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Why do you think that this was significant for the time period?

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Why do you think that this was significant for the time period?

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It showed that other people live different lives and experiences.

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How does the culture you found impact today? Is it similar or different? How? 

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How does the culture you found impact today? Is it similar or different? How? 

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The cultures of food brought people together and lead to many diverse restaurants. It is different because only few people were allowed inside the restaurants because of inequality. Its similar people they were all different people how brought in these foods and shared them with others.

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Literature

Art

Music

Fashion

Architecture

Food

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Find the history of this specific part of culture. POST IT HERE: 

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Find the history of this specific part of culture. POST IT HERE: 

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Once the boom of industrialization immigrants brought traditions, food, and more. Travelers and tourists started to want meals and once immigrants arrived they sought social places that connected them to their homeland through food.

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At the start of the 1800s, American cities had only a few public dining options such as taverns or hotels; by the end of the century, restaurants had become " a central part of the fabric of cities. " In the 19th century, the landscape of food consumption in America greatly changed. The modern concepts of retail food shops, restaurants, industrial food systems, and diverse food options emerged. As commute times increased, urban workers no longer went home for lunch, and instead grabbed hot meals being served by their offices and factories.

Travelers and tourists started to want meals from places other than their hotels, and newly-arrived immigrants sought social places that connected them to their homeland through food. Bringing their cultures with them, the increasing immigrant populations in urban areas greatly influenced American cuisine, which was experiencing a time of great transformation. The below facts illustrate how America became a melting pot for tastes and flavors by the start of the 20th century:

1. In the beginning of the 19th century, street food vendors consisted mainly of poor women selling a single item. As ethnic diversity increased throughout the decades, vendor options became much more diverse. "German vendors offered pretzels and sausages; Chinese salesmen peddled rock candy; Italian peddlers hawked fruits and vegetables." Mexican immigrants sold tamales-San Francisco's most famous street food by the 1880s.

2. Although New York City did not pioneer the restaurant (that distinction goes to Paris), New York did create a template for high- and low-end restaurants that other cities replicated. The most famous elite restaurant, Delmonico's, was opened up by two Swiss-born brothers in 1827. They employed a French chef and "pioneered such dishes as Lobster Newburg and Baked Alaska."

3. In New Orleans, in 1840, the first French restaurant, Antoine's, was founded by the French immigrant Antoine Alciatore. Antoine is still run by descendants of Alciatore to this day and continues to serve French Creole food.

4. Chinese entrepreneurs dominated San Francisco's restaurant business, but they did not serve Chinese food. The restaurants prepared a mostly European menu, and only a few served high-end Chinese food, which "catered exclusively to white patrons."

5. Washington, DC was the most cosmopolitan city in terms of its food offerings. The city boasted an extremely international array featuring German, Italian, Chinese, and Tex-Mex dishes.

6. The sale of food items-whether it was by way of restaurant, grocery store, or street vending-provided immigrants a means to climb their way up the economic ladder. This contributed to the food landscape in America becoming more cosmopolitan in nature, as urban populations became increasingly foreign-born.

7. German, Chinese, Italian, and Mexican ethnic grocery stores " were important social institutions in immigrant neighborhoods throughout the United States." The shops sold foods imported from the 'old country,' such as sharks' fins from China and olive oil and pasta from Italy, and became informal gathering spaces for locals. Ethnic groceries also offered news from home and served as informal post offices, banks, and job offices. The stores gave ethnic groups a way to connect with one another and with their countries of origin.

8. In the 19th century, native-born Americans did not eat at ethnic restaurants. Restaurateurs were intolerant in many ways, and very few cosmopolitan diners went to Little Italy or Chinatown as they considered it a "foray into the exotic."

9. The United States offered an abundant food landscape to late-19th-century immigrants in comparison with that available in their homelands. Foods that were previously accessible only to wealthy landowners in Italy, like pasta and olive oil, became staples of the Italian American pantry. Meanwhile, meat-a treat that Italian peasants might enjoy on an annual basis-was eaten weekly or even daily in the United States. Abundant family meals, once relegated to feast days, became weekly Sunday dinners in the homes of urban Italians and Italian Americans.

10. Sandwiches and spaghetti (Italian); egg creams (Jewish); nachos and chili (Tex-Mex); and hamburger, sausages, pickles, and the lager beer (German) were all introduced into the American diet by urban immigrants in the 19th century.

11. German immigrants are credited with inventing the American beer industry in the 1800s. They opened hundreds of breweries in cities where they settled, some of which-Pabst, Schlitz, Anheuser-Busch, and Piel's-grew into national brands.
Featured image credit: "Mulberry Street, New York City" by Detroit Publishing Co. Public Domain via the Library of Congress.

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The transformation of food in America in the 19th century

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At the start of the 1800s, American cities had only a few public dining options such as taverns or hotels; by the end of the century, restaurants had become "a central part of the fabric of cities." In the 19th century, the landscape of food consumption in America greatly changed.

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Make sure from the correct time period (1800-1860)

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The restaurants were busy and people started to love the difference in food their was. And so travelers and tourist started to explore the immigrant's food.

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Where can you find it now/Does it still exist?

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Where can you find it now/Does it still exist?

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The original Delmonico's opened in 1827 in a rented pastry shop at 23 William Street.

Antoine's Restaurant is still owned and operated by fifth generation relatives of the original founder, Antoine Alciatore and it can be found in New Orleans.

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Keep in mind that in America at this point there were many different groups of people, Immigrants, Native Americans and Slaves that also had their own distinct cultures as well.

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Digital History TOPIC ID 92

Food is much more than a mere means of subsistence. It is filled with cultural, psychological, emotional, and even religious significance. It defines shared identities and embodies religious and group traditions. In Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, food served as a class marker. A distinctive court tradition of haute cuisine and elaborate table manners arose, distinguishing the social elite from the hoi polloi. During the 19th centuries, food became a defining symbol of national identity. It is a remarkable fact that many dishes that we associate with particular countries--such as the tomato-based Italian spaghetti sauce or the American hamburger--are 19th or even 20th century century inventions.

The European discovery of the New World represented a momentous turning point in the history of food. Foods previously unknown in Europe and Africa, such as tomatoes, potatoes, corn, yams, cassava, manioc, and a vast variety of beans migrated eastward, while other sources of food, unknown in the Americas--including pigs, sheep, and cattle--moved westward. Sugar, coffee, and chocolate grown in the New World became the basis for the world's first truly multinational consumer-oriented industries.

Until the late 19th century, the history of food in America was a story of fairly distinct regional traditions that stemmed largely from England. The country's earliest English, Scottish, and Irish Protestant migrants tended to cling strongly to older food traditions. Yet the presence of new ingredients, and especially contact among diverse ethnic groups, would eventually encourage experimentation and innovation. Nevertheless, for more than two centuries, English food traditions dominated American cuisine.

Before the Civil War, there were four major food traditions in the United States, each with English roots. These included a New England tradition that associated plain cooking with religious piety. Hostile toward fancy or highly seasoned foods, which they regarded as a form of sensual indulgence, New Englanders adopted an austere diet stressing boiled and baked meats, boiled vegetables, and baked breads and pies. A Southern tradition, with its high seasonings and emphasis on frying and simmering, was an amalgam of African, English, French, Spanish, and Indian foodways. In the middle Atlantic areas influenced by Quakerism, the diet tended to be plain and simple and emphasized boiling, including boiled puddings and dumplings. In frontier areas of the backcountry, the diet included many ingredients that other English used as animal feed, including potatoes, corn, and various greens. The backcountry diet stressed griddle cakes, grits, greens, and pork.

One unique feature of the American diet from an early period was the abundance of meat--and distilled liquor. Abundant and fertile lands allowed settlers to raise corn and feed it to livestock as fodder, and convert much of the rest into whiskey. By the early nineteenth century, adult men were drinking more than 7 gallons of pure alcohol a year.

One of the first major forces for dietary change came from German immigrants, whose distinctive emphasis on beer, marinaded meats, sour flavors, wursts, and pastries was gradually assimilated into the mainstream American diet in the form of barbeque, cole slaw, hot dogs, donuts, and hamburger. The German association of food with celebrations also encouraged other Americans to make meals the centerpiece of holiday festivities.

An even greater engine of change came from industrialization. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, food began to be mass produced, mass marketed, and standardized. Factories processed, preserved, canned, and packaged a wide variety of foods. Processed cereals, which were originally promoted as one of the first health foods, quickly became a defining feature of the American breakfast. During the 1920s, a new industrial technique--freezing--emerged, as did some of the earliest cafeterias and chains of lunch counters and fast food establishments. Increasingly processed and nationally distributed foods began to dominate the nation's diet. Nevertheless, distinct regional and ethnic cuisines persisted.

During the early twentieth century, food became a major cultural battleground. The influx of large numbers of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe Progressive Era brought new foods to the United States. Settlement house workers, and food nutritionists, and domestic scientists tried to "Americanize" immigrant diets and teach immigrant wives and mothers "American" ways of cooking and shopping. Meanwhile, muckraking journalists and reformers raised questions about the health, purity, and wholesomeness of food, leading to the passage of the first federal laws banning unsafe food additives and mandating meat inspection.

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, change in American foodways took place slowly, despite a steady influx of immigrants. Since World War II, and especially since the 1970s, shifts in eating patterns have greatly accelerated. World War II played a key role in making the American diet more cosmopolitan. Overseas service introduced soldiers to a variety of foreign cuisines, while population movements at home exposed to a wider variety of American foodways. The post-war expansion of international trade also made American diets more diverse, making fresh fruits and vegetables available year round.

Today, food tends to play a less distinctive role in defining ethnic or religious identity. Americans, regardless of religion or region, eat bagels, curry, egg rolls, and salsa--and a Thanksgiving turkey. Still, food has become--as it was for European aristocrats--a class marker. For the wealthier segments of the population, dining often involves fine wines and artistically prepared foods made up of expensive ingredients. Expensive dining has been very subject to fads and shifts in taste. Less likely to eat German or even French cuisine, wealthier Americans have become more likely to dine on foods influenced by Asian or Latin American cooking.

Food also has assumed a heightened political significance. The decision to adopt a vegetarian diet or to eat only natural foods has become a conscious way to express resistance to corporate foods. At the same time, the decision to eat particular foods has become a conscious way to assert one's ethnic identity.

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Digital History TOPIC ID 92 Food is much more than a mere means of subsistence. It is filled with cultural, psychological, emotional, and even religious significance. It defines shared identities and embodies religious and group traditions. In Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, food served as a class marker.

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One photo should be made the background of this Padlet. Go into "settings" to change the wallpaper.

Add the other two photos in this column.

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How did it influence other parts of culture?

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How did it influence other parts of culture?

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Street food was a common food during the mid and late 1800s it caused many to try and was an influence to other cultures.

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Choose a group of people along with your section of culture. POST IT HERE: Immigrants - Food

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Choose a group of people along with your section of culture. POST IT HERE: Immigrants - Food

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Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History

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Printed from Oxford Research Encyclopedias, American History. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a single article for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

date: 08 February 2024

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Over the course of the 19th century, American cities developed from small seaports and trading posts to large metropolises. Not surprisingly, foodways and other areas of daily life changed accordingly. In 1800, the dietary habits of urban Americans were similar to those of the colonial period. Food provisioning was very local.