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Cooking: Recipes for Living in a New World.” Digest: a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

Review of:

Ethnic American Food Today: A Cultural 
Encyclopedia 
Edited by Lucy Long. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. 
Pp. 760, index, maps, bibliography per entry.

Ethnic American Cooking: Recipes for Living in 
a New World
Edited by Lucy Long. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2016. 
Pp. 358, index, maps.

By: Claire Schmidt

Lucy Long’s two-volume encyclopedia, Ethnic American Food Today: A 
Cultural Encyclopedia, and the companion cookbook, Ethnic American 
Cooking: Recipes for Living in a New World, represent an enormous amount 
of collaborative and multi-disciplinary work. The fascination and respect for 
the relationship of food and culture is clear on every page. Enthusiastic cooks 
and students of culture can immerse themselves in the wealth of details and 
insider knowledge collected from scholars and cooks around the world. 

The central argument of the encyclopedia’s introduction is that food and 
ethnicity are irrevocably intertwined, neither is static, and both involve 
politically charged choices (as well as lack of choice). Food can be both a 
window into history and a mirror that reflects and responds to difference (Long 
2015:9). The introduction defines the terms crucial to the endeavor—ethnicity, 
American, and food—drawing on Elliot Oring, Warren Belasco, and Don Yoder. 

The encyclopedia is organized alphabetically by ethnic group, 
as is the cookbook. The entries in the encyclopedia are written 
by a wide variety of people, including food scholars, folklorists, 
graduate students, chefs, home cooks, and food enthusiasts. 



Schmidt, Claire. 2016. “Review of: Ethnic American Food Today: A Cultural Encyclopedia and Ethnic American  
Cooking: Recipes for Living in a New World.” Digest: a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

While they vary in length and detail, each entry follows a consistent format. 
After the name of the ethnic group or nation and the global region (often 
with cross-references to entries for related food cultures), the entry usually 
contains a “background” section. The background gives information on 
historical and social immigration, settlement, and assimilation patterns. 
Sometimes the background section includes information on regional, religious, 
or linguistic diversity within the ethnic group (see “Nepal”), or etymology 
of group names (see “Pennsylvania Dutch”). In other cases, the background 
section draws on personal experience narratives of the authors of the entries 
or collaborators who assisted in the research process (see “Czechoslovakia”). 

The next section, “Foodways,” explains staple foods and essential ingredients 
in that particular ethnic cuisine. If traditional ingredients are not available, 
this section often lists substitutions. This section often describes daily 
patterns of food production, purchase, preparation, and consumption. 

Many entries include a “Holiday Feasts” section that focuses on the ways 
ethnic food heritage may be performed during national or cultural holidays 
(see, for example, “Denmark”). Most entries include a section on “Place in 
American Culture,” which identifies and explicates the role of particular 
ethnic foodways in mainstream American culture. Some entries include 
a section on “Noted Restaurants and Chefs,” and all entries close with 
a section titled “Further Reading” which lists bibliographic entries for 
scholarly articles, websites, blogs, articles, and other encyclopedias. 

Most encyclopedia entries include one or two recipes, often for a staple 
food (such as Tanzanian Ugali) or for a food that has become particularly 
emblematic in ethnic restaurants (such as Pad Thai) or during American 
holidays (such as Danish Butter Cookies). Some recipes, like Chinese-
American turkey congee, demonstrate the focus on how “Americans 
claiming an ethnic heritage or identity are eating today” (Long 2015:9). 

Entries range in length; the entry “Peru” occupies five pages and “Turkey” is 
ten pages, while “Qatar” occupies one page. In the introduction, Long writes 
that entry length ideally reflects the impact that the specific ethnic group 
has had on American food culture; but length is also determined by quality 
and availability of documentation, as European ethnic foodways have been 



Schmidt, Claire. 2016. “Review of: Ethnic American Food Today: A Cultural Encyclopedia and Ethnic American  
Cooking: Recipes for Living in a New World.” Digest: a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

studied vigorously in the United States but African foodways have not. 

Two issues made the encyclopedia less effective than it might have 
been; some of the maps are hard to read, both in the encyclopedia and 
in the cookbook. Some are beautifully clear but others, due to the file 
resolution, are nearly unreadable. In terms of ease of use, it would also 
have been helpful if the encyclopedia included the letter of the alphabet 
in the header (as the cookbook does); long entries made it challenging 
to find one’s place while navigating through the encyclopedia. 

Taking up the twin conceptions of food as mirror and window from the 
encyclopedia, the cookbook Ethnic American Cooking: Recipes for Living 
in a New World gives a brief introduction to foodways and ethnicity. The 
cookbook is organized alphabetically by ethnic group, introducing each group 
and providing information on nomenclature and geographic region. For 
example, the entry for Monaco reads “Monaco (Western Europe), Monegasque 
American,” and the introduction explains the relationship between foodways 
in Monaco, and those in nearby France and Italy (Long 2016:194). 

The introduction to the cookbook indicates that when traditional ingredients 
are difficult to find in the United States, substitutions are offered. While this 
would present its own set of challenges, I wish that more of the recipes offered 
suggestions for brands. For example, the recipe for sadza, the staple food 
of Zimbabwe and common in South Africa and Botswana, calls for “white 
cornmeal.” Since I have many students from Zimbabwe, I would like to cook this 
dish for college potlucks but I don’t know what kind of white corn meal to buy. 
When I asked my Zimbabwen students they told me Quaker white corn meal 
was the closest brand they had found in the U.S. but that people who are very 
serious about their sadza buy imported mealie meal or have it sent by family and 
friends back home. Some recipes, like La Reina Pepiada (Venezuelan arepas) 
and Curry Chicken (Trinidad and Tobago) do include brand recommendations. 

I cooked Maklouba (upside down Palestinian rice, 226), Pho (Vietnamese 
beef noodle soup, 301), Fry Bread (“Native American,” 208), and Ghanaian 
Tea Bread (110). I was very happy with the rice and the soup, found the Fry 
Bread recipe to be dryer and less salty than the fry bread I have eaten in 
Wisconsin and Manitoba (perhaps because this recipe is in the Southwestern 



Schmidt, Claire. 2016. “Review of: Ethnic American Food Today: A Cultural Encyclopedia and Ethnic American  
Cooking: Recipes for Living in a New World.” Digest: a Journal of Foodways and Culture 5:2: n. pag. © American Folklore Society 2017

Native American section or perhaps because my technique is undeveloped), 
and the Tea Bread to be pleasant, though I substituted brown sugar for caster 
sugar and put butter on the slices when I served it. I had intended to make 
Pirogo (Gypsy or Roma American noodle pudding, 122) but it called for “5 
cubes of butter” and since I was not sure what that meant, I have not yet 
experimented with that recipe. Similarly, I planned to make Peanut Butter 
Soup with Chicken (103), but dawdled because I was not sure whether the 
recipe ought to be made with skin-on, bone-in thighs or boneless skinless 
thighs (a distinction which probably says more about me as a perfectionist 
American cook and may not actually matter to the success of the recipe). 

Aside from the question of identifying the ideal ingredient or iron-clad 
quantities, the recipes are generally quite clear. In fact, the varied voices, 
ingredient flexibility, and very occasional uncertainty make the cookbook (and 
the encyclopedia) feel human and alive—like a tour through someone else’s 
recipe box. Many of these recipes come from home cooks, and the intimacy and 
informality of sharing family recipes separates these hybrid books—scholarly 
and practical, theoretical and hands-on—from the burgeoning commercial 
cookbook industry. The books emphasize the connection of the head to the 
heart, and the minority to the majority, and throughout both texts Long 
never over-simplifies ethnicity and economic and social power struggles. 


