The Geograpy of Taste (Published 1996) (2024)

IT USED TO BE THTA THE FOOD YOU chose to put in your mouth revealed your roots as readily as the accent that came out of it. Now food preferences linked to region alone are beginning to fade. People move around. Food companies market nationally. Nonetheless, the quirks and wrinkles of particular tastes continue to faintly mark the culinary landscape. High sales of Nilla Wafers in the South, for example, or of chunky peanut butter in the West reflect endemic, though frequently inexplicable, affinities that have existed for generations. here are some of the things we like to eat, and where we like to eat them.

Babecue The number of barbecue restaurants in the country jumped from 5,947 in 1985 to 6,670 in 1992, the last time they were counted. What was originally a regional food is becoming national as the country's palate heats up - spice consumption, espeically of the hot peppers that go into barbecue sauce, has skyrocketed. Preferences remain regional, however, when it comes to the meat. Port is prefered east of the Mississippi, with vinegar in the sauce; beef in cattle country and in the West, where the sauce is tricked up with tomato paste.

Beef Consumptionw was up to 67.1 pounds per person last year, compared with 65.1 pounds in 1993, reversing an 18-year decline, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. More people are ordering beef in restaurants (up 3.2 percent), especially in steakhouses, where business is up 24.5 percent. According to Morton's of Chicago, a chain of 31 restuarants, a 24-ounce porterhouse sells well in New York. The biggest seller in Palm Beach is the New York strip sirloin. Dallas likes its filet mignon rare; in Atlanta the preference is for medium and in the Deep South, well done. In 1994 there was an incrase of 11 percent in the servings of large hamburgers, 6 percent for large cheeseburgers and 18 percent for bacon cheeseburgers. Three-quarters of all beef eaten in the U.S. is in the form of hamburger, and burger consumption was up 2.7 percent in 1994. Eighty-seven percent of Americans ordered a hamburger or a cheeseburger in the past year, which translates to five billion hamburgers a year, 14 million a day.

Butter In the Northeast 72 percent of families use butter, compared with 39 percent in the South, where they use margarine. Economics drove that choice, from the time when margarine was a cheaper substitute, and habit has taken over. Salted is preferred to sweet all over the country.

Cheese White cheddar is preferred in New York and New England, yellow in the rest of the country. The color-coding started more than 100 years ago, when Wisconsin began mass-marketing cheese and wanted to differentiate theirs from everyone else's. In 1970 the per capita consumption of mozzarella was 1.19 pounds. IN 1995 it was 8.27 pounds, virtually all of it consumed on pizza.

Chicken Forty-six percent of folks in the South eat fried chicken, compared with about one-third of the residents in other regions. Seventy-three percent of those in the Northeast eat chicken baked or roasted. Americans spent $25 billion on chicken last year and at 70.5 pounds per person. Consumption is expected to increase to 74 pounds per person this year. In the past, when chicken-eating went up, beef-eating went down, but now both are gaining.