True, but fwiw I wouldn't consider potato to be particularly important in German cuisine. Sure you'll see it used quite a bit, but many of the more iconic dishes don't really need them or can be replaced like with bread dumplings for instance.
I tried to find some data, and I have to say I'm surprised how low potato consumption is in Germany[1]: 59 kg per capita per year. Metaphorically unfocusing my eyes while looking at the linked map, that seems like it's about average for Europe.
Another, more recent, statistic[2] bears this out, 54 kg, and also has surprising (to me) details. Of those 54 kg, fully two-thirds -- 38 kg -- are processed potatoes (the article names potato chips/crisps, ready-to-eat potato salad and, of course, fries) and just 16 kg are "real" fresh potatoes.
Finally, things used to be different[3]: in 1950, the per-capita consumption was 186 kg!
The fact that per-capita potato consumption was so much higher in 1950 tracks with what I've observed from german-american areas in the US. I lived in wisconsin for a bit and grew up as/around a lot of German-Americans, and we consumed way more potatoes than seems typical compared to eg San Franciscans. Potato salad, potato pancakes, potato soup, potato dumplings, german fried potatoes, baked potatoes, mashed potatoes (the latter two not being exclusively german but much more consumed), potatoes au gratin/scalloped potatoes +/- ham (I guess has some French origin as well).
Also notable is that a lot of dishes that seem popular in Germany when I went aren't very common in the US in german-american areas as far as I can tell. Spaetzle is basically just a novelty, and I never see schnitzel per-se, but we do have equivalents like chicken-fried steak. We also basically never use the German name for anything except sauerkraut, bratwurst, and strudels, which to my understanding is because the US heavily de-germanized in WW1.
A contributing factor in that is that Germans eat less and less traditionally German food. I'm wondering if fries are counted among the processed potatoes (I suspect so), as those are seemingly – like in many places – the most commonly observed form of potatoes.
Yes, they can be substituted but they're definitely a staple in good German Hausmannskost. Maybe not so much in the South: Swabia subsists almost entirely on Spätzle noodles and Bavarians seem to prefer various kinds of Knödel.
But a good Rhineland Sauerbraten for example would normally be served with potatoes and a good Bauernomelette demands some crispy fried potato slices as well. Semmelknödel (but also often offered alongside potato dumplings) are a more common sight at special occasions or buffets. Many a young family's weekly rotation features spinach, fried eggs and potato mash alongside fish sticks, fried potatos with fried eggs and onions are a popular hearty lunch or late breakfast, and cooked potatos or mash are the default addition to some meat or sausage to the point a common microwave TV dinner still consists of Nuremberg sausages, sauerkraut and mash.
> Yes, they can be substituted but they're definitely a staple in good German Hausmannskost. Maybe not so much in the South: Swabia subsists almost entirely on Spätzle noodles and Bavarians seem to prefer various kinds of Knödel.
While the classic northern "Salzkartoffeln" are basically non existent in Swabia, potatoes in general play a big role in traditional Swabian cuisine. Whether its "Schupfnudeln" (finger noodles), as salad, Knödel, fried potatoe slices, Hitzkuchen/Blootz/Dinnete (Pizza with potatoes instead of tomatoe/cheese), Kachelessen/Griebaschnecken/Schlanganger (various potatoe and milk dishes), Gaisburger Marsch (stew), "sour eggs" (potatoes and eggs in a vinegar sauce).
But unfortunately most of those dishes are not really cooked anymore. (For "sour eggs" thats a good thing, this tasteless sour graybrown dish can die in hell for all I care.)
As a fellow southern German - is it really surprising? Pretty much all traditional dishes are just so heavy, there’s only about two days of fall when I’m in the mood to eat anything like that. Also, pretty much any traditional German main course is meat-based.
The more east you go from Germany, the more important potatoes are to general population. Especially in the past, but even now they are more popular as side dish compared to ie rice or pasta, maybe due to bigger 'filling the stomach' effect that also lasts longer.
Potatoes play a major role in german cuisine, a fact that you can also observe through architecture by looking at old houses or farms in Germany: The "Kartoffelkeller" (="potato cellar") is a common storage room under a house with no windows/light, for long term storage of potatoes after the harvest. Often there would be slides under trapdoors to be accesible from outside the house, so you can fill the cellar with the potato harvest right from the tractor. People would get their basements filled to have enough potatoes to make it through the winter.
Another cultural fact: "Kartoffelferien" (="potato holidays") are still used by some elderly to describe the school holidays around october, because children needed to help with the potato harvest around that time.
Also rice doesn't grow anywhere near Germany. Today that's not really s factor anymore, because it's so easy to shop, but my parents both grew up sticking very much to a local and seasonal approach to cooking, because everything else was new to them. They eat what they always knew best, so 5-6 days of the week the starchy side were potatoes. Rice is way more filling by transportation effort, but potatoes have been around their entire lives and in my dad's case also what his parents grew on their farm.
On a related note: German beans are different. You'll find canned kidney beans everywhere because combining them with sweet corn, bell peppers and onions with a seasoning overpowered by vinegar is a popular cheap side salad (often called "Mexico salad") and you'll find Heinz beans in tomato sauce but otherwise it's white beans or green beans.
I was happy to discover canned pinto beans at my local supermarket but they were only available in a hot tomato sauce (branded as "chilli beans") - I only just found out the overpriced exotic Italian Wachtelbohnen collecting dust in the shelf next to them are pinto beans too.
Heck, I'm nearly 40 and I've met Germans my age who were intrigued (or put off) by couscous because it's so exotic and they've never tried it before. I've talked to people running kebab joints (Dönerbuden) who said that they stopped offering lamb meat because the Germans didn't buy it and the few Turkish and Arab people who frequented them weren't enough to justify the overhead.
Just on a practical note, if you're looking to buy dry beans in Germany, every Turkish supermarket has a whole aisle dedicated to them. You can get a couple dozen kinds of dry beans there, including pinto. Most organic grocery stores have them too, but for 3x the price.
What German did you meet, that didnt know couscous? Granted, im a fair bit younger, but all of my friends and family know couscous and eat it fairly regularly (im german too). Which is to say: couscous is very well known in germany in general
> couscous is very well known in germany in general
I take it you live in a city. When I lived in Cologne, everyone obviously knew couscous. Rural Germany is a very different place. Granted, this was like 10 years ago but there's a reason we have the saying Was der Bauer nicht kennt, frisst er nicht ("what the peasant doesn't know, he doesn't eat").
The article focuses quite a bit on asfoetida, but makes no mention of peppercorns which are native to India. When Europeans sailed to India for spices, they weren't going an asfoetida or turmeric run. It was pepper they sought (and I guess cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves too - though some of those might be from Indonesia idk).
I always assumed pre-Columbian Indian food had fieriness and heat from pepper (bite into a whole peppercorn - it's plenty fiery), so there was a pre-existing cultural affinity for that flavor. This to me explained the rapid assimilation of chilli peppers into virtually every regional Indian cuisine.
Mace and cloves only grew in the southern moluccas and when the Dutch took over from the Portuguese they genocide the local Melanesian population with the help of some peoples of the western islands.
And the list goes on of the food products that only existed in the Americas - chocolate, coffee, hot peppers.
But of course it goes both ways. I just had traditional breakfast in an isolated Zapotec village in Mexico. But of course the cheese wasn’t part of it until the Spaniards arrived.
You’re off on coffee, a few months ago I too assumed it came from the Americas because it grows so well here, but was surprised to learn it’s actually an old world thing.
Whats interesting is why nightshades diversified and selectively bred into so many staple plants in the new world but the nightshades in the old world did not.
Black nightshade berries native to Europe are easily mistaken for the latter stages of potato plant development, for example.
I can think of two, or at least, one dish and one snack:
dish: makki ki roti (roti made from corn flour) with sarson kaa saag (mustard greens, cooked). this is a very common, even iconic, Punjabi dish. I've only tried it once myself. didn't like the corn roti much. the mustard greens were fine.
Tomatoes took awhile to take hold, with it not really taking off until the 19th century. I've heard it explained as due to a general distrust of 'exotic' foods and vegetables generally at that time and a belief that it was poisonous and would sap your vitality.
There were lots of similar folk beliefs, such as diseases being related to the resemblance to the food you ate. E.g. potatoes looking like tumours therefore giving you tumours. In Germany they were popularised by Frederick the great putting a cursory guard around a field of them and then letting peasants steal them.
From memory tomatoes were for some time grown as ornament in Europe before they were commonly part of cuisine.
I'm willing to believe it, but do you have a citation? Google is useless here, too many results for non-ancient Rome, but when I can find one that is properly about the ancients they all claim the same thing: the Romans had things that could be considered pasta-like (pancakes used for a sort of lasagna dish) but those were not actually the ancestors of Italian noodles.
Again, though: did the various dough concoctions turn into pasta the way that we think of it today, or did modern pasta come from the East? Boiled dough balls and pancakes are a far cry from the thin, stretchy, glutenous noodles that we call pasta.
Rather than being peculiarly modern, I think probably most cultures have always been much less stable and more changing than we tend to assume, even before modernity.
Using "America" to mean the US annoys me too, but blame the Americans for that one.
There are definitely some unique food cultures within the US (cajun/creole comes immediately to mind, as does Chicago pizza), but are there really American food cultures - flavours or preparations that are eaten both throughout the US and not elsewhere? All of the obvious candidates like hamburgers are popular in many countries and cultures; whenever I've gone to an "American restaurant" (as distinct from a "New York deli" or a "New Orleans grill" or what have you) they've seemed to be serving much the same stuff as a generic restaurant.
The requirement that the food be eaten conventionally throughout the country is a really weird definition of what counts as "American food" that would to my first- and secondhand knowledge at the very least exclude Mexican and Italian cuisine from being distinct. Neither one really exists as a coherent cuisine in the way you seem to imagine, and if you talk to a native of those countries they'll very quickly tell you that the foods you think of as "Mexican" or "Italian" are actually from specific regions of those countries.
Your second requirement—that it be not eaten elsewhere—would likewise exclude every major exported food culture. Do the Italians no longer get to claim spaghetti because an American mom makes it as a quick dish at home for her kids?
> would to my first- and secondhand knowledge at the very least exclude Mexican and Italian cuisine from being distinct. Neither one really exists as a coherent cuisine in the way you seem to imagine, and if you talk to a native of those countries they'll very quickly tell you that the foods you think of as "Mexican" or "Italian" are actually from specific regions of those countries.
I don't know Mexico well enough to comment, but yeah there absolutely isn't a unified "Italian" culture (perhaps there is the beginnings of one) and it's a mistake to think of one (not just in food but in other matters as well). Just as there is no "Chinese" food, there are several distinct Chinese food cultures.
> Your second requirement—that it be not eaten elsewhere—would likewise exclude every major exported food culture. Do the Italians no longer get to claim spaghetti because an American mom makes it as a quick dish at home for her kids?
At some point it just becomes generic food yeah, just like trademarks. I'm sure for the first people to bake bread it was a unique cultural food, but it would be madness to call that Mesopotamian food now, it's just food.
I guess you at least have a consistent definition you're working from! My initial pattern matching on your first sentence told me (apparently mistakenly) that this was another anti-US rant that was holding the US to a different standard than the rest of the world.
There are universal, non-regional American dishes, eaten consistently everywhere in the country. Caesar salad, apple pie, fried chicken, chili (though: regional variations), beef stew, a BLT. And then of course there's Americanized ethnic food: pizza, burritos, General Tso's chicken. That's before you dip your toe into fast food.
> There are universal, non-regional American dishes, eaten consistently everywhere in the country. Caesar salad, apple pie, fried chicken, chili (though: regional variations), beef stew, a BLT.
Right, but those are mostly global (or at least broadly western) - I'm interested in the question of whether there's an American food culture. BLT is an interesting thought though, I think America does have a distinct "bacon" culture involving different, more heavily cured meat than you find in Europe.
Those are only universal because they were so successful. The things that are most universal in the US are also the ones that have been the most exported. Hamburgers and fried chicken weren't common in Europe before the US was involved in European wars and reconstruction. Honestly, even finding high-quality hamburgers in Europe outside of the Anglophone countries is something that happened in the last 10-15 years.
There are a lot of things like that -- you find chili in Europe, but you don't ever find good chili. Same with, say, pies. BBQ even less. And zero gumbo. Or fried okra. And so on.
Ooh, here's a fun one! Craft beer. It's pretty interesting watching American beer styles migrate over to Europe.
(I've spent about equal parts of my life in the US and Europe, and am a pretty avid cook.)
Well, you could make the case that the craft beer movement in the US came from European beers: India pale ale is a British invention after all. The "original" American beers (Budweiser & co) haven't made much of a dent on the world.
IPA was significantly revived by west coast US brewers and basically wasn't drunk in the UK at the time it caught on in the US. The modern "craft" (under that name) and explosion of styles and experimentation was very much an American cultural export. Europeans have brewed a lot of styles in regional breweries since forever, but the creative explosion of the last few decades happened in the US.
Comment significantly changed since I replied, so adding:
Actually the original American beers did have a lot of impact. American Adjunct Lagers are brewed in a lot of countries:
I don't like them, but they've certainly had a major influence on world beer. Most of the world's 10 most popular beer brands are American Adjunct Lager.
That list takes an awfully broad view of "American Adjunct": despite the self-description "made popular in America after Prohibition", there's plenty of 19th-century brands like Fosters, San Miguel, Sol, Dos Equis etc in there that predate the Prohibition by decades, and thus descend from German pale lagers.
> Those are only universal because they were so successful.
Well, sure, but so what? At the point where something's popular worldwide, to the point that people draw on it without thinking of it as from somewhere else, it's not a cultural thing anymore.
> Ooh, here's a fun one! Craft beer. It's pretty interesting watching American beer styles migrate over to Europe.
Craft beer very much came out of the UK with CAMRA and British traditional ales, American involvement came later. What we have now is very much international with influences in all directions, not an American culture spreading out one way.
You can probably get twice-cooked pork anywhere in Europe and in every city in the US with more than 40,000 people in it (ie: everywhere). But it is absolutely a Sichuan Chinese dish, regardless of its universality.
If you define "true" American cuisine as something that is (a) only eaten in America and (b) eaten consistently throughout America, you've come up with a definition that probably nothing fits. Though: watch the British Bakeoff episode where they attempt brownies, one possible contender.
Lots of stuff is probably only gettable in America! I doubt you can get a good cheese steak, italian beef, po' boy, biscuits & gravy, or scrapple in Europe. But you can't get a good version of all of those in most places in America, too.
> You can probably get twice-cooked pork anywhere in Europe and in every city in the US with more than 40,000 people in it (ie: everywhere).
> [a sentence about caesar salad that disappeared]
Sure. But not at a generic restaurant; you'll have to go to a specifically Chinese restaurant. I guess you could argue that you'd have to go to a western restaurant for Caesar salad, but at least where I am now you'd be more likely to find a Caesar salad in a "european" restaurant than in an "american" one.
I just didn't want the argument about the Americanity of a Caesar salad; it's a quintessential American dish, but Wikipedia would give you fodder to debate. I sort of puckishly thought I was up for that debate, and then thought better of it.
America is huge. There is American food, universal throughout the 50 states, but almost definitionally anything that's 3,000 miles successful is going to be popular outside of the US as well.
Breakfast cereals, hot dogs, hamburgers, toaster pastries, hot pockets, cornbread, jambalaya, grits, cranberry sauce, jerky, the chocolate chip cookie, pumpkin pie, the waffle ice cream cone, milkshakes, Coca-cola, peanut butter (although I learned today the first peanut butter patent was issued to a Canadian in Montreal).
Some of these were invented in North America, but before the USA was founded. If you do some research you can find much more.
It amounts to a considerable contribution to the culinary arts. Chocolate chip cookies alone are worthy of a lifetime achievement award.
While your list is true, it's not a great list to make your case. One responder said that the hamburger and hotdog don't fit, because they're German, but that's only appreciably true for the hotdog (which is effectively indistinguishable from a bockwurst).
Gumbo, jambalaya, barbecue, cornbread, chili, clam chowder, fried chicken, pancakes, biscuits and gravy, pies (any sweet sort, not just pumpkin), cheesecake, brownies, fudge. The US is also one of the three great pizza countries (along with Italy and Argentina).
And that's just the some of the stuff that's relatively decisively American. In practice, as I said in my original post, things are incredibly fluid, and a lot of American dishes are heavily based on other cultures, and a lot of other cultures' mainstays are based on New World ingredients. American and Italian versions of "Italian" cuisine significantly co-evolved, and it's virtually impossible to separate one from the other.
While most of the others sound North American, jerky is not. Dried meat is a pretty universal concept, and jerky specifically is something Europeans got from the Inca. Even the word itself is borrowed from Quechua.
Irrelevant in my opinion. Putting something on bread has probably existed since the day after someone invented bread. But we still give Italy credit for inventing pizza. Just like startups, the implementation is more important than the idea.
Early version of hot dog was invented in germany
Hamburger might also been created in germany
Cornbread: Native Americans
I give you breakfast cereals, toaster pastries, hot pockets, grits, pumpkin pie, milkshake.
Coca-cola? do we now start to listen all types of drink recipetes?
So pure cultural, usa invented easy foods. This has very little to do with cultural foods like cheese, or the million types of sausages and breads and etc.
It does not amount to a considerable contribution to the culinary arts
“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.”
The list of US-specific and US-influenced food is pretty long, and includes lots of ‘slow’ foods. Why are you basing your argument on cherry picking from an incomplete list of examples?
And what do you mean that so-called ‘easy food’ isn’t a contribution to food culture? It’s trending globally (for better or worse), and relates closely to food supply economics.
> Cornbread: Native Americans
Native American foods count, why wouldn’t they?
> This has very little to do with cultural foods like cheese
Inventing Coke, toaster pastries, and breakfast cereals was neither quick, nor easy. And drinks are a part of cuisine. If we can't count Coke, we also can't include French wine-making or German brewing.
Not that GPs point is particularly convincing, but are we really comparing the mastery of wine making and beer brewing to Coca Cola now, in a discussion on culinary culture..? That’s like comparing Fox News to Tolstoi.
Why not? This is just the whole high art/low art nonsense in another context. Plenty of people enjoy their cola of choice more than they do a fancy wine and consider it to be an essential part of their day. Why is it less worthy of inclusion in culinary culture?
No, it’s not. Wine is not just a fancy drink but a craftsmanship tradition, thousands of years old. It’s not just the sophisticated people drinking it, but also the countless people involved in its making and cultivation! Have you ever been to a vineyard in a French, Italian, or German vineyard wine region? The people there live for this; their yards have been passed on for generations, and will continue to be. Planting a new grape means making a 30 year bet, with that much commitment you have to be all in.
I could go on about the entire villages built around wine, the historic efforts required to get the grapes we have today, the unique chemical compounds making for the aromas, and more.
And you’re telling me you want to seriously compare thousands of years of agricultural tradition to a mere hundred years of stimulating Coca Tonic that accidentally tastes pretty good?
It looks like you just did compare coke to wine. :P Seriously though, isn’t this a straw man argument? Parent wasn’t saying there isn’t craft or tradition involved in wine, nor that coke compares on those axes. You didn’t actually answer the question at all: why not discuss the cultural impact of coke? There is cultural impact. It’s not the same impact wine has, it’s quite different, but it is in fact there, don’t you agree?
I answered this in a sibling comment in more detail, but basically my complaint is that comparing a single soda brand to an entire class of tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of drinks, which have a rich cultural back story just seems wrong to me, that doesn’t do wine justice, especially as we don’t just discuss cultural impact, but cultural significance. I’m sure I come across as a European snob here, and I’m actually sorry for that, but I can’t get over the fact that someone claims Coca Cola is in any way as significant as the tradition of winery in total :(
Nobody claimed Coke is as historically significant as all wines combined. That is the straw man. As the best selling single soda brand, and a major global export that people in almost every country on earth consume, Coke does in fact have global cultural and economic significance, which is just a fact. That fact is not taking anything away from the rich history of winemaking, so there’s no need to be defensive. Have some wine and relax!
Edit: BTW Coca Cola’s revenue does stack up meaningfully against the entire wine industry. (The Google results are all over the map, so I’m being careful with my claims, but according to some web pages out there, Coca-Cola’s net revenue is higher than all wines combined.) There is an economic basis for comparing Coke to wine, which does support a cultural basis for comparison, in addition to other reasons Coke is culturally relevant. Notice I’m not (and upstream comments were not) coming to any conclusions about the result of that comparison.
They're all popular drinks associated with their respective food cultures. That's all. I'm not comparing the skill in manufacturing Coke vs beer or wine.
It’s an apple to fruit comparison, then: More apt would be picking carbonated soda drinks, maybe. Or pick out a single kind of wine from a single vineyard.
I’m just a bit salty on comparing such a giant category like European wine or beer to a single company‘s soda.
I'm not sure how you'd make a claim like "plenty of typical XYZ food was invented elsewhere" when all food is similar to or a variation of or build upon something that came before unless we literally evolve new ways of ingesting nutrients.
The regional BBQ culture of different sauces and meats in the US has nothing to do with what the word was used to describe in the Caribbean. What was described as BBQ hundreds of years ago in the Caribbean, as a way of cooking fish, wouldn't even be considered BBQ in the US.
Fwiw I'm not American and get a good laugh out of /r/shitamericanssay sometimes, but I can think of: 'tex-mex', California roll sushi, deep dish pizza, bagels as sandwiches (I think? Not the bagel itself, but using it as a bun), different uses of okra than I'm aware of elsewhere like stewed/chowders/soup, some of that stuff in the south in general actually spicy shellfish chowders etc. I think there's a good argument is evolved from what came before it elsewhere.
First of all, humans invent recipes based on the locally available raw foods, nothing special about that. Secondly, humans reinvent the same recipes time after time because we are all the same. Each culture invents their own stuffed dumplings, flat bread with toppings, etc. and they believe it's soooo unique and local
Obviously different groups of humans in different times and locations are going to invent similar foods. But, for example speaking of flat bread, how you actually execute it and the differences in texture, thickness, crunchiness, what you put on top of it and what order can make two dishes that are the same macro idea but end up as two completely different things.
Cooking something for 15 minutes more or 15 minutes less can cause massive differences in texture and taste, and we are not even talking about the potentially big differences that having slightly different ingredients can cause.
So, you are saying I'm right. A steak tartare otherwise could be the same dish as an hamburger with egg and mustard, following the line of thought of your previous comment.
You are right, but at the same time your rightness doesn't serve your argument. Recipes can be dramatically different without anyone even putting a crumb of cretivity, just out of pure coincidence
Canadians have elevated Clamato juice with the Caesar, the purest nectar of the gods. Mexicans come close with micheladas and Americans have bloody Mary’s but nothing compares to a proper Caesar.
Italy didn't have tomatoes or basil. Nor was there corn for polenta. India didn't have chilies. The Irish and Germans didn't have potatoes.