Italian-American Cuisine

Italian-American cuisine () is a style of Italian cuisine adapted throughout the United States. Italian-American food has been shaped throughout history by various waves of immigrants and their descendants, called Italian Americans.

As immigrants from the different regions of Italy settled throughout the various regions of the United States, many brought with them a distinct regional Italian culinary tradition. Many of these foods and recipes developed into new favorites for the townspeople and later for Americans nationwide.

Influences

Italian-American food is based primarily on the culinary traditions of southern Italian immigrants, although a significant number of northern Italian immigrants also came to the United States and also influenced this style of cuisine to some extent.

Italian-Americans often identify foods with their regional heritage. Southern Italian staples include dry pasta, tomato sauce, and olive oil, whereas northern Italian staples include foods such as risotto, white sauce, and polenta.

Migration

In the late 19th and early 20th century, the Italian poor suffered from severe food insecurity, from taxes, modernization (depriving them of feudal land access), and overpopulation. The non-landowning class survived on a mostly vegetarian diet consisting of hard bread and soups; meat, if any, was reserved for celebration.transcript
/ref> Partial knowledge of fine food trickled down from the rich from restaurants, despite the poor having little means to access them.

Under this background, waves of Italians immigrated to the United States, mainly through Ellis Island. In the US, these immigrants found hard work, long hours, and cramped quarters; yet for the first time they were paid well enough to afford plenty of soft bread, flour, meat, cheese, eggs, and even olive oil, dry pasta, and cheese imported from Italy or the Italian diaspora in Argentina. Reacting to this newfound abundance, Italian-American cuisine shows two important characteristics: it heavily emphasizes the use of "rich ingredients" (meat, cheese, and eggs) compared to its Italian peasant counterpart, yet it retains a simple-to-prepare style characteristic of . The stereotypical Italian-American "red sauce" cuisine is, accordingly, a fusion of these characteristics with a southern Italian (chiefly Neapolitan and Sicilian cuisine) base. Immigrants from different regions of Italy also exchanged their regional recipes as they become neighbors.

Northern Italians also left important marks on Italian-American cuisine. Two cheesemakers from Parma, Paolo Sartori and Count Julio Bolognaisi, took advantage of the milk supply in Wisconsin and produced Parmesan cheese.

Americanization

There were very few Italian-American cookbooks published until the 1960s. Italian-Americans, like Italians in Italy, chiefly passed down recipes as an oral tradition. Girls took home economics classes that boasted the superiority of a homogenous American cuisine, influencing the range of ingredients and techniques they use at home.

Instead of learning about Italian food from the immigrant population, the general American population of this time explored Italian food using cookbooks written by Anglo-American chefs, containing those chefs' adaptations of Italian food. These books were also used by Italian Americans who were convinced that these books formed "an integral part of their cultural heritage" and had no alternatives. Only with the "new ethnicities" movement of the 1960s did significant efforts to document Italian-American cooking and associated foodways appear.

Further contact

Over time, through an increased appreciation of Italian cuisine in the United States, as well as increased imports into the United States from Italy, there has been a push towards producing more authentic dishes, which use techniques and ingredients that are more native to Italy.

On the other hand, e.g. carbonara, a dish unrecorded in Italy before World War II, may be due to an American influence in relationship to the allied liberation of Rome in 1944.

Popularity

Italian-American food and Mediterranean cuisine has been highly influential in the American diet. It is one of the top three cuisines in the United States, according to the National Restaurant Association:

Rated high on the list of popular, or trending, items in the survey include Mediterranean flatbread, ciabatta bread, espresso, and specialty coffee drinks.Stensson, Anita, National Restaurant Association news release,
Small is Big on Restaurant Menus
..." November 29, 2007. Pizza and pasta are also common dishes in the United States; however, they are presented in very different forms than in Italy.

Wine

There is a strong association between Italian-American cuisine and the history of winemaking in the United States.

Many Italian wines were first introduced to the United States in the late 18th century. Italian vintners were first brought to the state of Florida in 1766 by Dr. Andrew Turnbull, a British Consul at Smyrna (now Ä°zmir). Filippo Mazzei, an Italian physician, and close friend of U.S. President Thomas Jefferson, also helped to cultivate vineyards, olives, and other Mediterranean fruit with the help of Italians.

In later years, American viticulture was more influenced by the Italian diaspora of the transatlantic migrations, which steadily brought more Italians to America from the 1870s through the 1920s. Most of these Italians entered the East Coast of the United States through Ellis Island, whereas many of those quickly passed through to the American West Coast, where California still had its famous "Gold rush".

In California, Italian-Americans were inspired by the expanse of rolling hills and fertile fields. Prior to Prohibition starting in 1919, many wineries had made their start: Seghesio, Simi, Sebastiani Vineyards and Foppiano began in the late 19th century and remain in operation today. Others included Giuseppe Magliavacca's Napa winery, Secondo Guasti's Italian Vineyard Company and Andrea Sbarbaro's Italian Swiss Colony.

From 1919 until the repeal of Prohibition in 1933, many Italian-Americans struggled to keep their vineyards going. Many remained through providing sacramental wine to the Catholic Church or grape juice to the general market. These few holdouts can be credited with salvaging America's viticulture heritage, in an industry that values the longevity and tradition of the vine and its produce.

Today, Italian-American wineries prove a powerful asset on the world market. Some of these companies include: Atlas Peak (also known as Antinori), Cosentino, Dalla Valle, Delicato, Ferrari-Carano, E & J Gallo Winery, Geyser Peak, Louis M. Martini, Mazzocco, Robert Mondavi, Monte Bello Ridge, Corrado Parducci, Pedroncelli Winery, Robert Pepi, Picchetti Brothers Winery, Rochioli, Rafanelli, Rubicon Estate Winery (also known as Francis Ford Coppola Presents), Sebastiani Vineyards, Signorello, Sattui, Trinchero (most often under the Sutter Home brand), Valley of the Moon, Viansa, and more.

Dishes

Pastas and grains

Vegetable dishes

Meats and eggs

Sauces

Seafood dishes

Soups and stews

Breads, sandwiches, and savory baked goods

Sweets

* Tiramisu – a sweet multi-layered cake with light fluffy cream, often served with a coffee or other hot caffeinated beverage. Tiramisu is one of the more recent Italian imports, having been invented after World War II (probably in the Veneto or Friuli-Venezia Giulia region), but adopted readily by American diners.
* Cannoli – a sweet ricotta filling in a fried pastry shell
* '' Struffoli'' – fried dough for dessert. Christmas cake is typical of Naples. In Abruzzo, this dish is called ''cicerchiata'', meaning " blue sweet-pea dish" and is eaten before Easter.
* ''Biscotti d'annodare'' – knot cookies
* '' Sfogliatelle'' – a sort of custard turnover made with leaved ('' millefoglie'') pastry; a similar pastry, larger and filled with a type of pastry cream, is sometimes called a "lobster tail".
* Biscotti – generally anise flavored, often nut-studded hard cookie that may alternatively contain dried fruit or chocolate are common as well; often dipped in coffee rather than sweet dessert wines as in Italy. American biscotti are almost always loaf-type cookies that are sliced and rebaked to crispness, while the term refers to almost all forms of cookies in Italy.
* '' Pizzelle'' – traditional Italian waffle cookies made from flour, eggs, sugar, butter or oil, and flavoring (usually anise or anisette, less commonly vanilla or lemon zest). Originally from Abruzzo, brought over to the United States by Abruzzese immigrants. Popular during Christmas in the Northeastern United States among Italian-Americans and especially in Philadelphia and other cities where large numbers of Abruzzese immigrants settled.
* Zeppole – these cream puffs are often served on Father's Day in many Italian-American communities in the United States. They are made with '' pâte à choux'' and then filled with a custard based pastry cream and topped with maraschino cherries and powdered sugar before serving.

See also

* American cuisine
* North American cuisine
* New American cuisine

References

Further reading

There are many styles of cookbooks available in English, both on the subjects of traditional and authentic "Italian cuisine" and "Italian-American" food.
*Bastianich, Lidia Matticchio, ''Lidia's Italian American Kitchen''. New York, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001. Focuses on the Italian American kitchen and also the basis of the PBS television cooking show series. Winner of the IACP cookbook Award. Bastianich incorporates Northern Italian and Istrian Slavic influences in her cooking.
*Buonopane, Marguerite D., ''The North End Italian Cookbook'', 5th ed. Guilford, CT: Globe Pequot Press, 2004, : an oft-updated collection of Italian American recipes from Boston, Massachusetts.
*De Laurentiis, Giada, ''Giada's Family Dinners''. New York, New York: Crown Publishing Group/ Random House, Inc., 2006, , or 0-307-23827-X: by the star of television Food Network's ''Everyday Italian'' and ''Behind the Bash'', De Laurentiis' cooking style bridges the gap between Italian and Italian American food.
*Editoriale Domus (editor), ''The Silver Spoon'' (original title: '' Il cucchiaio d'argento''). London: Phaidon Press, 2005, : an English translation of a best-selling Italian kitchen reference providing a broad survey of the dishes popular around Italy; provided for comparison with the references about American Italian food.
*Gabaccia, Donna, "Food, Recipes, Cookbooks, and Italian American Life" pp. 121–155 in ''American Woman, Italian Style'', Fordham Press, 2011. .
*Gentile, Maria
''The Italian Cook Book: The Art of Eating Well''
New York: the Italian Book Co., 1919: a post-World War I effort to popularize Italian cooking in the United States.
* Hill, Henry, ''The Wiseguy Cookbook''. New York: Penguin-Putnam, 2002, : a presentation of the role of food in the life of the American Mafia by the subject of the movie Goodfellas.
*Mariani, John and Galina, ''The Italian American Cookbook''. Boston: Harvard Common Press, 2000, : a broad history and survey of Italian American food as eaten around the United States.
*Middione, Carlo, ''The Food of Southern Italy''. New York: William Morrow & Company, 1987, (hardcover). A San Franciscan chef's perspective on Italian food.
*Rice, William, ''Steak Lover's Cookbook''. New York: Workman Publishing, 1997, . Not an Italian cookbook, but talks extensively about the influence of Italian American cuisine on steakhouse culture and menus.
*Rucker, Alan, and Michele Scicolone, ''The Sopranos Family Cookbook''. New York: Warner Books, 2002, : a tie-in to the popular HBO television series, featuring recipes typical of Neapolitan-derived New Jersey Italian American food (the fictional Soprano family claimed descent from the town of Avellino).

On Italian American Winemaking
*Wine Heritage: The Story of Italian American Vintners. Dick Rosano (Author), Robert Mondavi (Foreword).

On Related topics of migration, immigration and diaspora

*Worrall, Janet E, et al. editors, ''Italian Immigrants Go West: the Impact of Locale on Ethnicity.'' Cambridge, MA: Italian American Historical Association (AIHA), 2003, (hardcover) or 0-934675-51-X (softcover): an anthology of essays on Italian Americans, including subjects of history, literature, ethnic relations, movement west in America, early 19th Century migration from Italy, politics, urban/ suburban/ rural living, typical labor and work life, etc.
* Gabaccia, Donna R., ''Italy's Many Diasporas.'' Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 2000, or 0-295-97918-6 (alk. paper): foreign countries, emigration and immigration. See essays on "Patria e natio" (29), "legacy of civilta italiana" (33), table 3.3. "Destinations of migrants by region, 1876-1914 by percentage" (70), "Paese, regione and the global labor market" (68). This book will also help better understand the concepts of community among working Italian Americans with the ideas of ''paese'' or ''paesani'', and the shared, formative culture among them, often referred to as ''civiltà italiana''.

External links

*
Italian American recipes by La Gazzetta Italiana
* – a collection of recipes and stories. Web page archived a

{{DEFAULTSORT:Italian American Cuisine

Italian cuisine
Articles containing video clips
American cuisine