You can order French bread in Denmark (but not a “Danish”).
In France, just order bread—in French.
© Joyce McGreevy

Food Origin Fun with a Dash of Cultural Awareness

So you’ve just canceled that upcoming trip, but you’re still feeling the wanderlust? Don’t be consumed by disappointment—there’s a travel adventure in the food you consume.

Lunch time scenario 1: Lee and his friend Ana meet for lunch.  Lee orders a French dip, French fries and a salad with French dressing.

Intrigued, Ana asks Lee, “What did you have for breakfast?”

“French toast,” says Lee. “Why?”

“Wow,” says Ana with crystal-clear cultural awareness. “You sure love American food!”

In Brussels, nobody eats Brussels sprouts, but many people enjoy spruitjes.
Photo by Pxhere

Lunch time scenario 2: On a culinary travel adventure one summer, I realize it’s been years since I’ve had a Reuben sandwich. Although it’s non-kosher (mixing meat and cheese), it’s a staple of many Jewish delicatessens.

As Meredith Mileti writes in Aftertaste: A Novel in Five Courses:

“I devour the sandwich, a mountain of corned beef between two greasy slabs of marble rye, leaking cheese and Russian dressing all down the front of my sweater. It’s delicious, and I don’t stop eating until I’ve finished the last thick fry, which I use to mop up the remains of the sandwich.”

Ah yes, the front of every sweater, blouse, and pajama top I own might just as well be emblazoned with an image of an airport runway. I order a Reuben anyway, because here I am in the city that invented it. You know, Omaha.

Wait, what?

It’s not “rye” humor—the Reuben sandwich may hail from the Cornhusker State.
© Kimberly Vardman (CC By 2.0)

A Slice of History

Reportedly, the Reuben sandwich was invented during a poker game at Omaha’s Blackstone Hotel circa the 1930s. Hotel proprietor Charles Schimmel then added it to Blackstone’s menu.

Fern Snider, a former employee of the Blackstone, used the recipe to win a national competition in 1956. That’s when the Oxford English Dictionary cites the first published use of the term “Reuben sandwich.”

Several New York-based origin stories also exist, including one from cookbook author and New York Times food journalist Craig Claiborne.

But I’d keep that to yourself if you’re in Nebraska on March 14. That’s when people in Omaha celebrate National Reuben Sandwich Day.  The food fest became official there in 2013.

Oh, I see: Food histories are like mystery novels, except that you can eat the clues, red herrings and all.

In a Pickle

Granted, it doesn’t take gourmet detective Poirot to reveal that a Reuben’s Swiss cheese and Russian dressing are neither Swiss nor Russian—just a case of “Colonel Mustard in the Kitchen with Kraft Foods.”

But even the Reuben’s sauerkraut, well-documented in German culture, has ties to another culture: Mongolia.  One reason Genghis Khan galloped from Asia to Meissen, Germany is that his nomadic horsemen packed the perfect lunch for those 4,000-mile commutes. Fermented food: Don’t leave the yurt without it.

From Mongolia to Germany to a Chicago hot dog, pickled cabbage has come a long way.
Photo by Erdenebayar/Pixabay

A Mystery that Takes the Cake

In 1963, when President Lyndon Johnson hosted a luncheon for German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard, the dessert chef served German chocolate cake. One wonders what Erhard thought of this three-layer confection of buttermilk, pecans, and not-exactly Teutonic coconut. No German bakery had ever produced one.

So why “German”?

In 1852, an English American chocolate mill worker named Samuel German developed a baking chocolate sweet enough to eat as a bar. Mr. German sold his recipe to Mr. Walter Baker of Baker’s Chocolate Company in Dorchester, Massachusetts. The resulting product, still on grocery shelves today, was Baker’s German’s Chocolate.

A mere 105 years later, a recipe for German’s Chocolate Cake appeared in The Dallas Morning News.  According to National Public Radio, sales of Baker’s German’s chocolate “shot up 73 percent that year, 1957.” Somewhere along the way, folks forgot  the apostrophe in German’s. Yes, they fudged the spelling and  “German Chocolate” took the cake.

I like ads that emphasize the nutritional importance of eating chocolate.
Public domain photo

You Say Croissant, I Say Kipferl

So many foods associated with one place began in another that tracking them down becomes a culinary adventure.

The croissant, that iconic French bread, might never have happened without an Austrian entrepreneur. According to food historian Jim Chevallier, author of August Zang and the French Croissant, the word for croissant did not even exist in 1838. That’s when Zang launched the first Viennese bread bakery in Paris, at 92 Rue Richelieu.

Zang, whose breads included the crescent-shaped kipferl, filled his patented steam oven with moist hay to add “a lustrous sheen.” Customers took notice. So did French bakers. A trend was born.

Surely the Danish came from Denmark. No, Austrian bakers invented that, too.
Photo by Pxhere

A Moveable Feast of Food Origins

In the annals of food history, one culture whets the appetite of others:

• San Francisco launched “Italian soda.”
• New York, not Nome, popularized Baked Alaska.
• Dutch Baby has nothing to do with the Netherlands—ask Seattleites.
• Indian-style vindaloo has ties to Portugal
• Tijuana, Mexico is the birthplace of Caesar Salad.
• And a Greek Canadian invented Hawaiian Pizza.

As for the pommes frites that preceded fries, they really are French, right? Belgian food historians say, “Au contraire!” Others credit Pedro Cieza, “teenage conquistador turned historian” of Spain. “Hold on!” say others, “It all began with the ancient Incas.”

Yes, the food on your plate is a gastronomical map of the world. Once you bring cultural awareness to the table, it’s all a culinary travel adventure.

An Asian restaurant in Athens evokes the global migrations of culinary cultures.
© Joyce McGreevy

• Team Omaha or Team New York? To read more about origins of the Reuben, see the Blackstone story here and food critic Craig Claiborne’s nod to its New York origin story here.

• Get the skinny on a puffy bread. Order August Zang and the French Croissant here.

Comment on the post below, or inspire insight with your own OIC Moment here.