“We all assume the food we eat has always been here,” says Marc Aronson, co-author of Bite by Bite: American History Through Feasts, Foods, and Side Dishes (Atheneum, May 28), “but much of what we eat, where we eat, how we eat is an incredibly recent development.”

Aronson, an editor, author, and publisher of children’s books with a PhD in American history, teamed up with Paul Freedman, a Yale professor who specializes in the history of cuisine, to tell the stories behind some of America’s formative foods. To enrich entries on key foodways, including salmon feasts, corn cultivation, and fish fries, they invited a team of collaborators to share their expertise and lived experience: Dr. Frederick Douglass Opie, Amanda Palacios, Tatum Willis, and David Zheng. The result is a toothsome tome “loaded with fascinating facts about regional types of pizza, the origins of nachos and General Tso’s chicken, the histories of the Automat and of the renowned New York eatery Mamma Leone’s,” and much more, as Kirkus writes in an admiring review.

“What interests me, when it comes to food, is lifting up the edge of assumed reality to see what’s behind it,” says Aronson, who recently spoke with us via Zoom. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

So what is American food, anyhow?

Great question! The obvious answer is, “It’s whatever Americans eat.” But I think it’s ultimately a reflection of, on the one hand, what we think of as normative—the assumption that everybody likes burgers, or everybody likes pizza, or whatever it might be—pressing against the individual heritage of our families, our neighborhoods, and our cultures. How many middle-grade or elementary school stories are there about the kid who brings in food to school that they’re afraid other kids will find smelly or odd or different, because it isn’t what the other kids eat? There’s an ongoing dialogue between what’s considered prototypical and what you get at home.

What made you want to write about this subject for young readers?

I’ve always been really interested in food. Years ago, Marina [Budhos] and I wrote a book called Sugar Changed the World, and I think there are ways in which a food can [be like a prism] to lift up, through which you can begin to see the world differently. So often the way we teach history is about laws, presidents, wars, conflicts, economics. They’re all vastly important, but you can also think about how people actually lived. People ate things! What they ate, how they got their food, how they cooked it, and how they experienced it was a big part of their lives.

How did you and Paul Freedman decide to enlist a team of collaborators for this project?

In some ways, what Paul and I were trying was an experiment. I wrote this article in the Horn Book about how the question of identity and writing applies to nonfiction. There was some controversy about it. But I think we were trying to find a way to do two things: to have a book that has a unified throughline that isn’t an anthology but, on the other hand, gives voice to many lived experiences. How can we tell history? History can’t just be all broken up into my experience, my experience, my experience, my or my ancestors’ experience. How can we have a unified narrative but at the same time pay attention to what is gained in lived experience? That’s what we were trying to build toward.

How did you assemble the team?

Tatum Willis, who is an enrolled member of the [Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation], who helped us on the Native American salmon feast, was a student at Yale, where Paul teaches. Amanda Palacios, I sought out through various academic contacts, as someone who was in the Southwest who could draw on a Latina and Indigenous experience. Dr. Opie is recognized as the leading academic student of African American cooking and food. And David Zheng, who speaks to the history of Chinese cuisine, was also at Yale. We called upon each of them to share their experience, to provide the resources to tell a broader story.

So how American is apple pie?

Not that American! It’s semi–Turkish, English, and did not actually become considered “as American as” until the 20th century. It’s just like the way that the initial Thanksgivings—and I’m hardly the first to say this—were much more about venison and eel than turkey. So, we should really be talking about the Thanksgiving eel celebrations. But I don’t know how well they would take to stuffing.

What are some of the German contributions to what we generally consider American food?

Germany is fascinating. It’s so funny, “Frankfurter” and “Hamburger” announce themselves self-evidently. Then, of course, there’s chicken-fried steak, which is really wiener schnitzel. And then there’s all kinds of pastries. Germans were [America’s] largest 19th-century immigration group, and they transformed food. But because of World War I, it was erased. Sauerkraut became “liberty cabbage.” You did not want to announce your Germanness.

The Germans had these beer halls, which were sort of festive family restaurants, kids running around. Something I learned in this book, which I didn’t know, is that a good part of the temperance movement and Prohibition was to get rid of the beer halls, because they were considered German, foreign. It’s exactly like modern book banning: Oh, it’s a great danger to our vulnerable youth!, who are running and scampering while they’re eating hamburgers and hot dogs. I hadn’t realized the anti-German element of the temperance movement.

One note you sound powerfully in Bite by Bite is that Native peoples, enslaved peoples, and immigrants brought a wealth of food knowledge to America, leaving many indelible impressions on the national cuisine.

We have them to thank for many important developments. One of the examples Dr. Opie shared is that fishing was a big part of how people got protein in West Africa, and so they continued here and found catfish—similar to the catfish that they knew—which grew into this rich, varied tradition of African American fish fries, which is the subject of Chapter 4. There’s even a debate about how deep-fat frying may have come from Africa. It certainly was not prevalent in Europe. So yes, they all brought things that we now think of as American. They brought the skills that they had, and adaptations, and resilience.

What would you say to a potential reader of Bite by Bite?

Look at what’s around you and just question, “Where did it come from?” Why, for example, do we have Whole Foods everywhere? That’s relatively new—as opposed to some more standard-bred stores. Why do we have farmers markets? Where did they come from? All these things represent something in a cultural moment that you can ask questions about. My biggest hope is that people will use the book as a beginning to ask questions about their own food, and to use those questions to explore their own history and culture. 

Megan Labrise is the editor at large and host of Kirkus’ Fully Booked podcast.