South as a source of fresh summertime fruit.
African American influences
West African influences came with slaves from Ghana, Benin, Mali, Congo, Angola,
Sierra Leone, Nigeria, and other portions of the Gold Coast, and the mark Africans
and their descendants, the African Americans, have made on Southern food is strong
today and an essential addition to the Southern table.

Crops like okra, sorghum, sesame seeds, eggplant, and many different kinds of
melons were brought with them from West Africa along with the incredibly important
introduction of rice to the Carolinas and later to Texas and Louisiana, whence it
became a staple grain of the region and still remains a staple today, found in
dishes like Hoppin John, purloo, and Charleston red rice.

Like the poorer indentured servants that came to the South, slaves often got the
leftovers of what was slaughtered for the consumption of the master of the
plantation and so many recipes had to be adapted for offal, like pig's ears and
fatbacks[173] though other methods encouraged low and slow methods of cooking to
tenderize the tougher cuts of meat, like braising, smoking, and pit roasting, the
last of which was a method known to West Africans in the preparation of roasting
goat.[174]

Peanut soup is one of the oldest known recipes brought to Virginia by Africans and
over time, through their descendants, it has become creamier and milder tasting
than the original.[175]

Florida cuisine
Certain portions of the South often have their own distinct subtypes of cuisine
owing to local history and landscape. Floridian cuisine, for example, has a
distinct way of cooking that includes different ingredients, especially south of
Tampa and Orlando.

Spain had control of the state until the early 19th century and used the southern
tip as an outpost to guard the Spanish Main beginning in the 1500s, but Florida
kept and still maintains ties with the Caribbean Sea, including the Bahamas Haiti,
Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Jamaica.

South of Tampa, there are and have been for a long time many speakers of Caribbean
Spanish, Haitian French, Jamaican Patois, and Haitian Creole and each Caribbean
culture has a strong hold on cooking methods and spices in Florida. In turn, each
mixes and matches with the foodways of the Seminole tribe and Anglophone settlers.
Thus, for almost 200 years, Floridian cooking has had a more tropical flavor than
any other Southern state.

Allspice, a spice originally from Jamaica, is an ingredient found in spice mixes in

summer barbecues along with ginger, garlic, scotch bonnet peppers, sea salt, and
nutmeg; in Floridian cooking this is often a variant of Jamaican jerk spice.
Coconuts are grown in the areas surrounding Miami and are shipped in daily through
its port for consumption of the milk, meat, and water of the coconut.

Bananas are not just the yellow Cavendish variety found in supermarkets across
America: in Florida they are available as bananitos, colorados, plátanos, and
maduros. The first of these is a tiny miniature banana only about 4-5 inches (10–13
cm) in length and it is sweet. The second has a red peel and an apple-like
aftertaste, and the third and fourth are used as a starch on nearly every Caribbean
island as a side dish, baked or fried: all of the above are a staple of Florida
outdoor markets when in season and all have been grown in the Caribbean for almost
400 years.

Mangoes are grown as a backyard plant in Southern Florida and otherwise are a
favorite treat coming in many different shapes in sizes from Nam Doc Mai, brought
to Florida after the Vietnam War, to Madame Francis, a mango from Haiti. Sweetsop
and soursop are popular around Miami, but nearly unheard of in other areas of the
South.

Citrus is a major crop of Florida, and features at many breakfast tables and many
markets, with the height of the season near the first week of January. Hamlin
oranges are the main cultivar planted, and from this crop the rest of the United
States and to a lesser extent Europe gets orange juice. Other plantings would
include grapefruits, tangerines, clementine oranges, limes, and even a few more
rare ones, like cara cara navels, tangelos, and the Jamaican Ugli fruit. Tomatoes,
bell peppers, habanero peppers, and figs, especially taken from the Florida
strangler fig, complete the produce menu.

Blue crab, conch, Florida stone crab, red drum, dorado, and marlins tend to be
local favorite ingredients. Dairy is available in this region, but it is less
emphasized due to the year round warmth.

Traditional key lime pie, a dessert from the islands off the coast of Miami, is
made with condensed milk to form the custard with the eye wateringly tart limes
native to the Florida Keys in part because milk would spoil in an age before
refrigeration.

Pork in this region tends to be roasted in methods similar to those found in Puerto
Rico and Cuba, owing to mass emigration from those countries in the 20th century,
especially in the counties surrounding Miami.[176]

Orange blossom honey is a specialty of the state, and is widely available in

farmer's markets.[177] Caribbean lobster is a favorite special meal eagerly sought
after by Floridians as it is found as far north as Fort Myers: spear diving and
collecting them from reefs in the Florida Keys and near rocky shoals is a common
practice of local scuba divers.[178]

Other small game

Ptarmigan, grouse, crow blackbirds, dove, ducks and other game fowl are consumed in
the United States. In the American state of Arkansas, beaver tail stew is consumed
in Cotton town.[179] Squirrel, raccoon, possum, bear, muskrat, chipmunk, skunk,
groundhog, pheasant, armadillo and rabbit are also consumed in the United States.

Cuisine in the West

Main article: Cuisine of the Western United States
Cooking in the American West gets its influence from Native American and
Hispanophone cultures, as well as later settlers that came in the 19th century:
Texas, for example, has some influence from Germany in its choice of barbecue by
using sausages.

Another instance can be found in the Northwestern region, which encompasses Oregon,
Washington, and Northern California. All of the aforementioned rely on local
seafood and a few classics of their own.

In New Mexico, Colorado, Nevada, Arizona, Utah, West Texas, and Southern
California, Mexican flavors and influences are extremely common, especially from
the Mexican states of Chihuahua, Baja California, and Sonora.[180][181]

Northwest
The Pacific Northwest as a region includes Alaska and the state of Washington near
the Canada-US border and terminates near Sacramento, California. Here, the terrain
is mostly temperate rainforest on the coast mixed with pine forest as one
approaches the Canada-US border inland.
One of the core favorite foodstuffs is Pacific salmon, native to many of the larger
rivers of the area and often smoked or grilled on cedar planks. In Alaska, wild
game like ptarmigan and moose meat feature extensively since much of the state is
wilderness.

Fresh fish like steelhead trout, Pacific cod, Pacific halibut, and pollock are
fished for extensively and feature on the menu of many restaurants, as do a
plethora of fresh berries and vegetables, like Cameo apples from Washington state,
the headquarters of the U.S. apple industry, cherries from Oregon, blackberries,
and marionberries, a feature of many pies. Hazelnuts are grown extensively in this
region and are a feature of baking, such as in chocolate hazelnut pie, an Oregon
favorite,[182] and Almond Roca is a local candy.

This region is also heavily dominated by some notable wineries producing a high-
quality product.

Like its counterpart on the opposite coast to the East, there is a grand variety of
shellfish in this region. Geoducks are a native species of giant clam that have
incredibly long necks; they are eaten by the bucketful and shipped to Asia for
millions of dollars as they are believed to be an aphrodisiac. Gaper clams are a
favorite food, often grilled or steamed in a sauce.

Native California abalone is protected as a food source, and a traditional foodway

predating settlement by whites, today featuring heavily in the cooking of fine
restaurants as well as in home cooking, in mirin-flavored soups (the influence of
Japanese cooking is strong in the region) noodle dishes and on the barbecue.

Olympia oysters are served on the half shell as well as the Kumamoto oyster,
introduced by Japanese immigrants and a staple at dinner as an appetizer.

California mussels are a delicacy of the region, and have been a feature of the
cooking for generations. There is evidence that Native American tribes consumed
them up and down the California coast for centuries.[citation needed]

Crabs are a delicacy, and included in this are Alaskan king crab, red crab, yellow
crab, and Dungeness crab. Californian and Oregonian sportsmen pursue the last three
extensively using hoop nets, and prepare them in a multitude of ways.

Alaskan king crab, able to get up to 10 kg, is often served steamed for a whole
table with lemon-butter sauce or put in chunks of salad with avocado, and native
crabs are the base of dishes like the California roll, cioppino, a tomato-based
fisherman's stew, and Crab Louie, another kind of salad native to San Francisco.

Favorite grains are mainly wheat, and the region is known for sourdough bread.
Cheeses of the region include Humboldt Fog, Cougar Gold and Teleme.[183]

Southwest and Southern California

Main article: Cuisine of the Southwestern United States

Mixed beef and chicken fajita ingredients, served on a hot iron skillet
The states of the Four Corners (Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, and Utah) plus
Nevada, Southern California, and West Texas make up a large chunk of the United
States.

There is a distinct Hispanic accent to the cookery here, with each having cultural
capitals in Albuquerque, Denver, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix, Santa Fe, San
Diego, and Tucson.

For centuries, prior to California's statehood in the 1850s, it was part of the
Spanish Empire, namely Alta California (modern California), Santa Fe de Nuevo
México (modern New Mexico), and Tejas (modern Texas). Today it is home of a large
population of Native Americans, Hispanos, descendants of the American frontier,
Asian Americans, and immigrants from Mexico and Latin America.

California, New Mexico, and Texas continue to hold their unique identities which is
reflected in their distinct regional cuisines, the multiple cuisines of California,
New Mexican cuisine, Texan cuisine, and Tex-Mex. Spanish is a commonly spoken
secondary language here; the state of New Mexico has its own distinct dialect.[184]

With the exception of Southern California, the signature meat is beef, since this
is one of the two regions in which cowboys lived and modern cattle ranchers still
eke out their living today.[185][186] High-quality beefstock is a feature that has
been present in the region for more than 200 years and the many cuts of beef are
unique to the United States. These cuts of meat are different from the related
Mexican cuisine over the border in that certain kind of offal, like lengua (tongue)
cabeza (head) and tripas (tripe) are considered less desirable and are thus less
emphasized. Typical cuts would include the ribs, brisket, sirloin, flank steak,
skirt steak, and t-bone.

Chili con carne, a typical Tex-Mex dish with garnishes and tortilla chips
Historically, Spanish settlers that came to the region found it completely
unsuitable to the mining operations that much older settlements in Mexico had to
offer as their technology was not advanced enough to extract the silver that would
later be found. They had no knowledge of the gold in California, which wouldn't be
found until 1848, and knew even less about the silver in Nevada, undiscovered until
after the Civil War.

Instead, in order to make the pueblos prosper, they adapted the old rancho system
of places like Andalusia in Spain and brought the earliest beefstock, among these
were breeds that would go feral and become the Texas longhorn, and Navajo-Churro
sheep, still used as breeding stock because they are easy to keep and well adapted
to the extremely arid and hot climate, where temperatures easily exceed 38 °C.[187]

Later, cowboys learned from their management practices, many of which still stand
today, like the practical management of stock on horseback using the Western
saddle.[188]

Biscochitos, the state cookie of New Mexico

Likewise, settlers learned the cooking methods of those who came before and local
tribes as well, for example, portions of Arizona and New Mexico still use the
aforementioned beehive shaped clay contraption called an horno, an outdoor wood-
fired oven both Native American tribes like the Navajo and Spaniards used for
roasting meat, maize, and baking bread.[189]

Meats that see frequent use are elk meat, a favorite in crown roasts and burgers,
and nearer the Mexican border rattlesnake, often skinned and stewed.[190][191]

The taste for alcohol tends toward light and clean flavors found in tequila, a
staple of this region since the days of the Wild West and a staple in the
bartender's arsenal for cocktails, especially in Las Vegas. In Utah, a state
heavily populated by Mormons, alcohol is frowned upon by the Church of Jesus Christ
of Latter-day Saints but still available in area bars in Salt Lake City, mainly
consumed by the populations of Catholics and other Protestant denominations living
there.

Introduction of agriculture was limited prior to the 20th century and the
development of better irrigation techniques, but included the addition of peaches,
a crop still celebrated by Native American tribes like the Havasupai,[192] and
oranges. Today in Arizona, Texas, and New Mexico the favored orange today is the
Moro blood orange, which often finds its way into the local cuisine, like cakes and
marmalade.[193][194]

Pine nuts are a particular regional specialty and feature often in fine dining and
cookies; in Nevada the Native American tribes that live there are by treaty given
rights to exclusive harvest, and in New Mexico they reserve usage of the term piñon
for certain species of indigenous pine nuts.[195]

From Native Americans, Westerners learned the practice of eating cactus fruit from
the myriad species of opuntia that occupy the Chihuahuan, Sonoran, and Mojave
desert lands. In California, Spanish missionaries brought with them the mission
fig, and today this fruit is a delicacy.

New Mexico green chile is a staple of New Mexican cuisine.

Cuisine in this region tends to have certain key ingredients: tomatoes, onions,
black beans, pinto beans, rice, bell peppers, chile peppers, and cheese, in
particular Monterey Jack, invented in Southern California in the 19th century and
itself often further altered into pepper Jack where spicy jalapeño peppers are
incorporated into the cheese to create a smoky taste.

Chili peppers play an important role in the cuisine, with a few native to the
region. This is especially true with the region's distinct New Mexico chile pepper,
still grown by Hispanos of New Mexico and Puebloans the most sought after of which
come from the Hatch valley, Albuquerque's Central Rio Grande, Chimayo, and Pueblos.

In New Mexico, chile is eaten on a variety of foods, such as the green chile
cheeseburger, made popular by fast food chains such as Blake's Lotaburger. Indeed,
even national fast food chains operating in the state, such as McDonald's, offer
locally grown chile on many of their menu items.

In the 20th century a few more recent additions have arrived like the poblano
pepper, rocoto pepper, ghost pepper, thai chili pepper, and Korean pepper, the last
three especially when discussing Southern California and its large population from
East and South Asia.[196][197]

Cornbread is consumed, however the recipe differs from ones in the East in that the
batter is cooked in a cast-iron skillet.

Outdoor cooking is popular and still utilizes an old method settlers brought from
the East with them, in which a cast-iron Dutch oven is covered with the coals of
the fire and stacked or hung from a tripod: this is different from the earthenware
pots of Mexico.

Tortillas are still made the traditional way here and form an important component
of the spicy breakfast burrito, which contains ham, eggs, and salsa or pico de
gallo. They are also used for regular burritos, which contains any combination of
marinated meats, vegetables, and piquant chilis; smothered burritos, often both
containing and topped with New Mexico chile sauces; quesadillas, a much loved
grilled dish where cheese and other ingredients are stuffed between two tortillas
and served by the slice; and steak fajitas, where sliced skirt steak sizzles in a
skillet with caramelized onions.

Nachos with cheese

Unlike Mexico, tortillas of this region also may incorporate vegetables like
spinach into the flatbread dough to make wraps, which were invented in Southern
California. Food here tends to use pungent spices and condiments, typically chili
verde sauce, various kinds of hot sauce, sriracha sauce, chili powder, cayenne
pepper, white pepper, cumin, paprika, onion powder, thyme and black pepper. Nowhere
is this fiery mix of spice more evident than in the dishes chili con carne, a meaty
stew, and cowboy beans, both of which are a feature of regional cookoffs.

Southern California has several additions like five spice powder, rosemary, curry
powder, kimchi, and lemongrass, with many of these brought by recent immigration to
the region and often a feature of Southern California's fusion cuisine, popular in
fine dining.[citation needed]

In Texas, the local barbecue is often entirely made up of beef brisket or large rib
racks, where the meat is seasoned with a spice rub and cooked over coals of
mesquite. In other portions of the state they smoke the meat and peppery sausages
over high heat using pecan, apple, and oak wood and serve it with a side of pickled
vegetables, a legacy of German and Czech settlers of the late 1800s.

California is home to Santa Maria-style barbecue, where the spices involved

generally are black pepper, paprika, and garlic salt, and grill over the coals of
coast live oak.[citation needed]

A chimichanga
Native American additions may include Navajo frybread and corn on the cob, often
roasted on the grill in its husk. A typical accompaniment or appetizer of all these
states is the tortilla chip, which sometimes includes cornmeal from cultivars of
corn that are blue or red in addition to the standard yellow of sweetcorn, and is
served with salsa of varying hotness.

Tortilla chips also are an ingredient in the Tex Mex dish nachos, where these chips
are loaded with any combination of ground beef, melted Monterey Jack, cheddar, or
Colby cheese, guacamole, sour cream, and salsa, and Texas usually prefers a version
of potato salad as a side dish.

For alcohol, a key ingredient is tequila: this spirit has been made on both sides
of the US-Mexican border for generations,[198] and in modern cuisine it is a must-
have in a bartender's arsenal as well as an addition to dishes for sauteeing.[199]

Southern California is focused more towards the coast and has had more contact with
immigration from the West Pacific and Baja California, in addition to having the
international city of Los Angeles as its capital. Here, the prime mode of
transportation is by car.

Drive through fast food was invented in this area, but so was the concept of the
gourmet burger movement, giving birth to chains like In-N-Out Burger, with many
variations of burgers including chili, multiple patties, avocado, special sauces,
and Angus or wagyu beef. Common accompaniments include thick milkshakes in various
flavors like mint, chocolate, peanut butter, vanilla, strawberry, and mango.

Smoothies are a common breakfast item made with fresh fruit juice, yogurt, and
crushed ice. Agua fresca, a drink originated by Mexican immigrants, is a common
hot-weather beverage sold in many supermarkets and at mom and pop stands, available
in citrus, watermelon, and strawberry flavors; the California version usually
served chilled without grain in it.

Machaca with pork, eggs, and potatoes wrapped in a tortilla, served with salsa
The weather in Southern California is such that the temperature rarely drops below
54 °F in winter, thus, sun-loving crops like pistachios, kiwifruit, avocadoes,
strawberries, and tomatoes are staple crops of the region, the last often dried in
the sun and a feature of salads and sandwiches.

Olive oil is a staple cooking oil of the region and has been since the days of
Junípero Serra; today the mission olive is a common tree growing in a Southern
Californian's back garden. As a crop olives are increasingly a signature of the
region along with Valencia oranges and Meyer lemons.

Soybeans, bok choy, Japanese persimmon, thai basil, Napa cabbage, nori, mandarin
oranges, water chestnuts, and mung beans are other crops brought to the region from
East Asia and are common additions to salads as the emphasis on fresh produce in
both Southern and Northern California is strong.

Other vegetables and herbs have a distinct Mediterranean flavor which would include
oregano, basil, summer squash, eggplant, and broccoli, with all of the above
extensively available at farmers' markets all around Southern California.

Naturally, salads native to Southern California tend to be hearty affairs, like

Cobb salad and Chinese chicken salad, and dressings like green goddess and ranch
are a staple.

California-style pizza tends to have disparate ingredients with an emphasis on

vegetables, with any combination of chili oil, prawns, eggs, chicken, shiitake
mushrooms, olives, bell pepper, goat cheese, and feta cheese. Peanut noodles tend
to include a sweet dressing with lo mein noodles and chopped peanuts.

Fresh fish and shellfish in Southern California tends to be expensive in

restaurants, but every year since the end of WWII, the Pismo clam festival has
taken place where the local population takes a large species of clam and bakes,
stuffs, and roasts it as it is a regional delicacy.[200][201]

Fishing for pacific species of octopus and the Humboldt squid are common, and both
are a feature of East Asian and other L.A. fish markets.[202][203][204] Lingcod is
a coveted regional fish that is often caught in the autumn off the coast of San
Diego and in the Channel Islands and often served baked. California sheephead are
often grilled and are much sought after by spear fishermen and the immigrant
Chinese population, in which case it is basket steamed.

Most revered of all in recent years is the California spiny lobster, a beast that
can grow to 44 lb, and is a delicacy that now rivals the fishery for Dungeness crab
in its importance.[205]

Pacific and Hawaiian cuisine

Main article: Cuisine of Hawaii

Lomi-lomi salmon
Hawaii is often considered to be one of the most culturally diverse U.S. states, as
well as being the only state with an Asian-majority population and one of the few
places where United States territory extends into the tropics. As a result,
Hawaiian cuisine borrows elements of a variety of cuisines, particularly those of
Asian and Pacific-rim cultures, as well as traditional native Hawaiian and a few
additions from the American mainland.

American influence in the last 150 years has brought cattle, goats, and sheep to
the islands, introducing cheese, butter, and yogurt products, as well as crops like
red cabbage.

Major Asian and Polynesian influences on modern Hawaiian cuisine are from Japan,
Korea, Vietnam, China (especially near the Pearl River delta,) Samoa, and the
Philippines. From Japan, the concept of serving raw fish as a meal with rice was
introduced, as was soft tofu, setting the stage for the popular dish called poke.

From Korea, immigrants to Hawaii brought a love of spicy garlic marinades for meat
and kimchi. From China, their version of char siu baau became modern manapua, a
type of steamed pork bun with a spicy filling.[206]

Filipinos brought vinegar, bagoong, and lumpia, and during the 20th century
immigrants from American Samoa brought the open pit fire umu[207] and the
Vietnamese introduced lemongrass and fish sauce.

Each East Asian culture brought several different kinds of noodles, including udon,
ramen, mei fun, and pho, and today these are common lunchtime meals.[208]

Much of this cuisine mixes and melts into traditions like the lu'au, whose
traditional elaborate fare was once the prerogative of kings and queens but is
today the subject of parties for both tourists and also private parties for the
‘ohana (meaning family and close friends.)

Traditionally, women and men ate separately under the Hawaiian kapu system, a
system of religious beliefs that honored the Hawaiian gods similar to the Maori
tapu system, though in this case had some specific prohibitions towards females
eating things like coconut, pork, turtle meat, and bananas as these were considered
parts of the male gods. Punishment for violation could be severe, as a woman might
endanger a man's mana, or soul, by eating with him or otherwise by eating the
forbidden food because doing so dishonored the male gods.

As the system broke down after 1810, introductions of foods from laborers on
plantations began to be included at feasts and much cross pollination occurred,
where Asian foodstuffs mixed with Polynesian foodstuffs like breadfruit, kukui
nuts, and purple sweet potatoes.

Some notable Hawaiian fare includes seared ahi tuna, opakapaka (snapper) with
passionfruit, Hawaiian island-raised lamb, beef and meat products, Hawaiian plate
lunch, and Molokai shrimp. Seafood traditionally is caught fresh in Hawaiian
waters, and particular delicacies are ula poni, papaikualoa, ‘opihi, and ‘opihi
malihini, better known as Hawaiian spiny lobster, Kona crab, Hawaiian limpet, and
abalone, the last brought over with Japanese immigrants.[209]

Some cuisine also incorporates a broad variety of produce and locally grown
agricultural products, including tomatoes, sweet Maui onions, taro, and macadamia
nuts. Tropical fruits also play an important role in the cuisine as a flavoring in
cocktails and in desserts, including local cultivars of bananas, sweetsop, mangoes,
lychee, coconuts, papayas, and lilikoi (passionfruit). Pineapples have been an
island staple since the 19th century and figure into many marinades and drinks.

Common dishes found on a regional level

See also: List of American regional and fusion cuisines

Chicken, pork and corn cooking in a barbecue smoker

New York–style pizza served at a pizzeria in New York

Chicago-style deep-dish pizza from the original Giordano's location

A Philly cheesesteak from Pat’s King of Steaks in Philadelphia

Key lime pie is from Key West, Florida

Memphis-style barbecue

California-style pizza

Ethnicity-specific and immigrant influence

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Fried fish and french fries in San Diego, California

The influence of ethnicity-specific cuisines like Italian cuisine and Mexican
cuisine was present in the United States by World War I. There are recipes for
Chilean meat pies, chicken chop suey, chow mein, Mexican pork pastries and Italian
meatballs going back to at least the 1930s, but many of the recipes were Anglicized
and they appeared relatively infrequently compared to Northern European recipes.
[210]

19th-century cookbooks bear evidence of diverse influences with some including

recipes like Indian pickle, Italian pork and various curries. 19th-century
literature shows knowledge of Jewish, Russian, Italian, Chinese and Greek-American
cuisines, and foreign cookbooks continued to grow more detailed through World War I
including recipes like Peruvian chicken, Mexican enchiladas, Chilean corn pudding
and Hindustan chicken curry.[211]

Louise Rice, author of Dainty Dishes from Foreign Lands describes the recipes in
her book as "not wholly vegetarian" though noting at the time of publication in
1911 that most of the recipes would likely be new to average American cooks and
likely contain higher proportions of vegetables to meat. She includes Italian pasta
recipes like macaroni in milk, soups and polentas and German recipes like liver
dumplings called Leberknödel and a variation of Sauerbraten.[212]

The demand for ethnic foods in the United States reflects the nation's changing
diversity as well as its development over time. According to the National
Restaurant Association,[213]

Restaurant industry sales are expected to reach a record high of $476 billion in
2005, an increase of 4.9 percent over 2004... Driven by consumer demand, the ethnic
food market reached record sales in 2002, and has emerged as the fastest growing
category in the food and beverage product sector, according to USBX Advisory
Services. Minorities in the U.S. spend a combined $142 billion on food and by 2010,
America's ethnic population is expected to grow by 40 percent.

Korean tacos from the "Seoul on Wheels" truck in San Francisco

A movement began during the 1980s among popular leading chefs to reclaim America's
ethnic foods within its regional traditions, where these trends originated. One of
the earliest was Paul Prudhomme, who in 1984 began the introduction of his
influential cookbook, Paul Prodhomme's Louisiana Kitchen, by describing the over
200-year history of Creole and Cajun cooking; he aims to "preserve and expand the
Louisiana tradition."[214] Prodhomme's success quickly inspired other chefs. Norman
Van Aken embraced a Floridian type cuisine fused with many ethnic and globalized
elements in his Feast of Sunlight cookbook in 1988. California became swept up in
the movement, then seemingly started to lead the trend itself, in, for example, the
popular restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley.

Examples of the Chez Panisse phenomenon, chefs who embraced a new globalized
cuisine, were celebrity chefs like Jeremiah Tower and Wolfgang Puck, both former
colleagues at the restaurant. Puck went on to describe his belief in contemporary,
new style American cuisine in the introduction to The Wolfgang Puck Cookbook:

Another major breakthrough, whose originators were once thought to be crazy, is the
mixing of ethnic cuisines. It is not at all uncommon to find raw fish listed next
to tortillas on the same menu. Ethnic crossovers also occur when distinct elements
meet in a single recipe. This country is, after all, a huge melting pot. Why should
its cooking not illustrate the American transformation of diversity into unity?
[215]

Puck's former colleague, Jeremiah Tower became synonymous with California Cuisine
and the overall American culinary revolution. Meanwhile, the restaurant that
inspired both Puck and Tower became a distinguished establishment, popularizing its
so called "mantra" in its book by Paul Bertolli and owner Alice Waters, Chez
Panisse Cooking, in 1988. Published well after the restaurants' founding in 1971,
this new cookbook from the restaurant seemed to perfect the idea and philosophy
that had developed over the years. The book embraced America's natural bounty,
specifically that of California, while containing recipes that reflected Bertoli
and Waters' appreciation of both northern Italian and French style foods.

Early ethnic influences

Adaptation of Mexican food tailored for the mainstream American market usually is
different from Mexican food typically served in Mexico.
While the earliest cuisine of the United States was influenced by Native Americans,
the thirteen colonies, or the antebellum South, the overall culture of the nation,
its gastronomy and the growing culinary arts became ever more influenced by its
changing ethnic mix and immigrant patterns from the 18th and 19th centuries unto
the present. Some of the ethnic groups that continued to influence the cuisine were
here in prior years; others arrived more numerously during "The Great Transatlantic
Migration" (of 1870–1914) or other mass migrations.

Some of the ethnic influences could be found across the nation after the American
Civil War and into the continental expansion for most of the 19th century. Ethnic
influences already in the nation at that time would include the following groups
and their respective cuisines:

Select nationalities of Europe and the respective developments from early modern
European cuisine of the colonial age:
British-Americans and on-going developments in New England cuisine, the national
traditions founded in the cuisine of the original thirteen colonies, and some
aspects of other regional cuisine.
Spanish Americans and early modern Spanish cuisine, as well as Basque-Americans and
Basque cuisine.
Early German-American or Pennsylvania Dutch and Pennsylvania Dutch cuisine
French Americans and their New World regional identities such as:
Acadian
Cajun and Cajun cuisine
Louisiana Creole and Louisiana Creole cuisine. Louisiana Creole (also called French
Créole) refers to native-born people of the New Orleans area who are descended from
the Colonial French and Spanish settlers of Colonial French Louisiana, before it
became part of the United States in 1803 with the Louisiana Purchase.
The various ethnicities originating from the early gastronomy and cuisines of the
New World, Latin American cuisine, and North American cuisine:
Native Americans in the United States and Native American cuisine
African Americans and Soul food.
Puerto Rican cuisine
Mexican Americans and Mexican-American cuisine; as well as related regional
cuisines:
Tex-Mex (regional Texas and Mexican fusion)
Some aspects of "Southwestern cuisine".
New Mexican cuisine from New Mexico and the historical region of Santa Fe de Nuevo
México, and now ethnically tied to the Pueblos and Hispanos of New Mexico.
Later ethnic and immigrant influence
Main article: Immigration to the United States
Mass migrations of immigrants to the United States came over time. Historians
identify several waves of migration to the United States: one from 1815 to 1860, in
which some five million English, Irish, Germanic, Scandinavian, and others from
northwestern Europe came to the United States; one from 1865 to 1890, in which some
10 million immigrants, also mainly from northwestern Europe, settled; and a third
from 1890 to 1914, in which 15 million immigrants, mainly from central, eastern,
and southern Europe (many Austrian, Hungarian, Turkish, Lithuanian, Russian,
Jewish, Greek, Italian, and Romanian) settled in the United States.[216]

Together with earlier arrivals to the United States (including the indigenous
Native Americans, Hispanic and Latino Americans, particularly in the West,
Southwest, and Texas; African Americans who came to the United States in the
Atlantic slave trade; and early colonial migrants from Europe), these new waves of
immigrants had a profound impact on national or regional cuisine. Some of these
more prominent groups include the following:

Arab Americans, particularly Lebanese Americans (the largest ethnic Arab group in
the United States)—Arab cuisine, Lebanese cuisine
Chinese Americans—American Chinese cuisine, Chinese cuisine
Cuban Americans—Cuban cuisine
Dominican Americans—Dominican Republic cuisine
Ethiopian Americans—Eritrean Americans: Ethiopian cuisine, Eritrean cuisine in Los
Angeles, Washington, D.C., Denver, New York.
German Americans—German cuisine (the Pennsylvania Dutch, although descended from
Germans, arrived earlier than the bulk of German migrants and have distinct
culinary traditions)
Greek Americans—Greek-American cuisine, Greek cuisine, Mediterranean cuisine
Haitian Americans—Haitian cuisine
Hungarian Americans—Hungarian cuisine
Indian Americans—Indian cuisine
Irish Americans—Irish cuisine
Italian Americans—Italian-American cuisine, Italian cuisine
Japanese Americans—Japanese cuisine, with influences on the Hawaiian cuisine
Jewish Americans—Jewish cuisine, with particular influence on New York City cuisine
Korean Americans—Korean cuisine, with significant influence during the Korean War
Lithuanian Americans—Lithuanian cuisine, Midwest
Nicaraguan American—Nicaraguan cuisine
Pakistani Americans—Pakistani cuisine
Polish Americans—Polish cuisine, with particular impact on Midwest
Polynesian Americans—Hawaiian cuisine
Portuguese Americans—Portuguese cuisine
Romanian Americans—Romanian cuisine
Russian Americans—Russian cuisine, with particular impact on Midwest
Salvadoran Americans—Salvadoran cuisine
Scottish Americans—Scottish cuisine
Thai Americans—Thai cuisine
Turkish Americans—Turkish cuisine, Balkan cuisine
Vietnamese Americans—Vietnamese cuisine
West Indian Americans—Caribbean cuisine, Jamaican cuisine, Trinidad and Tobago
cuisine
Italian, Mexican and Chinese (Cantonese) cuisines have indeed joined the
mainstream. These three cuisines have become so ingrained in the American culture
that they are no longer foreign to the American palate. According to the study,
more than nine out of 10 consumers are familiar with and have tried these foods,
and about half report eating them frequently. The research also indicates that
Italian, Mexican and Chinese (Cantonese) have become so adapted to such an extent
that "authenticity" is no longer a concern to customers.[217]

Contributions from these ethnic foods have become as common as traditional

"American" fares such as hot dogs, hamburgers, beef steak, which are derived from
German cuisine, (chicken-fried steak, for example, is a variation on German
schnitzel), cherry pie, Coca-Cola, milkshakes, fried chicken (Fried chicken is of
English, Scottish, and African influence), Pepsi, Dr Pepper and so on. Nowadays,
Americans also have a ubiquitous consumption of foods like pizza and pasta, tacos
and burritos to "General Tso's chicken" and fortune cookies. Fascination with these
and other ethnic foods may also vary with region.

Notable American chefs

See also: List of chefs
American chefs have been influential both in the food industry and in popular
culture. An important 19th-century American chef was Charles Ranhofer of
Delmonico's Restaurant in New York. American cooking has been exported around the
world, both through the global expansion of restaurant chains such as T.G.I.
Friday's and McDonald's and the efforts of individual restaurateurs such as Bob
Payton, credited with bringing American-style pizza to the UK.[218]

The first generation of television chefs such as Robert Carrier and Julia Child
tended to concentrate on cooking based primarily on European, especially French and
Italian, cuisines. Only during the 1970s and 1980s did television chefs such as
James Beard and Jeff Smith shift the focus towards home-grown cooking styles,
particularly those of the different ethnic groups within the nation. Notable
American restaurant chefs include Thomas Keller, Charlie Trotter, Grant Achatz,
Alfred Portale, Paul Prudhomme, Paul Bertolli, Jonathan Waxman, Mark Peel, Frank
Stitt, Alice Waters, Wolfgang Puck, Patrick O'Connell and celebrity chefs like
Mario Batali, David Chang, Alton Brown, Emeril Lagasse, Cat Cora, Michael Symon,
Bobby Flay, Ina Garten, Todd English, Anthony Bourdain, Guy Fieri, Colonel Sanders
and Paula Deen.

Regional chefs are emerging as localized celebrity chefs with growing broader
appeal, such as Peter Merriman (Hawaii Regional Cuisine), Jerry Traunfeld, Alan
Wong (Pacific Rim cuisine), Rick Bayless traditional Mexican cuisine with modern
interpretations, Norman Van Aken (New World Cuisine – fusion Latin, Caribbean,
Asian, African and American), and Mark Miller (American Southwest cuisine).