Recipes and Stories on the Origin of American Cuisine

Summary

Podcast Summary: All Of It with Alison Stewart – "Recipes and Stories on the Origin of American Cuisine"

Episode Information

• Title: Recipes and Stories on the Origin of American Cuisine
• Host: Alison Stewart
• Guest: Jessica B. Harris, Acclaimed Culinary Historian and Author
• Release Date: July 2, 2025
• Duration: Approximately 26 minutes

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Introduction

In this engaging episode of All Of It, hosted by Alison Stewart, the spotlight is on Jessica B. Harris, a renowned culinary historian, discussing her latest book, Braided Heritage: Recipes and Stories on the Origin of American Cuisine. The conversation delves into the intricate blending of Native American, European, and African culinary traditions that have shaped American cuisine.

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Inspiration Behind Braided Heritage

[00:45 – 03:42]

Alison Stewart introduces Jessica B. Harris and her new book, highlighting its focus on how indigenous, European, and African traditions have intertwined to create the diverse landscape of American cuisine. Harris explains that the book is not merely a historical account but an exploration of the "American braid"—a metaphor for the complex interweaving of different cultural influences.

Jessica B. Harris [02:48]: "The whole idea of that tripartite thread that creates our braid, our American braid, as I call it, that is."

This concept emphasizes the foundational role of these three cultural groups in developing what is recognized today as American food culture.

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Selecting Voices: The Interviewees

[04:01 – 08:16]

Jessica shares her approach to selecting individuals to feature in her book, primarily drawing from close personal connections. She highlights nine friends and introduces two Native American voices, notably Sean Sherman, a prominent chef dedicated to "decolonizing" Native American cuisine by removing European and African influences.

Jessica B. Harris [05:46]: "Sean Sherman... decolonizing the food of his people, that is to say, removing everything that came with contact, contact with Europeans, contact with Africans."

This approach underscores the book's commitment to showcasing authentic and revitalized indigenous culinary practices.

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Exploring Native American Culinary Traditions

[08:44 – 10:50]

The discussion shifts to Julianne Vanderhoop, a Wampanoag chef from Martha's Vineyard. Harris describes Vanderhoop's innovative dishes that honor Wampanoag traditions while adapting to contemporary tastes.

Jessica B. Harris [09:00]: "She does clams, clam fritters and also clear broth, clam chowder... a tempura battered sugar maple leaf."

Harris highlights the use of wild rice, distinguishing it from common rice in terms of flavor and cultural significance.

Jessica B. Harris [05:57]: "It's this glorious, nutty tasting, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful grain that is just, you know, a beautiful underpinning for anything."

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Infusing European Influences into the American Braid

[12:31 – 15:31]

Jessica introduces Melissa Guerra, a food blogger and photographer from the Texas-Mexico borderlands. Guerra's background, rooted in both Spanish and Irish heritage, exemplifies the permeability and blending of cultures that influence American cuisine.

Jessica B. Harris [13:28]: "The Spaniards went to get Irish to help them settle because they were also Catholic."

One notable recipe discussed is stewed salt cod in tomato sauce, which exemplifies the fusion of Old World ingredients (cod, olive oil, onion) with New World elements (tomatoes, bell peppers).

Jessica B. Harris [14:13]: "We get Old World, New World, Old World, New World... turning salt cod into empanadas."

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Celebrating African American Culinary Contributions

[17:26 – 21:00]

The conversation transitions to African American recipes that deserve more recognition. Harris emphasizes watermelon rind pickles as a testament to the African American ethos of minimizing food waste.

Jessica B. Harris [17:48]: "There's no such thing as food waste if we can help it. So the rind gets pickled."

She also discusses johnny cakes and chicken croquettes, highlighting their historical significance and enduring presence in American kitchens.

Jessica B. Harris [20:02]: "A johnny cake is like... a corn cake... they are, you know, a kind of iron skillet cornbread."

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Defining American Culture Through Culinary Origins

[22:15 – 25:09]

When asked to define American culture in the context of her book, Harris reiterates the importance of the "American braid" comprising Native, European, and African influences.

Jessica B. Harris [22:47]: "Those three origin cultures, or those three origin points, of the braid, native, European and African, are what kind of defines this hemisphere."

She acknowledges the broader diversity of contemporary America but focuses her analysis on the foundational influences that her book explores.

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Listener Appreciation and Closing Remarks

[25:09 – 26:18]

A listener expresses heartfelt appreciation for the episode, praising its depth and the beauty of tracing culinary origins.

Listener [25:09]: "Tracing the origins of these dishes brings me joy to think of the real lives that were being lived on this land over the centuries..."

Alison Stewart responds warmly, highlighting the connection between the conversation and the thematic "Three is a Magic Number" from Schoolhouse Rock, which ties back to the episode's exploration of three foundational cultural threads.

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Conclusion

This episode of All Of It masterfully intertwines historical context with personal narratives, illustrating how American cuisine embodies a rich tapestry of cultural influences. Through Jessica B. Harris's insightful discussions and evocative recipes, listeners gain a deeper appreciation for the diverse and interconnected roots of the food that defines the United States.

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Notable Quotes:

• Jessica B. Harris [02:48]: "The whole idea of that tripartite thread that creates our braid, our American braid, as I call it, that is."
• Jessica B. Harris [05:57]: "It's this glorious, nutty tasting, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful grain that is just, you know, a beautiful underpinning for anything."
• Jessica B. Harris [17:48]: "There's no such thing as food waste if we can help it. So the rind gets pickled."
• Jessica B. Harris [22:47]: "Those three origin cultures, or those three origin points, of the braid, native, European and African, are what kind of defines this hemisphere."
• Listener [25:09]: "Tracing the origins of these dishes brings me joy to think of the real lives that were being lived on this land over the centuries..."

---

Recommendation: For those interested in the historical and cultural narratives that shape American cuisine, Jessica B. Harris's Braided Heritage offers a compelling and flavorful journey through the nation's diverse culinary landscape.

Transcript

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[Alison Stewart]

This is all of it. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in Soho. Thank you for spending part of your day with us. I'm grateful that you're here. On today's show, we'll preview some summer movies with Vulture film critic Alison Wilmore. We'll conclude our full bio conversation about the life of abolitionist Charles Sumner. And we'll talk with author Bobby Finger about his novel Four Squares, which just came out in paperback. That's the plan. So let's get this started. We are gearing up for the 4th of July weekend and a new cookbook offers us a way to think about America. It's called Braided Recipes and Stories on the Origin of American Cuisine. And it's by acclaimed historian Dr. Jessica B. Harris. You may remember her seminal book, High on the A Culinary Journey from Africa to America, which inspired the 2021 hit Netflix docuseries of the same name. Now her new book, Braided Heritage, tells the story of how indigenous European and African traditions came to create American cuisine. It also reflects on what it means to be from the United States and the traditions that have been passed down from generation to generation. In her introduction, Harris writes, it's not a work of history, but rather an attempt to remind us just how magnificently mixed we are on the plate and have been from the very beginning of our national story. Bridded Heritage is on shelves now. And joining me now is Jessica Harris. Hi, Jessica. It's so nice to talk to you again.

[Jessica B. Harris]

Hi, Alison. Lovely to talk to you again. How are you?

[Alison Stewart]

I'm doing well, thank you. You know, in your recent books, you specifically focused on African American food traditions and their connections to the African diaspora. Why did you decide to turn your traditions to your attention to the United.

[Unknown Speaker]

States food, tradition and culture?

[Jessica B. Harris]

Well, actually, it's a funny thing. Someone actually asked me to write this book based on a speech that I had done. And I you know, I am a child of TV and a child of Saturday morning tv, even though I wasn't a child, when I was listening to it in many cases, and I started thinking about Schoolhouse Rock. And Schoolhouse Rock had a song called Three Is a Magic Number.

[Alison Stewart]

Yeah.

[Jessica B. Harris]

And the more I thought about the United States, the more I thought about three and the power of three in the founding of this country. And the whole idea of that tripartite thread that creates our braid, our American braid, as I call it, that is.

[Unknown Speaker]

The greatest story I have ever heard. Schoolhouse Rock meets Jessica Harris.

[Alison Stewart]

It was interesting. In the book, though, there's also these interviews, these sort of profiles of people who you wanted to talk to for the book. How did you decide who you wanted.

[Unknown Speaker]

To talk to for Braided Heritage?

[Jessica B. Harris]

Well, I mean, it's almost as though they came to me. I would say of the 11 people that I talk to, certainly fully nine were dear friends, old friends. So that was the other thing that came out of that whole idea of the power of three was it was like, well, doggone it, I know people from all of the aspects of the brain. Let me talk to them. And then the two that I didn't know as well were actually Native American. One being Sean Sherman, who is out of Minneapolis, who calls himself and is very much the sous chef, but he spells it S I O U X. And so, first of all, I just love the humor of it all, but also I love the fact that he is doing something extraordinary in his work, his culinary work. He is, as he puts it, decolonizing the food of his people, that is to say, removing everything that came with contact, contact with Europeans, contact with Africans. Move it. Removing it all. So he goes back to no wheat, no sugar, no cane sugar, no, you know, no pork. So it's a very interesting cuisine. And I had lunch out there a couple of weeks ago, and it was just astounding. Glorious, glorious, glorious food, but food as it would have not necessarily been cooked, but food with ingredients that would have been here.

[Alison Stewart]

Yeah. One of his recipes calls for wild rice and mustard green cakes. So how is wild rice different from average rice?

[Jessica B. Harris]

Well, it's an entirely different thing. It's a grain, but it's really almost like a weed. I can't call it a weed, though, but it grows in the marshlands. We see things that are called wild rice. But literally, from my eating in Minneapolis two weeks ago, I was gobsmacked. It's not at all what we think it is. It's this glorious, nutty tasting, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful grain that is just, you know, a beautiful underpinning for anything.

[Alison Stewart]

And the three that you're talking about is the indigenous people, the European and the African tradition in the United States.

[Jessica B. Harris]

Absolutely. And the Europeans being specifically the Spaniards who were here, who were here before the British because they go back to the 16th century. And when you see places like St. Augustine in Florida, you get a sense of that. And then of course, the Southwest, the British. And the British are the ones that, you know, kind of write the history that we know. Pilgrims, the Virginia colonies and so on and so forth. The Dutch, whom we always forget, but who had large swaths of the Middle Atlantic states under their domination. And then the French. And then for African Americans, rather than go with specific points of origin, because that gets a little sticky. Wicked, as they say. I went with different threads. So I talk about migration. I talked to one person who's a dear friend who was unfortunately the only person in the book who has died before the book was written. I'm deeply aggrieved about that and innovation. The person who died was a child of the North. We always think of African Americans in connection with the south, but her family had northern roots. No connection with the south at all.

[Alison Stewart]

We're talking to acclaimed culinary historian and author Jessica B. Harris. She's revisiting Americans origins through the food. It's titled Braided Heritage Recipes and Stories on the Origin of the American Cuisine. Let's roll it back to the native people. I'm very excited that you put a spotlight on Julianne Vanderhoop, a Wampanoag from the island of Martha's Vineyard. So many Vanderhoops on the vineyard.

[Jessica B. Harris]

Yes, yes. Well, then you must know the vineyard to know the Vanderhoops there. They're everywhere. Tell us. I'm. In a beautiful way.

[Alison Stewart]

In a beautiful way. Tell us how the food she makes reflects on her tribe's rich traditions. The Wampanoag.

[Jessica B. Harris]

Well, I mean, she does a lot of. Well, she does clams, clam fritters and also clear broth, clam chowder. We are used to the dairy based clam chowder. But, you know, dairy as we know it was cows and cows weren't here when you get back to the decolonizing. So clear broth, clam chowder, which is just a lovely, lovely thing. Then she also does a almost tempura battered sugar maple leaf. And that's one of those things where the braiding comes early because of course, the wheat in the battering of it would have been European. But it's a dish that she prepared once we were doing a. I don't know, we were doing A dinner together for something, and she was doing additions. She had these glorious sugar maple leaves. And sugar maple leaves are not your normal maple leaves, so you can't just go out and pick some in your backyard unless you've got a sugar maple tree. They're the leaves of the tree that gets tapped to make maple syrup. So they have a sweetness to them. And when you add that sweetness to the crunch, it's kind of lovely. Quite lovely.

[Unknown Speaker]

You include a recipe that involves bluefish, which can be found in the waters of Martha's Vineyard if you get up early enough. What is the most common way of cooking bluefish? And then what does the recipe offer that extends? What is great about bluefish?

[Jessica B. Harris]

Well, bluefish is an oily fish. Many people don't like it because it's oily, and they're not used to the, you know, the texture of it, if you will. But what happens here. And I'm speaking to you from the Vineyard, So one of the things that happens on the Vineyard is that it is often smoked. It's often smoked and often comes as a spread. So we're eating it, you know, almost. I can't say a pate, but it's really just sort of a bluefish spread that, you know, goes on crackers that shows up on tables all summer long. But what Julie does is take it and cook it fresh and attenuates the taste of it with a lemony aioli that's made with, you know, garlic powder and Dijon mustard and lemon juice. And so that cuts a little of the oiliness that some people don't like.

[Unknown Speaker]

Was my dad's favorite. Love the bluefish.

[Jessica B. Harris]

There you go. There you go. When the blues are running It's a good thing.

[Unknown Speaker]

Let's bring the Europeans into the braid. The second little wrap of the braid, you highlight Melissa Guerra, a food blogger and photographer you met while you were both on the advisory board for the Culinary Institute of America's campus in San Antonio. What did you find interesting about her story?

[Jessica B. Harris]

Well, I found her story absolutely fascinating because Melissa is someone who grew up in what she calls the Wild Horse Desert, which is the borderland. The borderland that is a very permeable. Permeable, or was a very permeable border. She is a McAllen. You know, her great. Well, her grandfather was Argyle McAllen, but his first language was Spanish, and their people have been in Texas since the 18th century. Now, what I didn't know. And in fact, I didn't even know this when the book was being written. So it's not in the book. But a Texan friend of mine who also has an Irish name said that the Spaniards went to get Irish to help them settle because they were also Catholic.

[Alison Stewart]

Interesting.

[Jessica B. Harris]

Yeah, I found that fascinating. So it makes connections. But where. Where Melissa grew up, it was permeable. They used to go to Mexico. They were in Texas. They would go to Mexico for lunch, go back to Texas. Her husband, who is Mexican, was born in the same hospital that she was. And so they were back and forth, you know, back and forth. And it's a very different feeling for Mexico and borderlands than what we have today.

[Alison Stewart]

She has a recipe for stewed salt cod in tomato sauce. What makes this uniquely American?

[Jessica B. Harris]

Well, the tomatoes, for one. Tomatoes being American. The cod, again, the braid. Starting early, the cod, the bacalao, is the dish of the seafarers. Codfish was on most, if not all, of the sailing vessels because it could keep. So you would have, you know, just stacks of it and people who've gone to open markets and seen it, it kind of gets stacked like cordwood. And you can, you know, desalinate it and use it so it could keep. It would survive an ocean voyage. But it became part of the food of the hemisphere. That's why it's so widely used in the Caribbean. And so it was also widely used on the Iberian Peninsula. So we've got the cod fish as the base of the recipe, but then we've got tomatoes and bell peppers, which are New World, and olive oil and onion, which is Old World. And so we get Old World, New World, Old World, New World. And then the salt cod, stewed salt code gets turned into empanadas.

[Unknown Speaker]

It's so interesting to look at the ingredients in a recipe and think about where they came from. And what does that mean, that they came from that place?

[Jessica B. Harris]

Indeed. I mean, that's one of my favorite things to do, is to just take a look and just. I mean, it. It's what lets you know that there is, in fact, and indeed a braid, because we are so mixed to deconstruct the food, or as Sean Sherman says, to decolonize it is very, very difficult. You know, we use wheat. We don't think of it as coming from Europe. We use tomatoes. We don't think of them as being New World. We use corn. We don't think of it as, you know, coming up and out of Mexico. We do so many things just almost automatically. The COVID of the book is a ham and fried okra. Well, ham is pig. Pig is Old World. Came with the Spaniards, okra is African, but it's fried in a kind of cornmeal coating. And the corn is Native American. So we've got all three parts of the braid on the COVID It also.

[Alison Stewart]

Looks like a beautiful still life.

[Jessica B. Harris]

Yeah, it does. It does, actually. You know, Kelly Marshall, who was the photographer, just did an extraordinary job.

[Unknown Speaker]

In her latest cookbook, acclaimed culinary historian and author Jessica Harris revisits America's origins through its traditions around food. The book is titled Braided Heritage Recipes and Stories on the Origin of American Cuisine. Our third part of the braid, African Americans.

[Alison Stewart]

Okay.

[Unknown Speaker]

Tell us which African American recipes you feel don't get enough love when we talk about food culture.

[Jessica B. Harris]

Oh, I don't know. We get a lot of love for our food. I'm not sure which ones don't get a lot of love. Maybe less well known would be something like watermelon rind pickles.

[Alison Stewart]

Okay, tell me more about watermelon rind pickles.

[Jessica B. Harris]

Well, African Americans are noted for, you know, there is no such thing as food waste if we can help it. And so the rind gets pickled. It gets turned into this wonderful sort of sweet and sour pickle. Sweet ish. With, you know, allspice and vinegars and cinnamon. And they have a little sweetness to them. So they're wonderful as an accompaniment for all kinds of things. My grandmother, maternal grandmother, would serve them with roasts. I do, and I don't think it's in the book, but I do a kind of appetizer, not appetizer, you know, nibble thing where I wrap a watermelon rind pickle and bacon, and you get, you know, all of the tastes of the bacon and the watermelon rind. They are just wonderful. And in fact, during the Depression, I can't remember her name, but there was a woman in Harlem who would collect all of the watermelon rinds and pickle them and then sell those. So it was a way to make money. The second known cookbook by an African American authority, what Mrs. Fisher knows about Southern Food by Abby Fisher. Abby Fisher was known for her pickles. So that that whole idea of pickling is something that we don't necessarily think of or connect, you know, but there it is. And the title of the book is actually what Mrs. Fisher knows about Old Southern Cooking.

[Alison Stewart]

You know, you know, as I'm thinking about it, I'm thinking about enslaved Africans. I mean, they had to preserve what they had.

[Jessica B. Harris]

Exactly.

[Alison Stewart]

And pickling must have been a huge part of it.

[Jessica B. Harris]

Pickling could have been a Part of it, if they were able to get the ingredients, not just of things to pickle, but the vinegars and things like that that they could use for the pickling. So it may have come into things a little later, but certainly it was a part of it.

[Alison Stewart]

You have a recipe for johnny cakes in the book. First of all, what is a johnny cake?

[Jessica B. Harris]

A johnny cake is like, well, it's not really a pancake, it's a bread. It's sort of flatbread, if you will. They are eaten often at breakfast and they're eaten up and down the hemisphere. Yeah, pretty much. I can say the hemisphere, but the northern hemisphere, so that they are, you know, a corn cake. And you get some that are called hoecakes, some that are called journey cakes. I was so surprised to find them once in the Dominican Republic, where they are called yanni kekes. And so they are, you know, just a kind of iron skillet cornbread.

[Unknown Speaker]

There's a recipe here that you say takes you back to my mother's days as a dietitian in African American traditions. The chicken croquettes.

[Jessica B. Harris]

Mm. Well, croquettes used to be a way to use food that would. Might otherwise have been not food waste, but not been as used, you know, second day recipes kind of thing.

[Unknown Speaker]

Yeah.

[Jessica B. Harris]

And African Americans, and generally Americans in the 50s, probably early 60s, and before the 50s, certainly when I grew up, would have croquettes. You might have salmon croquettes for breakfast, you might have chicken croquettes for dinner. And it's basically chop the chopped protein with onion, possibly a little bit of green pepper, bound together with, you know, eggs or cream or both, and then fried. So it's a patty. Then you can eat them with, you know, a mayonnaise or a aioli or whatever it is that you'd like to have along with it. Could even have some watermelon rind pickles next to them.

[Unknown Speaker]

I'd love to read this passage from your book and get you to comment on it. You write about America. The name itself is contentious, taken from an Italian explorer who used to define two continents that were already occupied by whole civilizations. In the United States, we consider ourselves Americans, but Canadians, Mexicans and Brazilians are also Americans in the original sense.

[Alison Stewart]

So how do you define American culture.

[Unknown Speaker]

For the purposes of this book?

[Jessica B. Harris]

Well, remember that the book is about the origin of American cuisine. So I'm not trying to define or describe contemporary American culture which has gone so far beyond the braid, you know, now we'd have to add in all of the people who are Americans. And, you know, I learned that when I would go to Brazil and say I'm an American, folks would look at me and say, so are we. You know, it's like, oh, okay, I get it. I totally get it. You know, we claim, you know, we claim this continent as ours. Not even this continent, this hemisphere, but, you know, but we share it with a whole lot of folks. So for the foundation of it, for the origin of it, I think, you know, gotta honor the people who were here. Those would be the indigenous people, the Native Americans, the folks who came. And whether it's North, Central or south, those same cultures pretty much predominate. The Spanish, the British, the French and the Dutch. I mean, we've got Suriname and Curacao and, you know, Aruba, Bonaire, Curacao, and then Saint Eustatius that are Dutch and the French, Martigny, Guadeloupe, that are still the Tremeau that are part of France today. So we've got, you know, those cultures still obtain. And of course, the Africans, North, Central and South. So those three origin cultures, or those three origin points, if you will, of the braid, native, European and African, are what kind of defines this hemisphere. Everybody else comes along and God knows I understand that. I'm not trying to leave them out of the braid, but they were not necessarily foundational, and I don't want to get into the they came before Columbus or who came across the Pacific and all the rest of that. It's highly possible there were others. But, you know, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

[Alison Stewart]

Jessica, I'm going to read you this text we just got. Hi, Alison. I want to say this is one of my favorite segments you've ever done on all of it. This conversation is so beautiful and. And well researched through and through whatever opinion one might have on colonization and who does or who doesn't belong where. Tracing the origins of these dishes brings me joy to think of the real lives that were being lived on this land over the centuries and the people who were doing their human thing on Earth. Culture mixing is all over the planet. It leads to such beauty and diversity and story. Thank you for this conversation.

[Jessica B. Harris]

Well, thank you to that reader. My goodness, such a beautiful. That listener. I guess not so much reader that.

[Alison Stewart]

Well, she will be a reader because she's gonna buy your book. The book is called Braided Heritage Recipes and Stories on the Origin of American Cuisine. It is by Jessica Harris. Jessica, we found Schoolhouse Rock and this is just for you. This is three is a Magic number. Thanks for the conversation.

[Jessica B. Harris]

Thank you so much.

[Schoolhouse Rock]

Three has a magic number. The past and the present and the future. Faith and hope and charity. The heart and the brain and the body give you three. There's a magic number. It takes three legs to make a tripod or to make a table stand. It takes three wheels to make a vehicle called a tricycle. Every triangle has three corners. Every triangle has three sides. No more, no less. You don't have to guess when it's three, you can see it's a magic number.

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