Cuisine

American

American cooking is a set of regional kitchens that share a supermarket more than they share a cuisine. New England clam chowder is a milk-or-cream soup of clams, potato and salt pork or bacon, thick enough to sit on a spoon. Pumpkin pie is a spiced custard in pastry, a harvest plate that became a national holiday dish. A smash burger is a thin patty pressed hard on a hot griddle so the edges frill and brown. Hot honey chicken is fried chicken finished with chilli-sweet honey. Pickle dip is a party bowl of chopped pickle and a dairy base.

Indigenous maize and pumpkin, British pies, African American frying, German and Italian butchery, and twentieth-century industrial bread and beef all sit on the same table. Clam chowder split into cream New England and tomato Manhattan styles; the argument is local. Texas-style brisket and New Mexican pork chile in this catalog are Southwestern and Texan, better read beside Southern US barbecue than as generic American. The smash burger is diner technique made fashionable. American food includes immigrant kitchens that are now regional. A single burger-and-pie brand is a postcard, not a map.

Frying, smoking, baking and the griddle do more work than a national spice blend. Dairy thickens chowder; it would be wrong in a Manhattan tomato version. Pumpkin pie should set, not slosh. Smash burgers want a hard press and American cheese that melts into the crust. Texas brisket is salt, pepper and smoke. New Mexican chile is chilli-as-sauce. Southern US cooking is a related, more specific regional kitchen.