The following is adapted from a white paper issued by the James Beard Foundation in July 2008, based on surveys conducted as part of the 2007 James Beard Foundation's Taste America® national food festival. It was written and compiled by Mitchell Davis, Anne E. McBride, and the editorial staff of the James Beard Foundation.

Read the complete paper online at www.jamesbeard.org/resources.

As part of the James Beard Foundation's Taste America®, a national food festival orchestrated in 2007 as a celebration of the James Beard Foundation's 20th anniversary, we decided to take the question of American cuisine to the streets. We wanted to know what and how the growing ranks of food lovers who subscribe to food magazines, watch 24-hour food television, buy cookbooks for their kitchens and their coffee tables, frequent trendy restaurants and favorite dives, and enjoy cooking for family and friends feel about the idea of an American cuisine. To broaden our pool of opinions, we threw a few food experts into the mix. Does America have a cuisine? we asked. If so, what is it? The answers we received are the data that form the basis of this white paper on the state of American cuisine.

Before discussing whether there is such as thing as American cuisine, it is important to understand what cuisine is in the first place. Because how we cook and what we eat are so intrinsically linked to who we are as individuals and as a nation, and because food culture comprises a variety of tangible and intangible elements, cuisine is difficult to define. Cuisine is a form of cultural expression in the same way that sculpture and dance are. It relates inherently to the idea of nation. Even if we are not exactly sure how to accurately describe what we mean by the words French, Cajun, or American, we generally accept these designations, at least as they relate to and distinguish us. We understand that we are American because we share a land, an economy, and a political system, which are easy to identify, if not to pinpoint. But we also share something much more fluid: national character—the unique, if sometimes indefinable attributes that make us culturally American. The foods we eat and how we cook them contribute to this more intangible idea of nation, especially in a country such as the United States, where general agreement about what defines our national cuisine is hard to come by.

Cuisine, as a concept, has to be fluid enough to correspond to the different memories people have of it and meanings that people ascribe to it, whether those people do so individually or collectively. It is obvious from the answers of the James Beard Foundation's Taste America® survey that Americans celebrate an incredible diversity, and that they do not see this diversity as an obstacle to the construction of a national cuisine. Rather, they celebrate it. American cuisine embraces multiple heritages and adaptability.

Methodology

In order to capture as many opinions about American cuisine as possible from as broad a national spectrum as we could hope to reach, the James Beard Foundation gathered data via a number of different channels. Individuals visiting our website and the website dedicated to the James Beard Foundation's Taste America® events were encouraged to complete a brief survey that asked three simple questions:

1. Do you believe there is an American cuisine?
2. If you believe there is an American cuisine, how would you define it?
3. If you do not believe there is an American cuisine, why not?

Participants in the survey were also asked to name five dishes they believe could be considered quintessentially American (without prompting). The questions were answered by a total of 131 respondents. As part of its value-added sponsorship program for the James Beard Foundation's Taste America®, Every Day with Rachael Ray magazine created a microsite that also asked visitors to contribute their thoughts on American cuisine. A total of 117 people wrote in their thoughts, making the total number of survey respondents from both websites 248.

So, Is There an American Cuisine?

If one thing is clear from the results of the James Beard Foundation's Taste America® survey, it is that American cuisine means a lot of things to a lot of people. In the United States, according to this survey at least, a national cuisine can exist in a regional form. The survey responders said what makes American cuisine a cuisine is precisely its disunity. It morphs, adapts, borrows, creates, and roots itself wherever people enjoy it.

In response to the first question, "Do you believe there is an American cuisine?" 90.8 percent of respondents answered yes, while 9.2 percent said no.

Out of the respondents who felt there was no American cuisine, only one said that no dishes came to mind as being quintessentially American. The others despite not believing in a national expression of cuisine, listed dishes such as hamburgers, apple pie, macaroni and cheese, barbecue, fried chicken, pot roast, brownies, pancakes, and ketchup as most American. These answers match those of the participants who thought that an American cuisine existed. The same words appeared in answers explaining the lack of a cuisine that appeared in those answers justifying it: diversity, regionalism, immigration, cultural influences, size of the country—all these concepts appeared as ways to explain, in the negative answers, why there could not be an American cuisine. For the believers, these same attributes became the unique and identifiable characteristics of our foodways. What this discrepancy suggests is that people agree on the characteristics of the food served in America, but disagree on definition of cuisine.

Iconic American Dishes

Which dishes did the survey's participants identify as quintessentially American? While regional nuances qualified some of the answers (North Carolina–style barbecue, Cincinnati chili, southern fried chicken, New England clam chowder, or Chicago-style pizza), most answers did not include geographic markers. They appeared simply as apple pie, corn on the cob, hamburger, crab cakes, or lobster.

The votes are in. How the top five most iconic American dishes break down:

• Hamburgers and Cheeseburgers (52) 26%
• Barbecue (46) 23%
• Fried Chicken (37) 18.5%
• Mac ‘n Cheese (34) 17%
• Apple Pie (31) 15.5%

Similarly, the five dishes most often cited as quintessentially American did not include specific geographic characteristics. Rather, these dishes tend to embody comfort and home, or the low-key setting of a diner: "Diner food—cheeseburgers, shakes, apple pies. Comfort food—mac n cheese, meatloaf," was an attempt of one respondent to define the most iconic American dishes. Sweets provide comfort, undoubtedly, which can explain the prevalence of apple pie in the answers, aside from its traditional association with the U.S. (Apple pie is, of course, a dish that originates in England.)

Even as survey participants touted the diverse influences of American food, from its native products to its immigrant imports, they chose as typically American dishes those which function as neutral canvas for whatever palette one chooses to personalize it.

Conclusion

So what is the state of American cuisine? Do we have one? Is there a national, unifying concept of cuisine around which we can all rally? After compiling these survey results, looking back at the panels we held in conjunction with the James Beard Foundation's Taste America®, and thinking about our daily conversations on the topic, it seems that it might be almost reductive to confine the richness and diversity of influences that are found in the foods we eat into one cuisine—unless, of course, we distance ourselves enough from the French idea of cuisine and create a language unique to the United States to talk about a national cuisine, our national cuisine. In that language, home-cooked foods and restaurant dishes, if they share ingredients and heritage, all become part of a national idea of cuisine. Cowboy food and recent immigrant dishes can share space on the national plate. American cuisine is fusion, not confusion; complex, not complicated. It makes us who we are as much as we make it what it is. Accepting its differences and diversity is what makes it American.