Ethnic was American Diet was [Sca-cooks] Re: Anchovette

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Jul 10, 2005, at 5:17 PM, Bill Fisher wrote:

> On 7/8/05, Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius
> <adamantius.magister at verizon.net> wrote:
>
>>> No, some of it is lasagne made with cottage cheese, Velveeta, and
>>>
>> ketchup. And also a lot of other stuff. It's hugely varied, but I do
>> think the stereotypes exist for a reason, and that their applications
>> almost certainly do outnumber the exceptions, which are what you're
>> citing, as well as some examples of foods which, while eaten in the
>> US, by Americans, aren't necessarily primary examples of "American
>> Food". The bottom line is that, if we had honest numbers on the
>> number of the total 260 million or so Americans, who ate anchovies in
>> the past 24 hours, I don't think we'd come across as a big anchovy-
>> eating nation. Compared to, say, Italy or the south of France.
>> Telling me that some people did eat anchovies in the past 24 hours
>> (myself included, by the way), doesn't really change that.
>>
>
>
>> Adamantius
>>
>
> Hrm is that pure anchovies or processed ones.

I'm talking about anchovies. Pure or at least identifiable, such as  
paste.

>   Lots of people use
> worcestershire sauce and never know what it is made from.

Hmmm. I have to keep rewriting this sentence because it keeps coming  
out snippier than I intend. Let's try this: I respectfully submit  
that the above sentence might be emblematic of the kind of problem/ 
confusion I'm addressing. The fact is that some brands of  
Worcestershire use no anchovies at all, and even Lea and Perrins'  
list it as the fifth ingredient, right after high fructose corn syrup  
and before hydrolyzed soy protein. Given how thin the stuff is, I'd  
say that if there are less anchovies by mass than there are molasses  
and high-fructose corn syrup, that's got to be a pretty miniscule  
amount. The fact that people continually refer to it as containing  
anchovies is, I suspect, more the result of some inherent freakout  
factor than of the importance of anchovies in the overall formula.  
Nobody says (AFAIK), "Worcestershire Sauce is made out of  
molasses!"... even though there's considerably more molasses in  
Worcestershire than anchovies; it may be because molasses doesn't  
appeal to the xenophobe in all of us. OK, I'm an oddity, and I'd  
rather eat an anchovy at any time of the day or night than have a  
spoonful of molasses (let's not even discuss high-fructose corn  
syrup), so my Inner Xenophobe tends to want to frighten the kiddies  
with nightmare tales set at the Coca-Cola plant...

>   It is also
> has been a standard shelf stocker in supermarkets and pantries for  
> a long
> time.

Definitely. But I wouldn't call that processed anchovies. Anchovy  
paste, yes. Even anchovy butter. But again, I'm still not seeing much  
evidence of America being a big anchovy-eating country. Certainly  
there are people in the US who eat them, but that, and all the  
Worcestershire Sauce on the planet, doesn't translate to a large  
annual per capita consumption, which is more or less the criterion on  
which I based my appellation, "a big anchovy-eating country". France,  
Spain, Portugal, Italy, maybe Greece, those are big anchovy-eating  
countries. The UK to a somewhat lesser extent. I really don't think  
we are one.

Adamantius




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry  
Holt, 07/29/04