page_title: American cuisine
section_title: Ethnicity-specific and immigrant influence
hierarchical_section_title: American cuisine / Ethnicity-specific and immigrant influence
context_page_description: American cuisine reflects the history of the United States, blending the culinary contributions of various groups of people from around the world, including indigenous American Indians, African Americans, Asians, Europeans, Pacific Islanders, and Latin Americans. Though much of American cuisine is fusion cuisine reflecting global cuisine, many regional cuisines have deeply rooted ethnic heritages, including Cajun, Louisiana Creole, Native American, New Mexican, Pennsylvania Dutch, Soul food, and Tlingit. Early Native Americans utilized a number of cooking methods in early American cuisine that have been blended with early European cooking methods to form the basis of what is now American cuisine. The European settlement of the Americas introduced a number of ingredients, spices, herbs, and cooking styles to the continent. The various styles of cuisine continued expanding well into the 19th and 20th centuries, proportional to the influx of immigrants from many different nations; this influx nurtured a rich diversity in food preparation throughout the country.
context_section_description: The influence of ethnicity-specific cuisines like Italian cuisine and Mexican cuisine was present in the United States by World War I. There are recipes for Chilean meat pies, chicken chop suey, chow mein, Mexican pork pastries and Italian meatballs going back to at least the 1930s, but many of the recipes were Anglicized and they appeared relatively infrequently compared to Northern European recipes. 19th century cookbooks bear evidence of diverse influences with some including recipes like Indian pickle, Italian pork and various curries. 19th century literature shows knowledge of Jewish, Russian, Italian, Chinese and Turkish cuisines, and foreign cookbooks continued to grow more detailed through World War I including recipes like Peruvian chicken, Mexican enchiladas, Chilean corn pudding and Hindustan chicken curry.
  Louise Rice, author of Dainty Dishes from Foreign Lands describes the recipes in her book as "not wholly vegetarian"  though noting at the time of publication in 1911 that most of the recipes would likely be new to average American cooks and likely contain higher proportions of vegetables to meat. She includes Italian pasta recipes like macaroni in milk, soups and polentas and German recipes like liver dumplings called Leberknödel and a variation of Sauerbraten.
  
  The demand for ethnic foods in the United States reflects the nation's changing diversity as well as its development over time. According to the National Restaurant Association, 
  Restaurant industry sales are expected to reach a record high of $476 billion in 2005, an increase of 4.9 percent over 2004... Driven by consumer demand, the ethnic food market reached record sales in 2002, and has emerged as the fastest growing category in the food and beverage product sector, according to USBX Advisory Services. Minorities in the U.S. spend a combined $142 billion on food and by 2010, America's ethnic population is expected to grow by 40 percent.
  A movement began during the 1980s among popular leading chefs to reclaim America's ethnic foods within its regional traditions, where these trends originated. One of the earliest was Paul Prudhomme, who in 1984 began the introduction of his influential cookbook, Paul Prodhomme's Louisiana Kitchen, by describing the over 200-year history of Creole and Cajun cooking; he aims to "preserve and expand the Louisiana tradition." Prodhomme's success quickly inspired other chefs. Norman Van Aken embraced a Floridian type cuisine fused with many ethnic and globalized elements in his Feast of Sunlight cookbook in 1988. California became swept up in the movement, then seemingly started to lead the trend itself, in, for example, the popular restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley. Examples of the Chez Panisse phenomenon, chefs who embraced a new globalized cuisine, were celebrity chefs like Jeremiah Tower and Wolfgang Puck, both former colleagues at the restaurant. Puck went on to describe his belief in contemporary, new style American cuisine in the introduction to The Wolfgang Puck Cookbook:
  Another major breakthrough, whose originators were once thought to be crazy, is the mixing of ethnic cuisines. It is not at all uncommon to find raw fish listed next to tortillas on the same menu. Ethnic crossovers also occur when distinct elements meet in a single recipe. This country is, after all, a huge melting pot. Why should its cooking not illustrate the American transformation of diversity into unity?
  Puck's former colleague, Jeremiah Tower became synonymous with California Cuisine and the overall American culinary revolution. Meanwhile, the restaurant that inspired both Puck and Tower became a distinguished establishment, popularizing its so called "mantra" in its book by Paul Bertolli and owner Alice Waters, Chez Panisse Cooking, in 1988. Published well after the restaurants' founding in 1971, this new cookbook from the restaurant seemed to perfect the idea and philosophy that had developed over the years. The book embraced America's natural bounty, specifically that of California, while containing recipes that reflected Bertoli 
caption: Fried fish and french fries in San Diego, California
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