BRATTLEBORO — Independence Day is one of those holidays that comes with its own menu.
Imagining a July 4 without grilled meat, potato salad, and a dessert that involves red, white, and blue is like imagining Thanksgiving without gravy.
Sure, we get to fool around a bit with the side dishes, but what everybody really wants is a brown and crispy hot dog, whether it be made of tofu or ground duck breast; a hamburger of some sort; something slathered in barbecue sauce like a rib or a chicken leg; a spoonful or two of whatever passes for salad; and a big old bowl of that blue-and-red dessert with lots of cream.
Most of all, what we want on July 4 is food that with every bite tells us we are American.
What is American food? Here are the results of my modest research expedition to uncover the origins of some July 4 classics and some suggested recipes for the same.
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There is no better place to start than the hot dog, or the frankfurter, as my genteel grandmother called them to distinguish herself from little boys who called them wieners.
As early as the 13th century, sausages in buns, Frankfurter Würstchen, were served in Frankfurt, Germany. Wien, or Vienna, Austria, was home to a similar sausage.
When German, Austrian, and Bavarian immigrants came to this country, they brought their food with them, and thus a long, round meat sausage on a bread bun was introduced to these shores.
How they came to be called hot dogs is up for debate.
One favorite version is that an enterprising vendor at the St. Louis World Fair in 1904 called them dachshund sandwiches because their shape resembles that of the small brown dog breed.
But “dachshund” was too hard to spell and too long to fit on signs, so by this account, the name was changed to “hot dogs.” And once the hot dog was born it became as American as baseball.
Hamburgers, as you may surmise from the name, are also a gift from the German city of Hamburg, where beef was minced and cooked into a patty referred to as “Hamburg steak.”
Hamburg was a large seaport, and German sailors arriving in New York sought out a cuisine they could recognize. New York harbor was home to many food stalls, and sometime in the late 1700s these began to feature “steak made in the Hamburg style.”
The journey of the hamburger from the harbor to McDonald's, where a modern-day version of the hamburger has sadly ascended to its place as the quintessential American meal, is again the story of immigrants and the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair.
Legend has it that a German immigrant food vendor featured a new sandwich called a hamburger, a ground meat patty on a bread bun. And thus, the Hamburg steak was transformed into a classic all-American meal.
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Cooks have been throwing pieces of meat over fires since fire was discovered. What most of us do is grill. We cook our meat and vegetables over a hot fire for a relatively short period of time.
A few brave souls actually barbecue. This method involves cooking larger pieces of meat over a lower heat for a longer period of time; in the process, the smoke adds its own distinct flavor.
By the time the North American colonists arrived, the Spanish had long before introduced pigs to the continent, and Native Americans had been slow-cooking pork over fires for years.
The development of American barbecue can also be attributed to the well-developed palate of African slaves who held onto their own culture of cooking over open fires. Their tradition was to baste the meat with a “mop” of sauce while it cooked.
Barbecue was an effective method of cooking inexpensive, tough cuts of meat with nothing more than wood and open air. It quickly became very popular in America, especially in the South, where pigs were staple diet food.
Methods and styles of barbecue vary from region to region in the South where Barbecue has a capital B and can perhaps be referred to as a distinctly American subculture all its own.
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The potato was first domesticated in South America 7,000 years ago. When Spanish conquistadors arrived in Peru looking for gold in the 1500s, they managed to wipe out Inca civilization but somehow saved the potato and brought it back to Europe, where each country seems to have personalized its own recipe for using it in salad. Many versions used wine and vinegar, some included bacon, a few used cream.
Mayonnaise, an essential ingredient in American potato salad, originated in Mahón, Spain - salsa mahonesa - and quickly became intensely popular in France, a country of sauces if there ever was one.
In the early 1900s, another German immigrant, Richard Hellmann, opened a deli in New York, where his wife's salads and their special dressings were featured. Hellman's Blue Ribbon Mayonnaise became commercially available in 1912 and quickly found its way into American kitchens and into July Fourth potato salad.
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At the end of our meal, what more American dessert could there be than strawberry shortcake? With a few blueberries thrown in you have the requisite holiday color scheme as well.
We can't take credit for the shortcake, which had been baked in Europe for centuries as a pastry similar to scones. But strawberries and blueberries are native to North America, and we have made the most of them.
Native Americans baked berries in cornbread, dried them and used them for dye. They kindly shared their knowledge and use of these fruits with the colonists, who soon discovered the perfumed sweet flavor of these little wild red and blue fruits that became important elements in their diet.
Strawberry shortcake, as we know it today, gained popularity in the mid 1800s, and strawberry suppers were widely enjoyed as celebrations of summer. Of all the foods discussed here, strawberry shortcake is the one that can be called American by birth.
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There is not much to grilling a hot dog, and there are lots of choices out there to satisfy vegetarians or carnivores.
A natural casing and a mixture of beef and pork is usually recommended. For a great hamburger, experts suggest 80 to 85 percent lean chuck and handling the meat as little as possible when forming it into patties. Don't make them too big, and try not to overcook them. (The U.S. Department of Food and Agriculture urges consumers to cook ground beef to a safe minimum internal temperature of 160 degrees Fahrenheit.)
As for the barbecue, it is one of the few types of cooking many seasoned cooks find intimidating, and I just don't attempt it.
It's possible to pre-cook chicken parts in the oven and then grill them with some barbecue sauce until the skin is crispy and caramelized. But purists will know that this does not even come near real barbecue. I tip my spatula to those who have mastered the art.
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Most of us have no such trouble with potato salad.
For 4 servings wash 2 pounds of the most beautiful thin-skinned potatoes you can find.
Cover them with cold water in a medium saucepan, put on the lid, and bring the pot to a boil.
Then turn down the heat, remove the cover, and simmer them until you can easily pierce them with a sharp paring knife.
I then gently remove them from the water and place them on a dishtowel laid out on the counter. Cover them with another towel.
As soon as they can be handled, peel them and cut them into large chunks. Then sprinkle them with a few tablespoons of white wine or wine vinegar.
In a medium bowl, mix ¾ cup of mayonnaise, ¼ cup each of finely diced red onion and celery, 1 teaspoon of Dijon mustard and ¼ cup of finely diced fresh herbs of choice.
Add this mixture to the peeled potatoes, and gently fold in the dressing with a rubber spatula.
Add salt and pepper to taste - that's it.
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Now we are at the best part. Take a quart of local strawberries, hull them, and slice them into a bowl. (You can add blueberries for patriotic color if you wish.)
Add just a few tablespoon of sugar and let the berries sit.
Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 400 degrees.
In a large bowl, mix 1 cup of flour, a pinch of salt, 1½ teaspoons of baking powder, and 2 teaspoons of sugar.
Add ½ stick of very cold unsalted butter, cut into small pieces, to the bowl and, using your hands, rub this mixture quickly together until little pea-size clumps form.
Then add ½ cup of very cold heavy cream and mix it quickly with a fork until the mixture starts to come together in a ball. Sometimes you have to add a bit more cream.
Turn this dough out on a lightly floured surface, sprinkle a tiny bit of flour on the top, and - again, quickly and with very light hands - fold, turn and press the dough for maybe 20 seconds until it seems homogenous.
Cut the dough into 4 equal yet ragged pieces, brush the tops with cream, and cook the cakes for 15 to 18 minutes until golden brown. Take them from the oven and place on a rack.
Using a potato masher, squish maybe a third of the strawberries into a purée and mix them all up to make sure the sugar has been incorporated. There should be a lot of juice.
Whip ¾ cup of heavy cream with 1 tablespoon of sugar until soft peaks are formed.
In shallow bowls, split each biscuit in half, spoon strawberries over the still-warm, sweet cakes, and top with gentle mounds of whipped cream.
I sometimes believe that if we could get the leaders of feuding nations to sit down together and eat this strawberry shortcake, world peace might be possible.
I do know each and every spoonful makes me happy to be in America, where once most of us were immigrants.