Food is certainly an interesting one, and it's true that I largely cook and eat the food I grew up eating, though I'll gladly scoff a tatty scone if it's available and will quite readily cook and eat haggis but I draw the line at macaroni pie. I'm far more likely to serve mince and tatties as cottage pie than next to each other on the plate and I've never taken to porridge.
The first picture there is, as the text under “United States” suggests, what would simply be called “macaroni and cheese” (or simply “macaroni”) here. Traditional macaroni and cheese here is always made with eggs, milk and butter (and possibly flour and other things) and always baked, not made on the stovetop with a Béchamel or other cheese sauce. Here, that would be an “imported” way of making it.
An interesting question is when food becomes part of heritage. Foodways are often an important part of a culture, but one that can easily traverse cultural boundaries. For example, @Arethosemyfeet's "mince and tatties" are a culinary import, since potatoes are not native to either England or Scotland. Likewise for @Nick Tamen's macaroni and cheese, since dairy cows, chickens, and wheat are not native to North America. We seem to be a lot more comfortable with the cultural appropriation of ingredients, or even whole dishes, than we are with active cultural practices.
I think when it comes to foodways, things may fall more under the label of “cultural spread” that you noted upthread, @Crœsos, rather than cultural appropriation as such. And as I noted above, the foodways of the American South are a melding of Native American, European and African/African American cultures and influences.
With regard specifically to macaroni and cheese, it appears to have been James Hemings—who like his sister Sally was enslaved by Thomas Jefferson (his half-sister Martha’s husband) and who studied as a chef in Paris while there with Jefferson—who introduced macaroni and cheese to Monticello and to the United States. And he did apparently call it “macaroni pie.” Here is the webpage the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello has on James Hemings, including his macaroni pie. And this article from Essence magazine describes both Heming’s history and the place macaroni and cheese holds in African American cultures.
Hemings’ recipe doesn’t include eggs—the structure of it reminds me of German Käsespätzle (Cheese Spätzle)—and it’s interesting that he cooked the macaroni in a mixture of water and milk.
To her dying day my mother's favourite dinner would be bacon, cabbage and potatoes. I refer to this as Irish soul food - along with soda bread and potato farls.
TBH, probably at least part the reason I cook French, Italian, Spanish, Middle Eastern, Indian, Chinese, Latin American, Malay and any other cuisine I can lay hands on.
I really don't think you can 'appropriate' food, that's not how cooking and eating work.
Somewhere up thread, @Gamma Gamaliel mentioned people are not English if they landed in England after the 1600s. Using that line of reasoning, I must be a true American, since one branch of my people landed in Jamestown around 1607 and the Puritan side of the family came over around 1629 during the Great Migration.
Funny story about the Puritan side. They settled in New Haven Connecticut area. Another family settled just a few miles from them. 350 years later I met a descendant of that family and married her. Long story short. I married the neighborhood girl, 350 years later.
Also had another branch of the family come in through Savannah Georgia.
So I have deep roots in this country. But I can trace lines through Finland, Denmark, Germany, Normandy, Scotland. Yes, a bit of Welch too, and well as England.
Note to @ChastMastr. I also found a Yiddish line through my tree. Not really all that surprising though since there was some interfaith marrying back in the 1500s.
While I know of no Native American in my direct line, I have had First Nations people from Canada tell me my last name is in their tribe. Apparently, in the lead up to the Revolutionary War, one side of the family stayed loyal to the king and was forced to move to Canada. That side had some people who became fur trappers and tradesmen. They married into the First Nation people.
I didn't say 'English' I said 'British'.
I was teasing.
I was riffing with the idea that if your ancestors came over with William the Conqueror in 1066 you weren't either Anglo-Saxon or 'British' in the original sense of the word - Celtic as it were (although that's a loaded and contested term) but Norman-French.
The term British in its later sense only came about with the various Acts of Union which created the United Kingdom.
As @Crœsos says all these successive identities overlaid earlier ones.
I'm afraid I can get pedantic with US Shipmates who use the term 'England' to refer to the island of Great Britain and even more so with English Shipmates who do the same.
To her dying day my mother's favourite dinner would be bacon, cabbage and potatoes. I refer to this as Irish soul food - along with soda bread and potato farls.
TBH, probably at least part the reason I cook French, Italian, Spanish, Middle Eastern, Indian, Chinese, Latin American, Malay and any other cuisine I can lay hands on.
I really don't think you can 'appropriate' food, that's not how cooking and eating work.
Not in general, but I think foods that have specific religious of cultural significance, like challah, do need to be treated with caution.
To her dying day my mother's favourite dinner would be bacon, cabbage and potatoes. I refer to this as Irish soul food - along with soda bread and potato farls.
TBH, probably at least part the reason I cook French, Italian, Spanish, Middle Eastern, Indian, Chinese, Latin American, Malay and any other cuisine I can lay hands on.
I really don't think you can 'appropriate' food, that's not how cooking and eating work.
Not in general, but I think foods that have specific religious of cultural significance, like challah, do need to be treated with caution.
I would agree, and I think extra caution is called for when it’s not just a food, but one or more foods in a cultural context that extends further than individual foods. Don’t get me started, for example, on so-called “Christian Seders.”
Tracing my Mennonite family's movement that we know or can make a reasonable guess about, we'd begin in Friesland and Flanders in the 16th century, go to the Vistula delta, then to an area near the Dnieper River in what is now the Zaporizhzhia Oblast in Ukraine but was then Russia. Most of my forebears left the Russia for the US in the 1870s and settled in Kansas. Three of my grandparents moved from Kansas to California; one came from the USSR to California.
After a bunch of moving around, my parents settled our family near the coast in San Luis Obispo, several hours drive from the Central Velley communities with lots of Mennonites; they were by this point Baptists, as they felt being Mennonite was almost more a cultural thing than a religious thing, and they were quite devout. My brothers and I were raised with a strong sense of having a Mennonite background and heritage but not being actually Mennonite. I lived in SLO 9 years, then went to college in Los Angeles and grad school in Orange County, the next county south. SLO was where I mostly grew up but wasn't exactly from. LA was too big and sprawling to get a handle on, and I lived in five different cities in suburban Republican Orange County and never fit into any of them.
When my last roommate situation was breaking up I was 30, and I finally had a decent job and could choose my new home from a bunch of cities in southern Los Angeles County within an easy commute. I chose Long Beach, where I had already been coming to see art movies and bands, because as I drove around the city, I realized I wouldn't have to worry about fitting in, as virtually everyone lives here. There is no racial or ethnic majority. There are several different large immigrant and recent immigrant-descended populations. There are people born in Long Beach and other local cities, and there are people who moved here from all over the US. There's a sizeable gay community. There's a large range of household incomes and businesses serving people at every price point.
For me heritage is one thing and belonging very much another.
The issue with cultural appropriation is the way it's rooted in colonialism; the Indigenous Mexican roots of Dias de los Muertos (because it covers both All Saints and All Souls in Mexico) only amplify the colonialism in this instance. A lot of Mexican Catholic folk practice incorporates pre-Christian beliefs and rituals. Also, some religious practices are closed and respecting that is just about good manners - just like you wouldn't gatecrash a stranger's wedding and eat their food without being invited, it's rude to partake of a religious feast you haven't been initiated into.
Despite it being a festival that lasts two or more days, the Mexican government says Día de Muertos, as do the editors of Spanish-language Wikipedia. It's Día de los Muertos to a lot of Americans, including those of Mexican descent. Adding "los" is to Spanish speakers a more poetic way of describing the festival, with a more "this is the time when we do these things" feel rather than the actual name of the festival. But most Americans who don't speak Spanish or don't speak good Spanish say "los" is because we're back-forming from English.
Throughout the southwest US, many celebrations of Día de los Muertos are not closed private rituals. There are big public festivals, with ofrendas set up in accessible places and parades sponsored by local governments. Everyone is invited. White Americans where I live didn't appropriate this holiday. It went on the calendar when Latinos started to gain power commensurate with their numbers - they now outnumber non-Hispanic whites by quite a bit where I live. In some places they were always present in large numbers.
Comments
With regard specifically to macaroni and cheese, it appears to have been James Hemings—who like his sister Sally was enslaved by Thomas Jefferson (his half-sister Martha’s husband) and who studied as a chef in Paris while there with Jefferson—who introduced macaroni and cheese to Monticello and to the United States. And he did apparently call it “macaroni pie.” Here is the webpage the Thomas Jefferson Foundation at Monticello has on James Hemings, including his macaroni pie. And this article from Essence magazine describes both Heming’s history and the place macaroni and cheese holds in African American cultures.
Hemings’ recipe doesn’t include eggs—the structure of it reminds me of German Käsespätzle (Cheese Spätzle)—and it’s interesting that he cooked the macaroni in a mixture of water and milk.
TBH, probably at least part the reason I cook French, Italian, Spanish, Middle Eastern, Indian, Chinese, Latin American, Malay and any other cuisine I can lay hands on.
I really don't think you can 'appropriate' food, that's not how cooking and eating work.
I didn't say 'English' I said 'British'.
I was teasing.
I was riffing with the idea that if your ancestors came over with William the Conqueror in 1066 you weren't either Anglo-Saxon or 'British' in the original sense of the word - Celtic as it were (although that's a loaded and contested term) but Norman-French.
The term British in its later sense only came about with the various Acts of Union which created the United Kingdom.
As @Crœsos says all these successive identities overlaid earlier ones.
I'm afraid I can get pedantic with US Shipmates who use the term 'England' to refer to the island of Great Britain and even more so with English Shipmates who do the same.
They know who they are.
Shame on them.
Not in general, but I think foods that have specific religious of cultural significance, like challah, do need to be treated with caution.
After a bunch of moving around, my parents settled our family near the coast in San Luis Obispo, several hours drive from the Central Velley communities with lots of Mennonites; they were by this point Baptists, as they felt being Mennonite was almost more a cultural thing than a religious thing, and they were quite devout. My brothers and I were raised with a strong sense of having a Mennonite background and heritage but not being actually Mennonite. I lived in SLO 9 years, then went to college in Los Angeles and grad school in Orange County, the next county south. SLO was where I mostly grew up but wasn't exactly from. LA was too big and sprawling to get a handle on, and I lived in five different cities in suburban Republican Orange County and never fit into any of them.
When my last roommate situation was breaking up I was 30, and I finally had a decent job and could choose my new home from a bunch of cities in southern Los Angeles County within an easy commute. I chose Long Beach, where I had already been coming to see art movies and bands, because as I drove around the city, I realized I wouldn't have to worry about fitting in, as virtually everyone lives here. There is no racial or ethnic majority. There are several different large immigrant and recent immigrant-descended populations. There are people born in Long Beach and other local cities, and there are people who moved here from all over the US. There's a sizeable gay community. There's a large range of household incomes and businesses serving people at every price point.
For me heritage is one thing and belonging very much another.
Despite it being a festival that lasts two or more days, the Mexican government says Día de Muertos, as do the editors of Spanish-language Wikipedia. It's Día de los Muertos to a lot of Americans, including those of Mexican descent. Adding "los" is to Spanish speakers a more poetic way of describing the festival, with a more "this is the time when we do these things" feel rather than the actual name of the festival. But most Americans who don't speak Spanish or don't speak good Spanish say "los" is because we're back-forming from English.
Throughout the southwest US, many celebrations of Día de los Muertos are not closed private rituals. There are big public festivals, with ofrendas set up in accessible places and parades sponsored by local governments. Everyone is invited. White Americans where I live didn't appropriate this holiday. It went on the calendar when Latinos started to gain power commensurate with their numbers - they now outnumber non-Hispanic whites by quite a bit where I live. In some places they were always present in large numbers.
This is why I would probably never live somewhere with a lot of deeply-rooted people. I would never belong.