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What Makes Food 'American'?
A new book samples eight flavors that unite people across decades and demographics.
As a teenager, Sarah Lohman worked at a historical museum in Ohio, where she donned a stiff crinoline and baked cakes dashed with rose water. In college, she ran a pop-up restaurant serving Revolutionary-era root vegetable soups and maple-glazed squab. She was hungry, she writes, for “a dinner eaten with ghosts of the past.”
Now, as a historical gastronomist recreating arcane recipes, Lohman looks to the table for clues about national identity. In her first book, Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine (Simon & Schuster, $27), Lohman examines how some historic ingredients have maintained a hold on the present, and what flavors reveal about the country’s eaters.