Ethnic Foods: Authenticity in Ethnic Cooking

Both foods associated with one’s own ethnic group and foods associated with other ethnic groups can be described as “authentic,” but the meaning of the term depends on a variety of contexts. If ethnic home cooking is understood as being about belonging, what is most authentic is what most promotes the feeling of belonging to the group, whether the food in question is culturally conservative or substantially Americanized and modernized. Outsiders who eat an ethnic food may consider authentic that which is most foreign to them, whether or not it is food that members of the ethnic group actually eat in the United States or that their ancestors ate on another continent. This collision of authenticities is perhaps most easily examined in regard to Native American foods. Many outsiders believe that the most authentic Indian foods are tribe-specific dishes that date from before contact with Europeans. Contemporary Indians, who often live and work outside Indian reservations, may well treasure opportunities to hunt and gather and cook wild foods in the way of their ancestors, but they may have stronger feelings about more recent family recipes with more pan-Indian origins: corn and wild rice casseroles, fry bread, Ojibwa bread pudding, and Navajo mutton stew.