America's only authentic cuisine

By JOE O'CONNELL, Past President

The French have haut cuisine, the Chinese have Mandarin.

America’s cuisine is barbecue.

American barbecue means meat and fish cooked in the heat and smoke of a wood fire.  Woods are usually hardwoods, such as hickory, oak, pecan and mesquite, and the smoke and heat are produced with the wood fire and coals (including charcoal).  Here are the historical facts.

All food was smoked

The method of cooking meat with a wood fire was well-known in Europe before 1200 A.D.  In fact, there were few ways alternatives to cooking meat other than in the heat and smoke of a wood fire.

Renaissance

Iron pots became widespread throughout Europe, and Europeans discovered the ease, speed and low cost of using iron pots to boil meat, usually with vegetables and often with dumplings or pasta.

Before iron pots and boiled meat, all meat had the taste of smoke.  With the advent of pots, meat could be cooked without the smoky flavor which, for those who had known only smoked meat, must have been a new taste treat, much preferred over the old taste.

Salt was found to be a much better method of preserving meat than smoking it.  In addition, the forests of Europe had been largely depleted, so it was far easier for the populace to salt meat for preservation and then to boil it (often with vegetables, to "cut" the strength of the salt) before eating it.

By the beginning of the Renaissance in 1453, the smoky taste of meat cooked in the heat and smoke of a wood fire had been forgotten for generations and was almost unknown in southern Europe (including Portugal, Spain and Italy) by 1492.

New World

Christopher Columbus and his men had never tasted meat cooked with a wood fire. 

So, when Columbus arrived in the Caribbean in 1492, he “discovered” the Taino Native Americans cooking wild game, which was hung on a wooden structure and cooked in the heat and smoke of a wood fire.

The Native Americans who lived on the present-day Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico had easy access to salt deposits and perhaps (the historical record is not clear) used salt to preserve fish and the meat of small animals.

However, there was no easy access to salt for the residents of the present-day Caribbean Islands (principally the Taino and Caribs).  It is plausible, therefore, that these residents discovered the preservative properties of smoked fish and meat, as they dried the fish and game in the sun and discovered that a smoky fire kept the flies from infesting the food.

When the Spanish explorers arrived, they learned that the Taino word for the wooden structure sounded to the explorers like barbacoa, and they returned to Europe with a new word and a “new” cooking method.

U.S. colonies

Over the next 100 years, Europeans explored the New World.  De Soto brought domesticated pigs to Florida (they were brought as livestock on the ships for food for the sailors), but many escaped and thrived.  In 1585, when the first English colonists arrived and tried to settle on Roanoke Island (off present-day North Carolina), wild pigs were everywhere.  (The Roanoke colonists disappeared and became known ever since as the infamous “Lost Colony”.)

In 1607, Capt. John Smith arrived and founded Jamestown (in present-day Virginia) with 108 English colonists.  In 1620, the Pilgrims arrived on the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock (in present-day Massachusetts).  In these and other colonies, barbecue became a several-day social event at which whole hog was cooked over an open pit in the heat and smoke of a wood fire.

The colonists called the cooking method, the cooked food, and the social occasion by the same word:  barbecue.

Brazil and South America

A similar development occurred simultaneously throughout South America, beginning in Brazil.  The Spanish and Portuguese explorers found the Native Americans using the heat and smoke of a wood fire to cook meat, which acquired an appearance, taste and tenderness that was new to them and which they learned from the Native Americans was called a word that became, in Europe, barbacoa.

Q claims

Today, many Brazilian scholars claim that barbecue originated with the Native Americans in present-day Brazil.  Similarly, many Hispanic scholars claim that barbecue originated with the Native Americans in present-day Hispanic America (Mexico, the Caribbean, Central and/or South America, not including Brazil).  There are many in the U.S. who claim that barbecue developed wholly in the U.S. after the first colonists arrived from England.

What seems probable, if not entirely clear, is that the word now known in English as barbecue and the method of cooking food with the heat and smoke of a wood fire originated in the Americas before Christopher Columbus arrived.  Thus, it is quite accurate to acknowledge that barbecue is a wholly American word and cooking method, and it may be described as the only American authentic cuisine.

Barbecue 101