Eight Flavors: Punjabi-Mexican Cuisine and the Roti-Quesadilla

Posted on February 20, 2018 by Sarah Lohman

A roti quesadilla with a side of curry sauce and refried beans.

While writing my first book, Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine, I researched the eight most popular flavors in American cooking: black pepper, vanilla, chili powder, curry powder, soy sauce, garlic, MSG, and Sriracha. When I dived deep into each of these eight topics, I often found fascinating new information and recipes–some of which didn’t make it into the book–so I’ve decided to include it on my blog! If it whets your appetite to read the whole book, make sure to get your own copy here.

Out of all the flavors I included in my book, the one that puzzled Americans the most was the inclusion of curry. Most cooks I talked simply didn’t think of it as an American flavor. But Anglo-American women were cooking with curry as early as the 18th century, and early Indian immigrants were arriving as far back as the 1880s. The arrival of immigrants from India sparked a national debate about immigration, and restrictive immigration laws were eventually passed. But at the same time, a curious new culinary culture evolved: Punjabi-Mexican cuisine.

The Culture

By 1900, Muslims from Bengal were settling on the East Coast, and Punjabi Sikh immigrants were making a home on the West Coast. The Punjab is on India’s northwestern border, and was conquered by the British in 1848. Under the Raj, the Punjab was subject to land inheritance laws similar to Ireland in the same time period: the land was divided equally between all sons, as opposed to being inherited by the oldest son. This law resulted in farms too small to sustain a family. Debts drawn to support a living added to an increasingly dire situation. A family benefited by sending a husband or son to serve in the British military, or to find well-paying work in America. Many military men served in the British port of Hong Kong, a port of transit to America. News of work in the U.S. was passed along by returning countrymen, and encouraged other Sikhs to make the trip themselves.

The San Francisco Chronicle said of the first Sikh arrivals, who disembarked in 1899, “…The quartet formed the most picturesque group that has been seen on the Pacific mail dock for many a day…They are all fine looking men, Bakkshifed Singh in particular being a marvel of physical beauty. He stands 6 feet 2 inches and is built in proportion…All of them have been soldiers and policemen in China.”

They came to the West Coast to work in lumber yards and railroads; many of them were agricultural workers, migrating as the crops ripened. Cheap labor from Asia was integral to food production in California. These laborers aspired to own their own lands and farms.

Sikh immigration was a trickle, a novelty, until about 1910. In January, 1910, 97 “Hindoos” were admitted to the United States. The term was used to designate all immigrants of Indian origin, despite the fact these immigrants were Sikh. By April, 80-100 Indian Immigrants were entering the country every week. Between 1899 and 1914, nearly 7,000 Indians immigrated to California.

The local papers wailed about the “Hindu Horde” descending upon the country. Those that were anti-South Asian immigrant claimed that the incoming Indians were all …“racially unassimilable laborers who competed unfairly with white workers and sent their money home.” H.A. Millis, the superintendent of the U.S. Immigration Commission, said “..the Hindus are regarded as the least desirable, or, better the most undesirable, of all the eastern Asiatic races which have come to share our soil…

By 1917, a national law made South Asians officially excluded as a group. In reaction to increasing racial tensions on the West Coast, congress passed a law banning immigration from India. The act–known as the Asiatic Barred Zone–used degrees of latitude and longitude to slice out a portion of the world America didn’t want immigrants from, with India right smack in the middle. Special provisions were made for tourists and highly skilled workers like doctors. For the men who were already in California, they could stay; but would not be allowed to bring over their wives and children.

Prevented from marrying outside their “race” by California miscegenation laws, many Punjabi men married local Mexican women. The Mexican Revolution was pushing families to migrate across the border; many ended up working on cotton farms run by Sikh men. On their wedding certificates, both of their races were listed as “brown,” but sometimes they could be listed as black or white. As long as their skin tones were similar, they could be married; however, should one partner be considered “too white,” the marriage license would be denied. There were at least 378 of these unions, and as a result, a unique Mexican-Indian culture was created.

The Cuisine

The wives wanted to cook food to please their husbands; the husbands, as best they could, communicated what food they liked back home in India. Both cultures used similar spices in cooking, like cumin and chili; tortillas seemed like a sister to rotis, the Punjabi flatbread made from whole wheat flour.

Moola Singh of Selma, California, married three times in his lifetime, to three different Mexican women: “I never have to explain anything India to my Mexican family,” Singh said. “Cooking the same, only talk us different…I went to Mexico two, three times, you know, not too far; just like India, just like it. Adobe houses in Mexico, they sit on floor there, make tortillas (roti you know). All kinds of food the same…” (source)

The two cuisines blended, not just in the home, but in the local restaurants. In Yuba City, California–which today has one of the world’s largest Sikh populations– El Ranchero was a Mexican restaurant serving Indian food, founded by the Rasul family. Tamara English, whose Indian grandfather and Mexican grandmother started the restaurant, remembers working there with her family:

“There for over 30 years we served Mexican food, along with curried chicken, lamb and roti. We were most famous for our Mex-Indian combo, the Roti Quesadilla, (the roti being Indian and the quesadilla of course being Mexican) which was most often served with a side of curry sauce for dipping…Just to round out the flavor I would add a side of refried beans to my plate.” (source)

The Recipe

Roti Quesadilla

You may have to head to an Indian specialty store to find roti, but I’ve also seen them in the frozen section of my local grocery store. I’d recommend a spicy curry sauce, which you can find in jars—the brand I used was “Patak’s.” After assembling this meal, I discovered nothing tastes as good as curry sauce over re-fried beans.

2 rotis
½ cup shredded cheese–cheddar, Monterey jack, or queso fresco
1 tablespoon butter
Curry sauce, for dipping
Re-fried beans

Heat a small skillet—not much larger than your roti—on medium-low heat. Add butter.
Once the butter has melted, place one roti in the skillet. Spread shredded cheese evenly over roti then top with second roti. Toast until the bottom roti begins to brown, then flip and continue to toast until cheese is melted.
Cut into quarters and serve with beans and sauce.

Further Reading: Making Ethnic Choices: California’s Punjabi Mexican Americans

Eight Flavors Book Club Discussion Questions!

Posted on July 1, 2017 by Sarah Lohman

If Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine is on your summer reading list, then here are some very official discussion questions to help you along!

Lohman mentions omitting certain prominent American flavors from the book, such as chocolate and coffee, because of the wealth of existing coverage and research on them. Why else do you think she specifically chose to feature these eight flavors? What other quintessential flavors in American food are not featured in this book?
Lohman profiles the individual histories of each of her eight chosen flavors. Which flavor’s story did you find to be the most engaging or interesting? Why?
Which of the eight flavors did you feel you learned the most about? Which did you have the most prior knowledge of?
What was the most surprising thing you learned from this book?
Lohman argues that American cuisine is “the most complex and diverse cuisine on the planet.” Do you agree with this statement and why?
Think about how you personally define the term “American cuisine”, and how Lohman defines it. When does an ingredient imported from another part of the world become “American” and part of “American cuisine”?
How has this book changed the way you think about American cuisine; how it is defined, where it comes from, etc?
Having read this book, would you consider reading more about the topic of American food history (or food history more broadly)?
Has reading this book influenced or affected your tastes in food? For example, do you find yourself wanting to further explore a specific cuisine or more likely to eat or make a certain food than you were before?
Consider the examples of MSG, which Lohman describes as unfairly receiving bad press, or vanilla, which became more widespread with advances in production techniques. What other factors influence how a specific ingredient goes up, or down, in popularity? What gives a foodstuff “staying power” in terms of how popular it is?
In the final chapter of the book, Lohman speculates where the flavor trends of American cuisine might lead us in the future. What do you make of her predictions? Have you noticed other flavors or ingredients rising in popularity that might become the stars of American cuisine next year? What about five, ten, or even twenty years in the future? Do you expect that the flavors depicted in this book will remain enduringly popular?

Origin of a Dish: Steak au Poivre

Posted on May 9, 2017 by Sarah Lohman

Black pepper-crusted steaks. Photo by Alan Tran.

While writing my first book, Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine, I researched the eight most popular flavors in American cooking: black pepper, vanilla, chili powder, curry powder, soy sauce, garlic, MSG, and Sriracha. When I dived deep into each of these eight topics, I often found fascinating new information and recipes–some of which didn’t make it into the book. So over the next few months, I’ll be publishing this exclusive content on my blog! If it whets your appetite to read the whole book, make sure to get your own copy here.

When we cook a steak, we often cover it in a thick layer of cracked peppercorns and salt. A simple, but flavorful, preparation. This generous crusting of pepper is often credited to a trend born of the 1960s, with a dish called steak au poivre. But the roots of this classic steak preparation may go back much further.

Martha Washington’s Booke of Cookery is a manuscript collection of recipes, gifted to Martha on the occasion of her first marriage to Danial Custis. The recipe book– copied from recipes of her in-laws–includes recipes that date from the late medieval era to the early 18th century. One in particular caught my eye: a roast of venison crusted in black pepper.

To Season a Venison

Take out ye bones & turne ye fat syde downe upon a board. yn take ye pill of 2 leamons & break them in pieces as long as yr finger & thrust them into every hole of yr venison. then take 2 ounces of beaten pepper & thrice as much salt, mingle it, then wring out ye juice of lemon into ye pepper & salt & season it, first taking ye leamon pills haveing layn soe a night. then paste it with gross pepper layd on ye top & good store of butter or muton suet.

Here’s a rough translation of the recipe: De-bone a roast of venison. Take the peel of two lemons and cut it into finger length strips, stuffing them into any holes left from the bones. Let the meat sit overnight, and remove the lemon peels. Take two ounces ground pepper and six ounces salt, mixed with the juice of one lemon, and season the holes the lemon peels previously occupied. Crust it with cracked pepper and butter or fat.

Sounds like the great-great-granduncle of a modern steakhouse dish, doesn’t it? This pepper-heavy treatment of venison was recommended through the 19th century to offset the strong, gamey flavor of the meat. The salt and fat would also serve to keep moist what was a particularly lean, dry meat. By the end of the 19th century, this dish evolved to have a creamy, pepper sauce, or sauce poivrade, and became known as “Steak a la Diane,”named after the Roman goddess of the hunt. The renowned Auguste Escoffier gave us a recipe for pepper sauce intended for venison in Le Guide Culinaire, published in 1903.

Sauce Diane

Lightly whip 2dl [about 2 cups] of cream and add it at the last moment to 5dl [4 1/2 cups] well seasoned and reduced Sauce Poivrade. Finish with 2 tbs each of small crescent shaped pieces of truffle and hard-boiled white of egg. This sauce is suitable for serving with cutlets, noisettes and other cuts of venison.

His sauce was comprised of three other sauces and stocks, each one slowly simmered from finely diced vegetables and joints of meat to add levels of deep flavor, and finished with slices of truffle. The entire dish, rich with pepper, would have taken an army of kitchen staff days of preparation before it finally landed in front of a restaurant patron.

French chefs simplified the dish after the turn of the century, calling it “steak au poivre” for the first time. Venison steak was replaced with crushed peppercorn-encrusted beef, which was pan seared and served with a brandy, butter, and (sometimes) cream-based sauce. The dish was often cooked table-side because when the brandy was added to the hot pan it resulted in an impressive tower of vaporized alcohol flames.

In the 1960s, American home cooks were introduced to the cuisine of France by Julia Child. Child’s longtime friend Jacques Pépin remembered her in the New York Times as “… almost a foot taller than I and her voice was unforgettable — shrill and warm at the same time.” They loved to disagree and debate proper cooking techniques and ingredients; “I like black pepper and she liked white pepper,” he recalled. According to Pépin, Child’s style of cooking meant “a simple meal made with great care and the best possible ingredients.” Her strong opinions on food come through in her recipe for steak au poivre. Child’s 1961 recipe for steak au povire in Mastering the Art of French Cooking was the first to be published in America, but she speaks to her readers as though the recipe was a familiar one, a nod to its pre-existing popularity in restaurants.

Julia Child.

“Steak au poivre can be very good when it is not so buried in pepper and doused with flaming brandy that the flavor of the meat is utterly disguised,” Child writes. “In fact, we do not care at all for flaming brandy with this dish; it is too reminiscent of restaurant show-off cooking for tourists. And the alcohol taste, as it is not boiled off completely, remains in the brandy, spoiling the taste of the meat.” As a rule, she felt “there was too much flaming in table top cookery.” In Child’s recipe, after the steaks are seared a sauce is made with leeks and crispy cooked bits left in the bottom of the pan, as well as vegetable stock, cognac and a lot of butter. The peppercorns crisp into a crust, and the dish is served with potatoes to soak up the rich sauce.

Through Mastering the Art of French Cooking, steak au poivre entered the American mainstream and set the precedent for how we prepare beef; a perfect example of Julia Child’s tremendous culinary influence. The dish is also key in shaping our modern identity of pepper. Steak au poivre treats pepper not as just another spice to be shaken into every dish, but as an ingredient with a bold flavor all its own. Steak au poivre today influences how most Americans cook their meat: crusted in salt and pepper, seared and served. The most basic cooking technique, and perhaps the most delicious.

Steak au poivre. Photo by mmmWolf.

Steak au Poivre
From Mastering the Art of French Cooking, 2011 reprint, by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, Simone Beck

2 Tb of a mixture of several kinds of peppercorns, or white peppercorns
Place the peppercorns in a big mixing bowl and crush them roughly with a pestle or the bottom of a bottle.

2 to 2 1/2 lbs. steak 3/4 to 1 inch thick
Dry the steaks on paper towels. Rub and press the crush peppercorns into both sides of the meat with your fingers and the palms of your hands. Cover with waxed paper. let stand for at least half an hour; two or 3 hours are even better, so the flavor of the pepper will penetrate the meat.

A hot platter
Salt
Sauté the steak in hot oil and butter as described in the preceding master recipe. Remove to a hot platter, season with salt, and keep warm for a moment while completing the sauce.

1 Tb butter
2 Tb minced shallots or green onions
1/2 cup stock or canned beef bouillon
1/3 cup cognac
3 to 4 Tb softened butter
Sauteed or fried potatoes
Fresh water cress

Pour the fat out of the skillet. Add the butter and shallots or green onions and cook slowly for a minute. Pour in the stock or bouillon and boil down rapidly over high heat while scraping up the coagulated cooking juices. Then add the cognac and boil rapidly for a minute or two more to evaporate its alcohol. Off heat, swirl in the butter and half-tablespoon at a time. Decorate the platter with the potatoes and water cress. Pour the sauce over the steak, and serve.

Eight Flavors: James Beard’s Chicken with 40 Cloves of Garlic

Posted on April 4, 2017 by Sarah Lohman

Chicken. With 40 cloves of garlic.

While writing my first book, Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine, I researched the eight most popular flavors in American cooking: black pepper, vanilla, chili powder, curry powder, soy sauce, garlic, MSG, and Sriracha. When I dived deep into each of these eight topics, I often found fascinating new information and recipes–some of which didn’t make it into the book. So over the next few months, I’ll be publishing this exclusive content on my blog! If it whets your appetite to read the whole book, make sure to get your own copy here.

I’m trying to get a handle on James Beard. In my generation, he wasn’t a household name; but once your reach a certain level of foodie-ness, you’re indoctrinated. You’re taught he’s a deity of American food.

According to Provence, 1970, Beard was “six foot three, three hundred pounds, and bald.” He described himself in this PBS documentary as “large and scarcely beautiful,” hardly a candidate for international super success. He enjoyed a jaunty bow tie; or, an even jauntier unbuttoned dress shirt. He was gregarious, always bringing people together, always quick to help out a new food talent in which he saw potential–like Julia Child, early in her career. He also kept his phone number listed in the phone book, and fans could look him up and give him a ring–unimaginable of a celebrity today. He would often “end up talking at great length to some woman in Iowa about her macaroons.” His mantra was to use the best, seasonal ingredients in the simplest, most flavorful preparations, and he embraced the diversity of American cuisine

Beard starred in the first food television show in 1946, a 15 minute program on NBC called “I Love to Eat.” Sadly, no copies of the episodes exist. Both Beard and Child created an interest in food that met in the middle between the housewiferly-domestic guides and the men-only haute restaurants of an earlier generation. In their DIY wake, cooks without formal culinary training began to open restaurants and head kitchens.

I was looking into Beard’s history during my writing process for Eight Flavors because he is often credited with convincing Americans to like garlic. Beard often looked to French cuisine for inspiration, and loved the simple, flavorful cuisine of Provence, which he first encountered while being stationed there during WWII. Provencal cuisine is also very garlic heavy. In America, leading up to WWII, people weren’t eating much garlic. It was associated with Italian immigrants, who were thought so unappealing, the US effectively banned Italian immigration in 1924. It was Beard who, with a rustic recipe, really began to change American’s minds about garlic.

“Chicken with Forty Cloves of Garlic” was first published in 1974. The recipe title sounds ridiculous and intimidating, but 40 cloves is only 2-3 heads of garlic. Beard calmly instructed his readers to fill a casserole with chicken legs and thighs, cover them with olive oil and vermouth, and top them with tarragon, parsley, celery and garlic–so much garlic, it serves the purpose of the vegetable in the dish. After baking for 90 minutes, the chicken comes out tender and mild–as does the garlic. Beard comforted the fears of worried cooks, stressed about the pungent taste of garlic: “Invite your guests to spread the softened garlic on the bread. They will find that the strong flavor has disappeared, leaving a wonderful, buttery paste perfumed with garlic.” It was the perfect recipe to convert the American masses because of the tame garlic flavor.

Beard championed a new form of American cooking; inspired by French cuisine, but not slavishly imitating it. He emphasized fresh, seasonal ingredients featured in ambitious, sophisticated dishes. “Buy the best produce you can buy and do the least to it, and you’ll have the best food,” Beard once said. And we have him to thank (in part) for garlic becoming a part of mainstream American cuisine.

Chicken with Forty Cloves of Garlic
Recipe from the James Beard Foundation

8 to 10 chicken legs
2/3 cup olive oil
2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
Dash of nutmeg
40 cloves garlic, approximately 3 bulbs, peeled
4 stalks celery, sliced thinly
6 sprigs parsley
1 tablespoon dried tarragon
1/4 cup dry vermouth

Rinse chicken legs in cold water and pat dry with paper towels. Dip the chicken in olive oil to coat each piece and sprinkle with salt, pepper, and nutmeg.

Put chicken in a lidded 3-quart casserole along with the residue of oil. Add the garlic, sliced celery, parsley, tarragon, and vermouth. Seal the top of the casserole with a sheet of foil and cover tightly. Bake for 1 1/2 hours in a preheated 375ºF oven. Do not remove the lid during the baking period. Serve with hot toast or thin slices of pumpernickel and spread the softened garlic on the bread.

My Audio Book of Eight Flavors is out now!

Posted on March 22, 2017 by Sarah Lohman

Guess what? You can now LISTEN to Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine on audio CD or Audible–including whispersync, which allows you to switch back and forth between e-book and audio book without losing your place!

AND GUESS WHAT ELSE. I read the book! It’s 11-ish hours of my sweet, sylvan voice telling you tales about Edmond Albius, a 12-year-old slave who discovered the technique still used to pollinate vanilla orchids today; or Ranji Smile, a Muslim immigrant to American who became a celebrity chef; or so many more American stories!

Buy the audio book here!

Enjoy it! Then sign up for my mailing list and see if I’m going to do an event near you!

Thank you!

Eight Flavors: My Book is on Sale NOW!

Posted on December 6, 2016 by Sarah Lohman

My first book, Eight Flavors:The Untold Story of American Cuisine, DROPS TODAY! You can get it direct from the publisher, on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, indie bookstores–or anywhere else books are sold! For a full list of retailers, click here.

“A unique and surprising view of American history… richly researched, intriguing, and elegantly written.”
– The Atlantic

“A breezy American culinary history that you didn’t know you wanted.”
– Bon Appetit

“Warning: This book may make you hungry.”
– Bustle

“A compulsively readable, surprising and deeply researched culinary history…a wide ranging, open hearted investigation into the way that flavors simultaneously transmit and follow cultures around the globe”
–Brooklyn Based Smithsonian Magazine named it one of the best food books of 2016!

It’s the perfect gift for the foodie in your life!!
AUTOGRAPHED COPY!

If you live in New York City, I’ll be signing copies tomorrow night (Wednesday) at The Lower East Side Tenement Museum after my free Tenement Talk with Melissa Clark, from 6-8:30pm. Afterwards, I’ll be at the launch party at Lucky Jack’s until 10pm. Feel free to stop by!

Tuesday, December 13th I’ll be at The Brooklyn Historical Society leading a panel with Mario Carbone and Jonathan Wu on How Immigrant Cooks Shape American Food. Doors: 6:30 pm Event: 7 pm and I’ll be signing books afterwards.

In the early spring, I’ll be in Boston and Baltimore! More details coming soon.

Eight Flavors: Country Captain Chicken

Posted on December 5, 2016 by Sarah Lohman

A chicken curry from the 1850s.

To create my first book, Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine, I researched the eight most popular flavors in American cooking: black pepper, vanilla, chili powder, curry powder, soy sauce, garlic, MSG, and Sriracha. When I dived deep into each of these eight topics, I often found fascinating new information and recipes–some of which didn’t make it into the book. So over the next few months, I’ll be publishing this exclusive content on my blog! If it whets your appetite to read the whole book, make sure to get your own copy here.

One week after the 2016 presidential election, I attended a citizenship ceremony hosted by the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. Fifteen individuals, their birthplaces as wide ranging as Japan and Iraq, became Americans that day.

The most touching part of the ceremony was a speech delivered by Samantha Power, United States Ambassador to the United Nations, an immigrant herself from Ireland. During her speech, Power choked up while recounting the immigration stories of the families of her closest colleagues. “This is impossible,” she declared at one point, trying to get through the moving stories. She then went on to address the new citizens directly:

You are what America looks like…We are a nation of immigrants, but for as long as this nation has existed, Americans have been harkening back to a golden era, before families like yours or mine got here. It never seems to matter to those people that their parents or grandparents were on the receiving end of similar discrimination when they first arrived in this country. But even if we know deep down that such intolerance is as old as the nation itself, it doesn’t make it hurt any less when we experience it.

You may hear some people say that in order to become “real” Americans, you need to forget where you came from, or leave behind the history that brought you to this moment. Cover up your accent, change the way you dress…Please don’t list to those voices. Joining a new nation does not mean you have to leave behind the one you came from, or what it taught you.

You can watch Power’s speech in its entirety here.

I had attended this citizenship ceremony in the past, in 2013, to see my dear friend and colleague Raj become an American. Raj is an immigrant from New Zealand; his parents are from India. I talk about Raj in the Curry Powder chapter of my book; we went on a “curry crawl” together in Jackson Heights, Queens. In that chapter, I also focus on the stories of Indian immigrants in the early 20th century who were not allowed to receive their citizenship because of the color of their skin.

Often, when I list the flavors I’ve included in my book, I get a lot of push-back about curry powder. Many people don’t consider it an American ingredient. But Indian immigrants have been coming to America for more than 100 years; and we have been cooking with curry powder in this country for over 200 hundred. In fact, a dish called Country Captain Chicken, a traditional dish of the American South, arrived in this country in the 19th century through our Anglo-immigrant roots.

The History

The origin of Country Captain Chickens begins late in the 16th century, when the East India Company was granted a royal charter by Queen Elizabeth. The charter gave the East India Company a monopoly within Britain on trade with the Far East; the company would focus on India.

As the East Indian Company rapidly expanded in the 19th century, more and more employees moved to the “Country,” as India was known. They were posted to a new station in another part of India every three years, which exposed them to culinary traditions all over the subcontinent. When these British workers traveled around the subcontinent, they were carried in a litter by a team of men, the carriers traded out at roadside taverns like horses. The litter itself was misery, being shaped like a wooden coffin in which the traveler slowly baked in the Indian sun. When they stopped for food at a roadside eatery, called a “bungalow,” they were often served chicken. Beef and pork were not served in much of India because of Hindu and Muslim religious restrictions. And beyond that, chicken, no matter what the continent, was the convenience food of the 19th century. If you had sudden dinner guests, you could step out your back door and scoop up one of the chickens pecking around in the yard. A few hours of plucking and butchering later, you had a chicken dinner. It doesn’t sound convenient–but most other meat was seasonal. A chicken was available anytime.

Because British officials didn’t have the same cultural history and connection to each region as a native Indian, when eating at home, they would take the foods they loved willy-nilly from all regions and serve them together. A bowl of Anglo curry could be accompanied by garnishes from everywhere: Persian hard-boiled eggs, Punjabi pickled lemon, Madras-style sliced raw onions, fried papadum bread, as well as British-style crispy bacon. The transient English officials created a trans-continental cuisine, which became the food they imported when they returned to England.

And that cuisine eventually traveled to America. Country Captain Chicken, a dish inspired by the bungalow dinners of the British, first showed up in America in Eliza Leslie’s 1857 cookbook Miss Leslie’s New Cookery Book. Although Leslie was born in Philadelphia, she lived in England from the ages of 5-11. It’s likely that as a girl she was exposed to the Anglo curries being served in British households, and transported her love of spicy, fried Country Captain Chicken back to the States.

Curry powder ingredients according to a 19th century American recipe.

The Recipe

Leslie’s recipe asks the home cook to rub chicken parts in curry powder before frying them up crisp in butter and onions. The chicken is lifted out of the butter with a slotted spoon, and set aside to drain. A sauce is made from the butter and onions, with the addition of a few spoonfuls of coconut. It’s all served over rice, and the crispy chicken skin makes a lovely textural contrast to the sauce.

Country Captain Chicken
Recipe adapted by Jill Paradiso from Miss Leslie’s New Cookery Book, 1857.

Yield: serves 4

For the curry powder:

1 teaspoon powdered turmeric
1 teaspoon powdered coriander
1 teaspoon powdered cumin
1 teaspoon powdered ginger
1 teaspoon powdered nutmeg
1 teaspoon powdered mace
1 teaspoon powdered cayenne pepper

For the chicken:

Salt
1 whole chicken, cut into 8 pieces (2 breasts, 2 thighs, 2 drumsticks, 2 wings)
2 large onions, peeled
1 stick butter
1/2 cup curry powder
1/2 cup unsweetened coconut, shredded

Make curry powder by combining the spices. Grind fresh from whole

spices for the best flavor.

Bring a large pot of well-salted water to boil. Once water has reached full

boil, add chicken breasts and onions and cook for 4 minutes. Then add

thighs, drumsticks, and wings, and continue cooking another 6 minutes.

Remove the chicken from pot and drain well. Leave onion in boiling

water to continue cooking.

Melt butter in large sauté pan over medium-high heat. Toss chicken in

curry powder until well coated.

When butter begins to foam, add chicken to pan and cook about 3

to 4 minutes until well browned. Turn chicken pieces over and cook

another 3 to 4 minutes. Turn heat down to low and remove chicken

from pan. Season chicken with salt and set aside.

Remove onions from water. Slice onions in half lengthwise and then

cut into half-moon strips. Add onions and 1/2 teaspoon of salt to pan

and cook in curry butter mixture over low heat about 8 minutes or until

onions are lightly browned, stirring occasionally.

Garnish chicken with sautéed onions and coconut. Serve immediately

over any kind of rice you like.

Modern Country Captain Chicken. Photo by Dan Costin.

The Results

By the 1940s, Country Captain Chicken had spread from Philadelphia and appeared in the American South in church-fundraising cookbooks alongside Jello mold with marshmallows. It maintains a crazy level of popularity to this day, with several Southern cities laying claim to its invention. In the contemporary version, the chicken, after being fried, is stewed in the oven in a tomato sauce. And the few spoonfuls of coconut in Leslie’s recipe are replaced by a whole assortment of toppings served table side: slivered almonds, raisins, chutney, orange sections, pineapple and crispy bacon — much liked the varied condiments on the tables of the East India Company in the 18th and early 19th centuries. In the South, these condiments are called “boys,” but according to one Savannah hostess, “Anything more than a five boy curry is considered pretentious north of Gaston Street.” Check out a modern recipe here.

Much of the background on The East India Company came from the fascinating book Curry: A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors by Lizzie Collingham.

Eight Flavors: Data Visualization

Posted on December 1, 2016 by Sarah Lohman

All the eight flavors. Click for a larger image.

My first book, Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine will be released December 6th, but is available for pre-sale right now. To create the book, I researched the eight most popular flavors in American cooking: black pepper, vanilla, chili powder, curry powder, soy sauce, garlic, MSG, and Sriracha. When I dived deep into each of these eight topics, I often found fascinating new information and recipes–some of which didn’t make it into the book. So over the next few months, I’ll be publishing this exclusive content on my blog! If it whets your appetite to read the whole book, make sure to get your own copy here.

The premise of my new book, Eight Flavors, is that American cuisine can be illustrated by its most commonly used flavors. One of the most freqeunt questions I get about the book is how I picked my eight flavors to focus on.

When I began my research, I made a timeline of recipes from my respectable collection of cookbooks, dating from Amelia Simmons’s American Cookery, the first cookbook published in this country in 1796, all the way through modern American standards like How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman. I flipped through these cookbooks from different eras: the 1800s, 1850s, 1900s, and 1950s, selecting the most influential tomes from those periods, like Mary Randolph’s The Virginia Housewife; Fannie Merritt Farmer’s The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook; and James Beard’s The Fireside Cook Book. I looked for ingredients that significantly affected the flavor of the recipe. After I made a list of commonly used flavors, I plotted them on a graph with the help of Google’s Ngram Viewer, which visualizes the frequency of words in all the books Google has digitized. I set the sample size to American books from 1800 to 2000. When I built the graph of American flavors, it revealed which ones were used the most frequently (and for all practical purposes, were the most popular), when flavors entered our lexicon, and how some grew in popularity while others disappeared. After all was said and done, the results revealed eight winners—flavors that were the most popular, and had never significantly waned in their popularity.

The graph at the top of the page shows them all, and gives a really clear sense of how these flavors entered into our kitchens chronologically. I love in that top graph how clear garlic’s popularity is over the other flavors I talk about.

I write in the book that vanilla replaced rosewater in American kitchens, and you can see that below.

Vanilla v. Rosewater

And look at how long curry powder has been used in the U.S.!

Curry Powder

And look at how our use of MSG has declined in the last 30 years. I unpack the perception that MSG is “bad” for you in my book, but you can also listen to some great podcasts on the topic here.

MSG

These graphs gave me a quick and dirty way to identify trends over time, and a wonderful way to visualize how our larger culture was affecting consumption of these ingredients, and vice verse.

Eight Flavors: Black Pepper and White Wine Snow Drops

Posted on November 3, 2016 by Sarah Lohman

An 18th century candy made with white pepper, brandy and sugar.

In the 21st century, black pepper sits firmly on the savory shelf of our kitchen. We add a twist from our peppers grinders to finish a salad, or crust the exterior of a thick steak with cracked peppercorns. But as I was researching Eight Flavors, I discovered pepper was used to complement sugar, just as often as it was used with salt.

Last week, I got the chance to do some of my first public speaking engagements in California, including a visit to the Dallidet Adobe in San Luis Obispo, California. As part of my talk, I made “pepper-cakes” from the 18th century, a simple candy made of pepper, alcohol and sugar. Easy enough to make, with an intense, but pleasant flavor.

The History

An early American reference to pepper used in sweets is found in Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, first published in 1747 in England. This book was an extremely popular import to America, and also went through several domestic printings, with an added chapter on the use of American ingredients. In the first American edition in 1805, Glasse uses pepper in her pickles, fish recipes, and in many, but not all, of her meat recipes, often in combination with nutmeg, mace, cloves, parsley, savory, and thyme.

But tucked in next to recipes for cookies and gingerbread is this recipe:

To make pepper cakes.

Take half a gill of sack, half a quarter of an ounce of whole white-pepper, put it in, and boil it together a quarter of an hour; then take the pepper out, and put in as much double refined sugar as will make it like a paste; then drop it in what shape you please on plates, and let it dry itself.

The recipe is more of a candy than a cake: brandy is infused with pepper, mixed with sugar and left to dry. Sack is an old word for brandy, and a gill is a measurement of four ounces. So this recipes calls for 1/8 ounce white pepper, boiled for 15 minutes in 2 ounces (1/4 cup) of brandy. I suspect Glasse choose white pepper so as not to discolor the brandy; white pepper was prized historically because it kept white sauces (or in this case, white candy) looking clean and white. I decided to give this unusual recipe a try.

The Recipe

My tiniest saucepan is actually a two-cup measuring cup, perfect for my quarter cup of brandy and smattering of white peppercorns. I set it on my gas burner, and turned the flame up to high to bring the liquid to a hard boil. But after about two minutes of heating–it ignited!! A jet of flames leapt an impressive three feet into the air, flickering blue and gold, almost igniting my eyebrows in the process. Oops. I wonder why Hannah Glasse didn’t warn me about that?

Rather than smothering the flames, I turned off the burner and let it do its thing. The flames would burn off the alcohol, as well as infuse the aromatic oils from the pepper. It burned itself out in a couple minutes, and I strained the brandy into a glass bowl.

At this point, the smell of the white pepper infused brandy was very strong: musty, like old attic books. I added 1 ½ cups white sugar and mixed it into a paste. Glasse says “drop it in what shape you please on plates,” so I used a mini ice cream scoop that I normally employ for doling out cookie dough. I shoveled tiny mounds of pale, cognac-colored sugar onto parchment-lined baking sheets, and set them aside to dry.

The Results

The next morning, the little sugar balls were crusty and shockingly beautiful. Since the sugar is not cooked, the candy isn’t hard and smooth; instead, it’s crisp, crumbly, and sparkly! It looked like the top layer of snow: slightly melted, glistening in the sunshine. These simple treats were breathtakingly beautiful.

But tasted terrible.

I popped one in my mouth. Imagine the taste of musk. Something musky. White pepper is awful. It’s awful.

I hated the taste but loved the concept of this candy. So a couple quick substitutions, and I had made a vast improvement: instead of brandy, I used a sweet white wine. To replace the white pepper, classic Tellicherry black peppercorns offered a complex and surprisingly pleasant flavor.

Give this candy a try for a unique treat and what will seem like a totally innovative way to use pepper– that’s actually over 200 years old.

White Wine and Black Pepper Snow Drops
Adapted from The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, by Hannah Glasse, 1805 edition.

¼ cup sweet white wine
1 teaspoon black peppercorns
1 ½ cups white sugar

Yield: makes 40-60 candies

Combine wine and pepper in a small saucepan; place on a stove top burner on high. Cover. Boil for five minutes.

Add sugar, stir to combine. Drop into ½ teaspoon sized balls onto a parchment lined cookie sheet.

Allow to dry completely. This part of the process can be complicated on a humid day, resulting is a sticky, never-quite-dry candy. If you can, make this candy in the winter, or used a well-airconditioned room.

Pre-Order My Book: Eight Flavors!

Posted on July 10, 2016 by Sarah Lohman

My very first book is in presale, ready to wing its way to your hands on December 6th, 2016!

Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine looks at the eight most popular flavors in American cooking as a way to define American food–and the American people. Moving chronologically through our history, I explore black pepper, vanilla, curry powder, chili powder, soy sauce, garlic, MSG, and Sriracha. But this book is really about people, the folks who have shaped American food over time; and these are people that don’t normally get a page in our history books: blacks, women, immigrants. There’s Edmond Albius, a twelve-year-old slave, who discovered the technique still used to pollinate vanilla orchids today. And David Tran, the Vietnamese refugee who created Sriracha to support his family.

This book has got it all! There’s gorgeous illustrations (by Peter Van Hyning):