The New England clambake started as a Native American steaming technique
Long before colonists named it, New England tribes steamed fish, shellfish and vegetables in pits of hot stones layered with seaweed or corn husks. Potatoes joined the pile by the 18th century. Much of what counts as American food began like this, as Native methods blended with European, African and immigrant traditions.
Before 1600, native peoples lived off wildly different landscapes, often moving with the seasons. Many farmed the Three Sisters, beans, maize and squash, in rotation. William Bradford described Squanto showing Plymouth settlers how to bury a fish or eel with maize seed to feed the soil. Deer, elk, bison and rabbits were staples; the Cherokee hunted squirrels with bamboo blowguns, and southern peoples such as the Choctaw ate snapping turtles and young alligators. Pemmican, preserved meat, sustained long journeys and hard winters.
Geography and belief both shaped menus. The Apache and Navajo of the Southwest generally avoided fish, which was taboo in both cultures and scarce in the desert anyway. Lacking pots that could sit over flames, many groups stone-boiled, dropping heated rocks into water, while southwestern cooks baked cornmeal bread in adobe ovens the Spanish later called hornos.
Colonists first planted familiar English crops, then slowly absorbed local plants and animals. Enslaved Africans brought peanuts, sweet potatoes, yams and coffee, and West African techniques still flavour Southern cooking. Early American cooks were scornful of France: the first American cookbook, American Cookery, appeared in 1796, and the popular English writer Hannah Glasse dismissed French recipes as an odd jumble of trash.
Later waves remade the table again. Immigration and city growth diversified food in the late 19th century, and the 20th brought new technology, two World Wars, food science and the car, which spawned drive-ins and drive-throughs. Many dishes seen as quintessentially American, from burgers and hot dogs to pizza and Tex-Mex, are reworkings of foods from elsewhere, and immigrant communities built their own branches such as Chinese American and Italian American cooking. Louisiana Creole mixes French, West African and Native influences, while Hawaiian food leans on Polynesian and East Asian roots.
Source: American cuisine
