The Melting Pot: PART 1 - How Ethnic Foods Survived

Through Early Mobility

Posted: Thursday, April 16, 2015 2:00 am - Uniontown (PA) Herald-Standard

PHOTOS BELOW NEWSPAPER COLUMN:

Europeans, Asians and other peoples traveled across Europe, and as they settled and moved, their foods were affected by where they lived, by who ruled them and by various other circumstances.

They came to the United States and brought their ethnic recipes with them. As German, Irish, Italian, Polish, English, French, Russian, Scottish, Scotch-Irish, Ukrainian and other ethnic groups settled in southwestern Pennsylvania they assimilated into society as did their foods.

Previously and today, their foods live on not only in the home, church and other venues but most importantly on the streets through mobile dining.

Food carts come in two basic styles.

One allows the vendor to sit or stand inside and serve food through a window. Another uses all of the room inside the cart for storage and usually some type of grilling surface.

Food carts first appeared at the time of the early Greek and Roman civilizations, with traders converting old hand-carts, push-carts and smaller animal-drawn carts into mobile trading units.

Carts have the distinct advantage of being able to be moved should a location not be productive in sales, as well as transporting goods to/from storage to the place chosen from which to trade. There were chuck wagons (in the west) and dope wagons (southern factory work carts).

The use of these carts gained major ground with the coming of the railways. Mobile customers required food and drink to keep them warm within the early open carriages. Locomotives needed to stop regularly to take on coal and water, and allow their passengers to use the toilets, eat and drink. Few early trains had any form of buffet or dining car so the food carts were perfect.

When passengers did arrive at their destination or when they needed to switch trains or modes of transportation, some refreshment was required, particularly for poorer passengers who could not afford to stay in the railway-owned hotels.

The food carts expanded to concession stands also. Many countries still use these such as in Africa and Southeast Asia.

The first food cart items were ready-made foods.

A summary of ready-made foods, for example, from Germany might be Fleischkase (meatloaf) served with mustard in a roll, from Turkey Shawarma (Levantine Arab meat preparation, where lamb, chicken, turkey, beef, veal, or mixed meats are placed on a spit, and may be grilled for as long as a day), from Hungary a Retes (strudel), from Italy a Margherita pizza (the street version originated in Naples and is rectangular in shape with toppings of margherita, mushrooms, Italian sausage, ham and vegetables), from Poland a Rurki Z Kremem (similar to ice cream cones but filled with whipped cream), from Romania Covrigi (hot pretzels covered in sesame or poppy seeds) and from Slovakia Langos (fried flat bread loaves with garlic and salt or other condiments).

For recipes from 1700s to 1960s and modern day links, visit www.ThePAMeltingPot.com.

Christine Willard, a native of western Pennsylvania, researches and blogs about the food unique to western Pennsylvania. She currently resides in North Carolina.