Historic Recipes: Reinterpret…or stay authentic?

The dilemma is real. 

Do we recreate these recipes authentically, or do we try to make them palatable for a modern audience.  After all, not everyone enjoys a heavy dose of rose water, or an indiscriminate mixing of sweet and savory—even if our forefathers and foremothers certainly did.

As we mapped out our dishes for season 1 of DBH Eats, we gave our chefs some license with these recipes, sometimes because it was difficult to find the original ingredients (turkey poults, anyone?), and other times simply because flavor profiles were…well, let’s just call them unusual.

To compensate for the changes, we included both the “classic” and “modernized” recipes on our website.  And I took it upon myself to recreate the “original” dishes at home when the chef opted to change them significantly (and included photos – I’m proud of how they turned out, since I’m far from a chef myself!) so that you could easily compare the two versions.

But this raised a legitimate question: are we just repurposing old recipes for a modern palate, or are we trying to give our history-loving audience a taste of the past?

Ultimately—and maybe not surprisingly—that proved an easy question to answer. 

Our flagship show, Drive By History, is predicated on the idea that understanding the past is extremely important, and helps to inform our present.  Shouldn’t that concept transfer to our culinary history as well? 

It’s important to learn how different ingredients made it to our tables and into our dishes, whether by hitching a ride with European and Asian immigrants, or traveling up from Central and South America (remember, even the common honey bee was brought over from Europe in the 17th century). 

We need to stay true to those recipes (whenever possible) so that we can experience those tastes, textures, and combinations that laid the foundation for our extremely diverse and complex modern American cuisine (or cuisines, accounting for huge regional differences).

Here’s our promise:  we’ll strive to present authentic representations of these recipes in season 2 of DBH Eats as much as and whenever possible.

And finally, I do hope you’ll try some of these recipes at home.  Every one of these dishes was genuinely delicious – sometimes surprisingly so! 

And if you do try them at home, please send us a photo of your finished dish so we can include it on our Instagram page!