what if i told you that a lot of “Americanized” versions of foods were actually the product of immigrant experiences and are not “bastardized versions”
That’s actually fascinating, does anyone have any examples?
Chinese-American food is a really good example of this and this article provides a good intro to the history http://firstwefeast.com/eat/2015/03/illustrated-history-of-americanized-chinese-food
Yes, thank you! I find it really fascinating how dishes evolve when entering new countries, based not only on ingredient availability and the tastes of the host culture, but also on the influences of other immigrant groups, since it’s not uncommon for different groups of immigrants to end up living near each other and/or interacting heavily with each other. (I read an article once on how the earliest Boston-area Chinese food ended up with Italian influences for this reason, some of which have lingered to this day, but I’m too lazy to actually find it again.) Plus, also, cultural influence on food flows in all kinds of directions and no country’s culinary traditions are pure and unsullied by outside influence, so, idk, it just always annoys me when people get up in arms about X country doing Y food wrong.
“Chop suey was invented in the 19th century by San Francisco chefs who threw a bunch of ingredients in a stir-fry pan and unintentionally started a craze; around the same time in China, an elderly grandmother in Sichuan was making a never-seen-before dish with soft tofu, ground pork, and chili that would later be known as mapo tofu. The soup dumpling was also invented around that time in 19th-century Shanghai. All of these wildly popular dishes were originally created by Chinese chefs for the Chinese people, yet only one of them is deemed a bastarized version of Chinese food”
QueerAnarchism 