DiningBuzz! - Article: America's Food Revolution

I thought others might also find this article (http://city-journal.org/2009/19_3_urb-american-food.html) interesting, not just those of us who lived through the 1950s and its casseroles and "exotic ethnic foods" available mainly in Chef Boyardee (http://www.chefboyardee.com/index.jsp) or Chun King (http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_g1epc/is_tov/ai_2419100249/) cans. :)

Urban revival, globalization, and some world-class chefs have created one of the world’s great culinary scenes.

In a 1769 letter to the naturalist John Bartram, Benjamin Franklin observed that while lots of people like accounts of old buildings and monuments, “I confess that if I could find in any Italian travels a receipt for making Parmesan cheese, it would give me more satisfaction than a transcript of any inscription from any old stone whatsoever.”

Had Old Ben written this letter 50 years ago, in 1959, it’s doubtful that many Americans would have agreed. Back then, a gourmet American dinner might have included tomato aspic (gelatin with canned tomato juice), crab casserole (canned crab with canned cream-of-mushroom soup and canned fried onions), and cherries jubilee (canned cherries heated in a chafing dish with brandy and sugar, “flambéed,” and poured over vanilla ice cream)...

Benjamin Franklin's reasons for wanting a Parmesan cheese recipe may have been for financial rather than gourmet reasons.

The taxes levied on this product were famously astronomical (from what I understand, it was a whole series of taxes applied that accumulated as the cheese was transported through several countries). Samuel Pepys, a well known English diarist, when he learned about the great fire of London of 1666, immediately took steps to secure his valuables. One of the first things he did was bury the parmesan in his garden.

Strikes me that anyone who could successfully reproduce this cheese would have been sitting on a goldmine! Perhaps 'Old Ben' would have himself felt very differently about this cheese 50 years ago too.