When you walk into an Italian restaurant, you know what to expect. Same with a Thai restaurant, an Indian restaurant, and a Mexican restaurant. You also might know what to expect at a Peruvian restaurant, a Hungarian restaurant, or even a Middle Eastern restaurant.

But when you see the words “American cuisine,” do you know what to expect?

I know I didn’t.

I drew a blank.

I’m not alone, says Paul Freedman, a Yale professor who will host an online discussion about “The History of American Cuisine and How It Got This Way” on Sunday, Feb. 20 at 2 p.m. The discussion, hosted by the Branford Forum, is free and open to the public. Email Daniel Rabin at rabinkux@sbcglobal.net to sign up.

“It can be a problem identifying what American cuisine is, for the average person,” Freedman says. “If you’re walking along a sidewalk and see a sign that says ‘Italian restaurant,’ there are definite expectations. There are a whole bunch of dishes that fit into that category that you would be surprised if they did not have.”

But for an American restaurant?

“It could be anything. It could be a medley of foreign things. It could be regional stuff. It could be American-based foreign dishes like nachos or chili,” he says. “What is distinctive about American cuisine if it isn’t some kind of dish, like paella in Spain or blanquette de veau in France?”

One thing that is clear is that Americans love variety, Freedman says.

“Yes, that’s both the strength and the weakness,” he says.

A restaurant featuring American cuisine likely has somewhat eclectic fare, maybe a pot pie or some braised meats, with a smattering of regional food, and maybe some fajitas thrown in.

Food Unifies Us, Divides Us

Freedman does have a very specific and defined notion of what constitutes American cuisine, and how it got that way, elucidated in the 528 pages of his critically acclaimed 2019 book, American Cuisine: And How It Got This Way.

His day job is serving as the Chester D. Tripp Professor of History at Yale, where he specializes in medieval social history, the history of Catalonia, comparative studies of the peasantry, and trade in luxury products, in addition to the history of cuisine.

His interest in cuisine, and what it says about us as we develop and define it, is grounded in his work in medieval history.

“As a medieval historian, I had an interest in social distinction,” he says.

Peasants are different from lords are different from kings.

“That still goes on in our society,” he says.

That led him to wonder: What do rich people eat? What do they think poor people eat? What foods are prestigious? What does it mean when we obsess about free-range chickens? Why do French-imported pâtés have a certain kind of status, while Hamburger Helper does not?

Prestige and how it was signaled on the dinner table, has certainly changed over the centuries. In the Middle Ages, spices from far-flung destinations were prestigious. Menus before the Civil War and right after might have featured pigs feet and calves heads.

“People loved organ meat,” Freedman says. “One of the most prestigious dishes in the 19th century was terrapin. Why was that, and why has no one heard of it today but as a football mascot?” (Think turtle).

As he delved into these studies, he found again and again that food often is a “way of expressing community and celebration,” but that it also can be “divisive with regard to race, cultural differences, gender, and geography,” theories he explores in his book published in 2021, Why Food Matters.

“When I say divisive, I don’t necessarily mean conflict, but if you take something like Jewish dietary laws, or Muslim dietary laws, or Buddhist prohibitions against the eating of meat, that identifies people in terms of religion,” which can set them apart at a dining table.

“A contemptuous term for Germans was ‘kraut,’” he says. “Or frogs, a derogatory term for French people, who were seen as fond of eating frogs. So that starts to get at a more divisive thing. Sometimes the thing that unifies us is the same thing that divides us.”

The American love of Chinese food came at the same time that politicians, with the acquiescence and support of their constituents, were crafting laws to restrict immigration. And Americans’ love for Mexican food has not stopped some in this country from demonizing people who come from that country. Chop suey, an Americanized version of Chinese rice-based dishes, was once as ubiquitous in American cuisine as nachos are now.

Taste Preferences, Food Habits

When discussion American cuisine, Freedman cites the anthropologist Sidney Mintz, who “said that for a collection of foodways to be legitimately called a cuisine, there has to be a repertoire of dishes, recipes, and practices that ordinary people, not just self-described ‘gourmets,’ discuss and have strong opinions about. Lacking an intense and agreed-upon culinary culture, America has a set of taste preferences and food habits, but not a cuisine.”

One of the ironies of American cuisine is that our love for things like free-range chicken and the rediscovery of local, seasonal food comes at the same time that there is a bewildering array of choices thanks to the industrialization of food. Go into any supermarket and, the current supply chain issues notwithstanding, you likely will find at least half of a supermarket aisle taken up by not just pasta sauce, but so many different kinds and brands of pasta sauce.

And there are 23 different flavors of Pop-Tarts. Yes, we do love variety, even when it comes to artificial flavors.

Freedman notes that free-range loving locavores are more numerous than in the past, but that eating that way remains, for the most part, an elite preoccupation. The average food item in the supermarket comes from thousands of miles away.

When trying to makes sense of what American’s love and why, Freedman points to three forces: regionalism, standardization, and variety.

Regionalism used to play a very large role in what people ate. Prior to the Civil War, most food was regional, with the exception of some elite practices.

“People didn’t eat clam chowder on the East Coast because they loved it; it was a natural response to a wealth of shellfish,” he says. Oysters in the Mountain West might have been considered rare, prestigious, and beloved, but “if you lived in New York, you could get oysters on the street, sort of like fast food.”

But regionalism lost its hold as companies like Heinz, DelMonte, and Nabisco began to mass produce food marketed and loved for its hygienic qualities and predictability.

“That meant it would not have bugs. And that it would be as crisp in one part of the country as another. It was eminently predictable,” he says. “That for a long time meant it was good, hygienic, safe, and inexpensive.”

The country became more urban after the 1850s, when about 75 percent of the population was engaged in agriculture, he says. Now that’s less than two percent, which also dealt a blow to regional specialties.

In terms of standardization, that remains a force, he says.

“If you go into most supermarkets, you won’t know if it’s in California or New England,” he says. “But you will know the income level they are serving. If it’s serving an affluent suburban clientele, there will be a lot of fresh produce, health bars, and gluten-free items. If you go into a supermarket in a small town in, say West Virginia, as I did recently, they don’t have any of that gluten-free stuff. They’ll laugh at you if you ask for it. But they’ve got pickled eggs. And little hot dogs in a can. And Underwood deviled ham.”

When it comes to variety, yes, we love it.

“Without being too cynical, that has dictated the mediocre quality of some of what we eat,” he says. “Pop-Tarts come in all flavors. They are many different kinds of Rice-a-Roni. That’s just their marketing, and that’s fine. But the way of selling Pop-Tarts is not to come up with a way to make a high-quality Pop-Tart that tastes like it’s made from scratch. That is not possible to do.”

So, instead, these companies offer variety and market the bejesus out of that.

There was a time when people forgot what food was supposed to taste like, he says.

“They were not aware,” he says. “People thought that peaches were supposed to taste of nothing in particular. Chicken didn’t actually have the taste of chicken, it was merely a vehicle for some kind of honey mustard or barbeque sauce.”

Community cookbooks, to some extent, created an archive for regional specialties in some cases, but in other cases reinforced national trends like Jello molds and tuna salad, he says.

And, then in the 1970s, people like Alice Waters happened.

A Sustainable Change?

Waters opened her now world-renowned restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California in 1971. She took a close look at what she had available right around her, and kicked off the farm-to-table and California cuisine movements. She was, and remains, a passionate advocate for healthy, local, organic foods, and went on to not only write numerous, very successful cookbooks, but she also created a foundation to help education children about where their food came from and how to eat healthy.

If you pick up a cookbook by Waters, you’ll find carrots with butter and honey, salt-roasted potatoes, pomegranate gelée, pork shoulder braised in milk with sage, and lemon verbena ice cream.

This approach, Freedman says, created the seeds for what just might be now, and in the future, perceived as authentic American cuisine.

“Yes, the seasonal, the local, the reintroduction of things like heirloom tomatoes, and free range chickens that are not just an elite project,” he says.

The movement started by pioneers like Waters could be salvation not only of our dinner tables, but also of the world.

“It is a real movement and it is strengthened by questions of sustainability,” he says. “The industrial model of food that we grew up with is, literally, unsustainable. We literally cannot continue with this without wrecking the world we live in.”

That doesn’t mean that those of us in New England have to live on cabbage and turnips for months on end in the winter.

“I like cabbage and turnips,” he says. “But it’s the monotony. And a sign of living in an affluent society is the ability to avoid monotony.”

On the other hand, the average supermarket offers around 35,000 items. Do we really need access to 35,000 items, 24 hours a day? Maybe not. Still, our love for variety isn’t going away anytime soon.

When he thinks about what’s next for American cuisine, Freedman thinks about the paradoxes that remain.

“The paradoxes are a kind of rediscovery of local ingredients, but still a desire for variety, and a desire for authenticity,” he says, noting “there is a pull between authenticity and familiarity, and that can create a paradox.”

And then the pandemic has created so many changes and it’s unclear which will be permanent.

“There are fewer restaurants. So many of the rest have been forced to simplify their menus. There’s more outdoor dining. What’s going to happen to find dining?” he asks. “A year ago its utter demise was predicted. Now, maybe not.”

But he hopes sustainability will become more than a trend. And he’s curious as to how people will solve the current supply chain problems.

“It’s hard to imagine people growing asparagus in Connecticut again, but there is always room for hope,” he says.