American cuisine

In the East, this was documented as early as the 1620s in Of Plimoth Plantation, evidenced by the pages William Bradford wrote regarding Squanto, who showed them the traditional regional method of burying a fish or eel in a mound with seeds for maize to improve the soil; this itself is also part of the widely practiced phenomenon of companion planting.

The last makes an appearance in the accounts of Lewis and Clark as being fished for in the Columbia River Basin, and this species is named for a family of tribes of the Pacific Northwest, indicating its important role in that food culture.

When European colonists came to Virginia, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and any of the other English colonies on the eastern seaboard of North America, their initial attempts at survival included planting crops familiar to them from back home in England.

[citation needed] Through hardships and the eventual establishment of trade with England, the West Indies and other regions, the colonists were able to derive a cuisine similar to what they had previously consumed in Britain and Ireland, while also introducing local animals and plants to their diet.

One of the cookbooks that proliferated in the colonies was The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (1747) by Hannah Glasse, who referred to "the blind folly of this age that would rather be imposed on by a French booby, than give encouragement to a good English cook!"

These different types of pizza can be advertised throughout the country and are generally recognizable and well-known, with some restaurants going so far as to import New York tap water from a thousand or more miles away to recreate the signature style in other regions.

Apples from New England would include varieties imported from their earliest in Europe and a few natives, like Baldwin, Lady, Mother, Pomme Grise, Porter, Roxbury Russet, Rhode Island Greening, Sops of Wine, Hightop Sweet, Peck's Pleasant, Titus Pippin, Westfield-Seek-No-Further, and Duchess of Oldenburg.

Historically New England and the other original 13 colonies were major producers of hard cider and the only reason why this changed were that immigrants from Western and Central Europe preferred beer, especially lagers, to apple based alcohol.

Many of the more complicated dishes with rich ingredients like Lobster Newberg, waldorf salad, vichyssoise, eggs benedict, and the New York strip steak were born out of a need to entertain and impress the well-to-do in expensive bygone restaurants like Delmonico's and still standing establishments like the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

Other mainstays of the region have been present since the early years of American history, like oysters from Cape May, the Chesapeake Bay, and Long Island, and lobster and tuna from the coastal waters found in New York and New Jersey.

[138] The Philadelphia soft pretzel was originally brought to Eastern Pennsylvania in the early 18th century, and later, 19th-century immigrants sold them to the masses from pushcarts to make them the city's best-known bread product, having evolved into its own unique recipe.

In England and Wales, where prior immigrants had come from, the feast of All Hallows Eve had died out in the Reformation, dismissed as superstition and excess having nothing to do with the Bible and often replaced with the festival of Guy Fawkes Night.

Naturally, they went door-to-door to collect victuals for masked parties as well as gave them out, like nuts to roast on the fire, whiskey, beer, or cider, and barmbracks; they also bobbed for apples and made dumb cakes.

[144] Immigrants from Southern Europe, namely Sicily, Campania, Lazio, and Calabria, appeared between 1880 and 1960 in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Eastern Maryland hoping to escape the extreme poverty and corruption endemic to Italy.

They were employed in manual labor or factory work but it is because of them that dishes like spaghetti with meatballs, New York–style pizza, calzones, and baked ziti exist, and Americans of today are very familiar with semolina based pasta noodles.

As in the American South, pawpaws are the region's largest native fruit, about the size of a mango, often found growing wild come September; they are made into preserves and cakes and command quite a price at farmer's markets in Chicago.

The influence of German, Scandinavian, and Slavic peoples on the northern portion of the region is very strong; many emigrated to Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, and Illinois in the 19th century to take advantage of jobs in the meatpacking business as well as being homesteaders and tradesmen.

Bratwurst is a very common sausage eaten at tailgate parties for the Green Bay Packers, Chicago Bears, or Detroit Lions, often served boiled in lager beer with sauerkraut, different from many of the recipes currently found in Germany.

In the Midwest and especially Minnesota,[159] the tradition of the church potluck is a gathering where local foods reign, and has been since the era of the frontier; pioneers often needed to pool resources to have a celebration in the 19th century and that simply never changed.

German speakers often settled in the Piedmont on small farms from the coast, and invented an American delicacy that is now nationally beloved, apple butter, based on their recipe for apfelkraut, and later they introduced red cabbage and rye.

Chaudin is unique to the area, and the method of cooking is comparable to the Scottish dish haggis: the stuffing includes onions, rice, bell peppers, spices, and pork sewn up in the stomach of a pig, and served in slices piping hot.

Spain had control of the state until the early 19th century and used the southern tip as an outpost to guard the Spanish Main beginning in the 1500s, but Florida kept and still maintains ties with the Caribbean Sea, including the Bahamas, Haiti, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Jamaica.

[185] Caribbean lobster is a favorite special meal eagerly sought after by Floridians as it is found as far north as Fort Myers: spear diving and collecting them from reefs in the Florida Keys and near rocky shoals is a common practice of local scuba divers.

Outdoor cooking is popular and still utilizes an old method settlers brought from the East with them, in which a cast-iron Dutch oven is covered with the coals of the fire and stacked or hung from a tripod: this is different from the earthenware pots of Mexico.

In other portions of the state they smoke the meat and peppery sausages over high heat using pecan, apple, and oak wood and serve it with a side of pickled vegetables, a legacy of German and Czech settlers of the late 1800s.

A typical accompaniment or appetizer of all these states is the tortilla chip, which sometimes includes cornmeal from cultivars of corn that are blue or red in addition to the standard yellow of sweetcorn, and is served with salsa of varying hotness.

Agua fresca, a drink originated by Mexican immigrants, is a common hot-weather beverage sold in many supermarkets and at mom and pop stands, available in citrus, watermelon, and strawberry flavors; the California version usually served chilled without grain in it.

Soybeans, bok choy, Japanese persimmon, thai basil, Napa cabbage, nori, mandarin oranges, water chestnuts, and mung beans are other crops brought to the region from East Asia and are common additions to salads as the emphasis on fresh produce in both Southern and Northern California is strong.

Tropical fruits also play an important role in the cuisine as a flavoring in cocktails and in desserts, including local cultivars of bananas, sweetsop, mangoes, lychee, coconuts, papayas, and lilikoi (passionfruit).

Notable American restaurant chefs include Samin Nosrat (Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat), Thomas Keller (The French Laundry), Charlie Trotter (Trotter's), Grant Achatz (Alinea), Alfred Portale (Portale), Paul Prudhomme (K-Paul's), Paul Bertolli (Oliveto), Jonathan Waxman (Barbuto), Mark Peel (Campanile), Frank Stitt (Bottega), Alice Waters (Chez Panisse), Wolfgang Puck (Spago), Patrick O'Connell (The Inn), Eric Ripert (Le Bernardin), Todd English (Olives) and Anthony Bourdain (Les Halles).