Introduction
Does an American cuisine exist? The multicultural and theoretically egalitarian society of the USA as well as its relatively recent establishment as a nation makes it difficult to identify specific foods that accurately and inclusively represent the country. It also raises other questions. What is a cuisine? Is a description of what Americans eat the same thing as a description of cuisine? Can those eating patterns constitute a cuisine? In what ways do those patterns reflect and, perhaps, even shape the history and identity of the nation? Who gets to answer these questions and why do they matter anyway?
This entry reviews a variety of approaches to the initial question, treating the definition of cuisine as a fundamental starting point. Some scholars (Long 2009; Mintz 2002) see it as a publicly recognized and officially established...
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Long, L.M. (2019). American Cuisine, Existence of. In: Kaplan, D.M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-024-1179-9_384
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