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Comment by Footingerm | Hacker News Reader

But its true.

Europe has a refined food history even if certain foods are young. There was some type of pizza before and it evolved in what pizza is today.

Alone the amount of cheese types is huge.

What did the USA invent in comparision? What is specific to USA? Even plenty of typical USA Food was invented in Europe.

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Breakfast cereals, hot dogs, hamburgers, toaster pastries, hot pockets, cornbread, jambalaya, grits, cranberry sauce, jerky, the chocolate chip cookie, pumpkin pie, the waffle ice cream cone, milkshakes, Coca-cola, peanut butter (although I learned today the first peanut butter patent was issued to a Canadian in Montreal).

Some of these were invented in North America, but before the USA was founded. If you do some research you can find much more.

It amounts to a considerable contribution to the culinary arts. Chocolate chip cookies alone are worthy of a lifetime achievement award.

Louisiana really is this country's best kept secret.

While most of the others sound North American, jerky is not. Dried meat is a pretty universal concept, and jerky specifically is something Europeans got from the Inca. Even the word itself is borrowed from Quechua.

Thanks!

> Dried meat is a pretty universal concept

Irrelevant in my opinion. Putting something on bread has probably existed since the day after someone invented bread. But we still give Italy credit for inventing pizza. Just like startups, the implementation is more important than the idea.

Early version of hot dog was invented in germany Hamburger might also been created in germany

Cornbread: Native Americans

I give you breakfast cereals, toaster pastries, hot pockets, grits, pumpkin pie, milkshake.

Coca-cola? do we now start to listen all types of drink recipetes?

So pure cultural, usa invented easy foods. This has very little to do with cultural foods like cheese, or the million types of sausages and breads and etc.

It does not amount to a considerable contribution to the culinary arts

“American cooks and chefs have substantially altered these dishes over the years, to the degree that the dishes now enjoyed around the world are considered to be American. Hot dogs and hamburgers are both based on traditional German dishes, but in their modern popular form they can be reasonably considered American dishes.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_cuisine#Ethnic_influe...

The list of US-specific and US-influenced food is pretty long, and includes lots of ‘slow’ foods. Why are you basing your argument on cherry picking from an incomplete list of examples?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_foods

And what do you mean that so-called ‘easy food’ isn’t a contribution to food culture? It’s trending globally (for better or worse), and relates closely to food supply economics.

> Cornbread: Native Americans

Native American foods count, why wouldn’t they?

> This has very little to do with cultural foods like cheese

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_cheeses

Inventing Coke, toaster pastries, and breakfast cereals was neither quick, nor easy. And drinks are a part of cuisine. If we can't count Coke, we also can't include French wine-making or German brewing.

What's a "cultural food"?

Not that GPs point is particularly convincing, but are we really comparing the mastery of wine making and beer brewing to Coca Cola now, in a discussion on culinary culture..? That’s like comparing Fox News to Tolstoi.

Why not? This is just the whole high art/low art nonsense in another context. Plenty of people enjoy their cola of choice more than they do a fancy wine and consider it to be an essential part of their day. Why is it less worthy of inclusion in culinary culture?

No, it’s not. Wine is not just a fancy drink but a craftsmanship tradition, thousands of years old. It’s not just the sophisticated people drinking it, but also the countless people involved in its making and cultivation! Have you ever been to a vineyard in a French, Italian, or German vineyard wine region? The people there live for this; their yards have been passed on for generations, and will continue to be. Planting a new grape means making a 30 year bet, with that much commitment you have to be all in.

I could go on about the entire villages built around wine, the historic efforts required to get the grapes we have today, the unique chemical compounds making for the aromas, and more.

And you’re telling me you want to seriously compare thousands of years of agricultural tradition to a mere hundred years of stimulating Coca Tonic that accidentally tastes pretty good?

It looks like you just did compare coke to wine. :P Seriously though, isn’t this a straw man argument? Parent wasn’t saying there isn’t craft or tradition involved in wine, nor that coke compares on those axes. You didn’t actually answer the question at all: why not discuss the cultural impact of coke? There is cultural impact. It’s not the same impact wine has, it’s quite different, but it is in fact there, don’t you agree?

I answered this in a sibling comment in more detail, but basically my complaint is that comparing a single soda brand to an entire class of tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of drinks, which have a rich cultural back story just seems wrong to me, that doesn’t do wine justice, especially as we don’t just discuss cultural impact, but cultural significance. I’m sure I come across as a European snob here, and I’m actually sorry for that, but I can’t get over the fact that someone claims Coca Cola is in any way as significant as the tradition of winery in total :(

Nobody claimed Coke is as historically significant as all wines combined. That is the straw man. As the best selling single soda brand, and a major global export that people in almost every country on earth consume, Coke does in fact have global cultural and economic significance, which is just a fact. That fact is not taking anything away from the rich history of winemaking, so there’s no need to be defensive. Have some wine and relax!

Edit: BTW Coca Cola’s revenue does stack up meaningfully against the entire wine industry. (The Google results are all over the map, so I’m being careful with my claims, but according to some web pages out there, Coca-Cola’s net revenue is higher than all wines combined.) There is an economic basis for comparing Coke to wine, which does support a cultural basis for comparison, in addition to other reasons Coke is culturally relevant. Notice I’m not (and upstream comments were not) coming to any conclusions about the result of that comparison.

They're all popular drinks associated with their respective food cultures. That's all. I'm not comparing the skill in manufacturing Coke vs beer or wine.

It’s an apple to fruit comparison, then: More apt would be picking carbonated soda drinks, maybe. Or pick out a single kind of wine from a single vineyard.

I’m just a bit salty on comparing such a giant category like European wine or beer to a single company‘s soda.

Specifically colas as opposed to all carbonated drinks should count.

I don't know if generally all sweetened carbonate drinks are mainly American, but I wouldn't be surprised.

That's fair. Most of the popular soft drinks today were invented in the US - Pepsi, Sprite, Dr. Pepper, 7-up, Slice, Dr. Pepper.

While your list is true, it's not a great list to make your case. One responder said that the hamburger and hotdog don't fit, because they're German, but that's only appreciably true for the hotdog (which is effectively indistinguishable from a bockwurst).

Gumbo, jambalaya, barbecue, cornbread, chili, clam chowder, fried chicken, pancakes, biscuits and gravy, pies (any sweet sort, not just pumpkin), cheesecake, brownies, fudge. The US is also one of the three great pizza countries (along with Italy and Argentina).

And that's just the some of the stuff that's relatively decisively American. In practice, as I said in my original post, things are incredibly fluid, and a lot of American dishes are heavily based on other cultures, and a lot of other cultures' mainstays are based on New World ingredients. American and Italian versions of "Italian" cuisine significantly co-evolved, and it's virtually impossible to separate one from the other.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tex-Mex would be an obvious candidate?

I'm not sure how you'd make a claim like "plenty of typical XYZ food was invented elsewhere" when all food is similar to or a variation of or build upon something that came before unless we literally evolve new ways of ingesting nutrients.

> What did the USA invent in comparision? What is specific to USA? Even plenty of typical USA Food was invented in Europe.

Low and slow style BBQ

Barbeque originated in the Caribbean

Oh they were the first to cook meat on fire were they. /s

The regional BBQ culture of different sauces and meats in the US has nothing to do with what the word was used to describe in the Caribbean. What was described as BBQ hundreds of years ago in the Caribbean, as a way of cooking fish, wouldn't even be considered BBQ in the US.

> What did the USA invent in comparison?

Well, there’s California cuisine: https://guide.michelin.com/sg/en/article/features/california...

Fwiw I'm not American and get a good laugh out of /r/shitamericanssay sometimes, but I can think of: 'tex-mex', California roll sushi, deep dish pizza, bagels as sandwiches (I think? Not the bagel itself, but using it as a bun), different uses of okra than I'm aware of elsewhere like stewed/chowders/soup, some of that stuff in the south in general actually spicy shellfish chowders etc. I think there's a good argument is evolved from what came before it elsewhere.

What is there to "invent" exactly?

First of all, humans invent recipes based on the locally available raw foods, nothing special about that. Secondly, humans reinvent the same recipes time after time because we are all the same. Each culture invents their own stuffed dumplings, flat bread with toppings, etc. and they believe it's soooo unique and local

Your strokes are too broad.

Obviously different groups of humans in different times and locations are going to invent similar foods. But, for example speaking of flat bread, how you actually execute it and the differences in texture, thickness, crunchiness, what you put on top of it and what order can make two dishes that are the same macro idea but end up as two completely different things.

Cooking something for 15 minutes more or 15 minutes less can cause massive differences in texture and taste, and we are not even talking about the potentially big differences that having slightly different ingredients can cause.

So, you are saying I'm right. A steak tartare otherwise could be the same dish as an hamburger with egg and mustard, following the line of thought of your previous comment.

You are right, but at the same time your rightness doesn't serve your argument. Recipes can be dramatically different without anyone even putting a crumb of cretivity, just out of pure coincidence

And curiously most older cultures have their own fermented food.

Yep! Fermented foods have been a cornerstone of traditional diets in many cultures (Kimchi)

Cajun cuisine and multiple types of BBQ come to mind.

> What did the USA invent in comparision?

Clamato juice?

Canadians have elevated Clamato juice with the Caesar, the purest nectar of the gods. Mexicans come close with micheladas and Americans have bloody Mary’s but nothing compares to a proper Caesar.

I think I might need to have one today.

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