Over centuries of immigration and integration, American cuisine has become as diverse as its people. Different regions have cultivated their own cuisines, each as broad as the cultures that thrive there. The United States has become a melting pot of foods from around the world—melding cooking styles and ingredients to form innovative and sometimes odd fusions.

Wikipedia, a free internet encyclopedia, lists the following varieties as a sample of different styles of American cuisine: American Chinese cuisine, barbecue, California cuisine, Euro-Asian cuisine, fast food, Midwestern cuisine, New England cuisine, New York City cuisine, Pennsylvania Dutch cuisine, Puerto Rican cuisine, Southern cuisine, Cajun food, Creole, soul food, Tex-Mex, Southwestern cuisine, suburban cuisine.

Along with this vast smattering of styles, these foods are considered to be uniquely American: apple pie, Boston baked beans, brownies, buffalo wings, buffalo steaks and burgers, Chicago-style pizza, chocolate chip cookies, chop suey, corn dogs, corn on the cob, disco fries, fortune cookies, fudge, grits, gumbo, hot dish, hush puppies, ice cream cones, jambalaya, macaroni and cheese, pancakes, peanut butter , peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, pecan pie, pecan pralines, Philadelphia cheese steak, pumpkin pie, scrapple, shoo-fly pie, sloppy joes, sweet potato pie, Thanksgiving dinner (roast turkey, cranberry sauce, etc.), whoopie pies.

With such diveristy of foods, it would be difficult to narrowly focus the wide range of spices and herbs used by American cooks. Almost every conceivable seasoning flavor is in use in some form by some type of American cuisine. The following list are those spices and blends we feel typify some particularly American dish, and herbs and spices that are native to America.

Copyright © 2008 The Spice House
Web site powered by Table XI