Most American 'recipes' aren't really recipes, are they? They're assembly instructions.

[MaMight]

I've just found a recipe for Pineapple Upsidedown Cake; ingredients list - 1X plain cake donuts, 1X can pineapple slices.

I suspect there must be a massive swathe of American cooking that I have yet to discover.

(And 'pie filling' is not an ingredient.)

(And neither is 'pizza sauce'. WTF?)

If you still have not had your fill of Jello Salads, I dare you to google for images of ASPIC, here is one... eggs in jelly

Some come with pieces of cod, and prawns, etc.

Ah fudge, you made me look at the jello salad!

MayNeverBeAbleToEatJellyAgainTiggaxx

That's because you're in Scotland, Expat. We're a displaced SCottish family, living THANK GOD in the south, where there's very good food available in the local pub just down the road and in pretty well every village.

Americans don't cook. Even the professional women. One of my friends was stunned to know that we make cakes from scratch over here. SHe wouldn't accept that it takes barely any longer than opening a packet.

Firstly, appologies to Expat. I didn't mean to offend. I even said in my op that I was sure there was a large part of American cooking I have yet to discover; the good bit.

Secondly, wow.

Hmmm - if you look at that 80s American classic The Silver Palate cookbook it's the opposite problem - divine recipes but mammoth lists of ingredients and endless marinading and fiddling before putting in 'Dutch ovens'.

In contrast I could mention Delia's shepherd's pie..

Bill Bryson does a good line in this style of American cooking in one of his books.

Have learned from this thread that American bacon is the same as streaky rashers which I much prefer to back anyway and that American 'biscuits' are what I would call soda scones which we have for breakfast quite frequently.

I could never find American bacon that was like our streaky rashers. The latter are roughly 50:50 meat/fat. When I lived in PA the 'bacon' there was about 90% fat with a thin strip of meat on each slice, cunningly arranged overlapping in the pack so that it looked like it was meaty.

Not saying they weren't horribly moreish microwaved to a crisp, but not much good for cooking with.

MaMight
That website is enough to give me a coronary, just by looking at it.

Expat
Why do you find food so bad in Scotland? It is not all deep fried mars bars.

'Americans don't cook. Even the professional women. One of my friends was stunned to know that we make cakes from scratch over here. SHe wouldn't accept that it takes barely any longer than opening a packet. '

Really? Over 300m people of all kinds of nationalities and mixed nationalities and none of them cooks? Wow, that's news to me!

I didn't know anyone who didn't cook there.

And I was 'professional', too.

Imagine that.

I know quite a few Brits who can't boil an egg, but I'd never go so far as to say, 'Brits don't cook. They eat ready meals all the time. Even professional ones.'

I did read a fascinating article from a US 'foodie' magazine comparing a variety of boxed 'yellow cake' mixes with a scratch victoria-type sponge.

The article started with a sentence along the lines of 'We all have our favourite yellow cake mix, but how many of us have ever tried how easy it is to make our own from simple ingredients? The [magazine] testers found out...'

And bear in mind this was a food-porn type mag along the lines of Delicious or BBC Good Food...

I have googled but can't find again [grr]

(obv the homemade cake won, and something like 4/5 tasters had never tasted one before)

I think that there is a late 50s "one can campbell soup + dash of sherry = consomme" style of American 'cooking' as exemplified by the (incidently fantastic) 'I Hate To Cook' and 'I Hate to Housekeep' books. I still follow the instructions in my mother's copy of the latter about doing last minute dinner parties back to front (set the table first etc).

But those were the days of Fanny Craddock and vile glace cherry and pineapple chunk creations over here. And in any case Julia Child put paid to the 'Mad Men' style of artificial creations in the 60s. And, quite frankly, after a few martinis, who cared about the cooking?

There was a vein of feminism back in the seventies that was particularly strong in the US which was committed to pushing women out of the kitchen. This is what one of my American friends, who teaches at a university in New England and is now in her fifties, told me. She regarded kitchen 'work' as time-consuming and a distraction from more serious pursuits. (I kind of know where she's coming from, though I love cooking at weekends, not so keen during the week.) This is a sentiment that many other women of the same rough age and background have told me. I worked for a US company and still have strong contacts with the US.

It may be different in different groups, ages and classes, (and yes, I am sorry, I should have made it clear that I was talking about white middle-class women).

Oh and if anyone has the recipe for the utterly divine banana chocolate cream pie, well how much do I have to beg?? (and no not horrible over-sweet okay yah British 'banofi' pie..)

expat, i'm certain that mexicans eat black pudding, they certainly sell morcillo by the bucketload in lupe pinto's. i love it.

and you must admit that the internet does not give the best impression of american cooking, it is all condensed soup and crackers online.

oh yes fanny craddock, she was something else. for SURE she was immobilising vegetables in lime jelly.

There are just so many anecdotes about American cooking. A friend told me that when she moved to US a neighbour came over with a basket of two cake mixes - in the boxes, not baked - as a welcome gift.

Which does not mean that no one in US makes their own cakes.

Expat is certainly right about food in Scotland (said as one who's married to a Scot). It has got better in the last few years but I certainly wouldn't be recommending anyone try eating out in Bathgate, for example.

On the other hand, some of my best moments ever have been in coastal inns, tucking into piles of lobster and oysters. Truly sublime.
But, erm, often cooked by English or Australian people.

It's the curse of industrialised countries, poor cooking, and as most of the population of Scotland lives in the Central Belt and not in the more rural parts, that's probably why the food can be bad. Just as it was in cities like Birmingham in the 50s and 60s before Indians thankfully took over a lot of the restaurant scene.

What the fuck IS yellow cake?? Why is it yellow?

yellow cake is like maderia or sponge cake I think (depending on how you make it...the yellow cake that is). I believe it is also called pound cake in some places tho I may have got that wrong.

It's a good thing I'm not Mexican then, Aitch.

I don't look for recipes via general online searches a la Goodgle, unless there's a specific recipe I'm looking for, so I wouldn't know what impression of 'American cooking' (I'm going to make a huge assumption this means white, middle-class) is online.

Anyhow, I know who MaMight is. Nice try.

it's just sponge ie same weight eggs/flour/butter/sugar

it's caled yellow to differentiate it from the frweaky-looking white cake

Yellow cake is sponge cake. It's called that because you use the whole egg and the yolk gives it yellow colour.

It is not pound cake. Pound cake is made with a pound of butter, hence the name.

I wouldn't know about 1970s New England feminism.

That probably missed a significant part of the population there.

What is and has been common there are two-parents/couples working a lot of hours. This is expected, as the standard working week is 40 hours, and often enough, far more is expected.

Hence, why many might come to rely on means other than slow food to feed themselves or on restaurants, which are far more varied, open more flexibly and generally cheaper than they are here.

Yes, I take the point about the restaurants, and that's always a point my US friends make: how expensive it is to eat out (decently but modestly) over here.

I thought pound cake used a lb of each ingredient ie just like victoria sponge

but am prepared to be wrong

Errrr... Pendleton? The white cake, thank you.