Second Biennial Symposium on American Culinary History – Regional and Ethnic Traditions

May 18-20, 2007

The Longone Center for American Culinary Research

William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

FEATURED SPEAKERS: TITLES AND LECTURE SUMMARIES

John T. Edge: “Mouth of the South: The Southern Foodways Alliance at Ten”

In 1998, the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi hosted a symposium on regional food culture. Speakers included anthropologists and cooks, playwrights and preachers. >From those beginnings, the member-supported Southern Foodways Alliance (SFA) has emerged. It's a queer beast, a socially-conscious confab of writers, eaters, chefs, and thinkers, known for documenting the life work of barbecue pitmasters and hosting late-night symposium parties that end when the gendarmes arrive.

John T. Edge, director of the SFA, will sketch its evolution and screen a couple of short films.

 
Marcie Cohen Ferris: “Matzoh Ball Gumbo: Culinary Tales of the Jewish South”

Jews in the South reinvented traditions as they adjusted to living in a largely Christian world, where they were bound by regional rules of race, class, and gender. In a culinary journey through the Jewish South, Arkansas native Marcie Cohen Ferris explores how southern Jews embraced, avoided, and adapted southern food and, in the process, found themselves at home.

Larry B. Massie: “Rubbaboo, Kalamazoo, and Pasties Too: Aspects of Michigan’s Culinary Heritage”

The diverse ethnic groups who people Michigan’s past--ranging from indigenous Americans, steel-sinewed French voyageurs, and intrepid Yankee pioneers to Dutch, German, Irish, Scandinavian, and Italian immigrants—contributed distinct culinary traditions. They interacted with Michigan’s unique natural setting, two majestic peninsulas lapped by more fresh water than any other place on the globe, to create intriguing regional foodways.

This illustrated lecture will explore some of the ways Michiganders have developed a special and alluring cuisine.

Peter Rose: “The Influence of the Dutch on the American Kitchen”

This lecture explores the foodways brought to America by the Dutch more than three centuries ago and the way these foods were adapted to the new circumstances. Slides of 17^th-century Dutch art works depicting various foodstuffs are part of the talk.

Jane and Michael Stern: “America’s Least Fashionable Cuisine: A Road Trip through the Vastly Underappreciated Cuisine of America’s Northeast: Unknown, Disrespected, Hidebound, Inexplicable, Ghastly, and Delicious Foods that Define the Region’s Unique Taste.”

The Northeast’s best-known contribution to American gastronomy is Thanksgiving dinner, the meal of the year most famous as a repository of parochial foodways, even if that means dry turkey, bread stuffing, and bland creamed onions. So it is with Northeast cuisine in general, which has never been and never will be trendy or cutting-edge. And yet, if you travel through the region, you find pockets of culinary character that are colorful, strange, sometimes delicious ( Connecticut’s farmhouse pies), and sometimes a taste that needs to be acquired from childhood ( Maine’s vinegar tripe). In this region – the original melting pot – specialties range from primordial cornmeal jonnycakes to such frivolities as the Whoopie Pie and Grape-Nuts ice cream.

Our talk will cover the deep-rooted common threads of Northeast cooking as well as some of its inexplicable oddities.

Dan Strehl: “Hon-Dah a la Fiesta: the Immigrant cuisines of the American West”

American Indians, Spaniards from Mexico , and New Englanders settled the West and redeveloped their cuisines. The Gold Rush re-mapped the face of California food. Cuisines melded with others, yet maintained their own integrity. Modern waves of immigration have brought new Asian, Mediterranean, and Middle Eastern influences into the mix. A tour from the Sacramento Ladies Kitchen Companion to The Tassajara Bread Book will look at the history of cookbook publishing in California.

Toni Tipton-Martin: “The Jemima Code: A Cook’s View into the Heart, Soul and Recipe Box of a Wise Servant”

American history has been cruel to the African American cook. Much of what is known about her reflects more about the way society viewed her than the way she really was. This presentation examines late 19^th- and early 20^th-century cookbooks and recipes to destroy a myth and find a seat for African American cooks at the long table of Southern food history.

William Woys Weaver: “The Amish as a Symbol of Regional and Ethnic Cuisine”

The Amish have become an icon of Pennsylvania Dutch culture, even though numerically they represent a very small proportion of the total Pennsylvania Dutch population. The blurring of distinctions between things Amish and things Pennsylvania Dutch began in the 1930s as a reaction to events in Europe.

This paper will trace the history of Pennsylvania Dutch foods and how tourism has created mythologies that are now accepted as real. 

Ari Weinzweig, “What’s for Lunch and Why: Artisanal Cheeses in Wisconsin”

This talk will offer a short but sharp introduction to Wisconsin artisanal cheeses as a segue to the box lunch sponsored by the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board.

Jackie Williams: “In The Midst of Plenty: Pacific Northwest Foodways”

The talk begins with the Native Americans, the first group to feast on the Pacific Northwest's abundant fish and seafood. It then follows the Oregon Trail pioneers and those who first settled in the Pacific Northwest as they sought ways to stretch available foods and adapted and substituted ingredients in planning family meals. It examines the role foodways played in encounters between indigenous communities and the arrival of these diverse newcomers on the Northwest Coast. And lastly it shows how the combination of good soil and a favorable climate made agriculture the number one industry in the Pacific Northwest and in turn affected the foodways of all Americans.