Balch Institute: Selections from the Museum Collections
Ethnic Cuisine
Introductory Essay


Food and its preparation are the most basic elements of ethnic heritage. They endure more persistently than language, dress, crafts, or religious traditions. Many families who have become largely assimilated still prepare and eat the foods their parents, grandparents, or earlier ancestors ate. The words assimilated into everyday American usage from other languages include a great many names for foods, ways to prepare food, and cooking utensils. Some immigrants brought cooking and serving implements with them on their journey to the United States--a measure of their high significance since most immigrants could not bring much luggage. Others made here the utensils needed to prepare their traditional foods.

Sometimes immigrants also brought with them seeds to grow their customary vegetables. Americans today grow crops that were exotics introduced by European and Asian immigrants, enslaved Africans, and native South American traders as well as those that were cultivated for generations by Native Americans. Groceries supplying ingredients for the cuisine of the home country are one of the most common and successful types of businesses for immigrants and their descendants. So too are companies importing foods from the old country or producing and selling traditional foods here.

Although food was the basis of many early ethnic slurs (Germans, for example, were called "Krauts" in reference to their traditional sauerkraut), it now is the most celebrated aspect of cultural diversity in the United States. Restaurants and cookbooks have been the most visible manifestation of the renaissance of ethnicity in recent years. They also promote the one aspect of ethnic diversity in America that draws wide participation from nearly all of the population.

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© 1996 The Balch Institute For Ethnic Studies

This Internet publication has been supported by grants from
The Equitable Foundation and the William Penn Foundation.


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