Oriental Cookery in Cold War Suburban America
White women who encountered food cultures of Asia and the Pacific attempted to replicate the enchantment after returning home to fulfill their role as subur- ban housewives in the United States. One way that they did this was to intro- duce family and friends to their culinary discoveries by hosting Asian-inspired dinner parties. With the advent of the electric skillet, suburban homemakers were able to prepare Asian and Pacific dishes more efficiently while also using the skillet as the main attraction of a dinner party. An article from Pacific Stars & Stripes in May 1958 suggested that women “orient their diet” by using their electric skillets to make sukiyaki for party guests wanting to cook their own Japanese sukiyaki.53
Cooking “Oriental” was important because exposing friends and family to new, exotic flavors held the promise of elevating white American women’s social and cultural status outside the confines of the home. In Simple Orien- tal Cookery (1960), author Edna Beilenson encourages readers to prepare the unfamiliar but simple recipes in her cookbook to entertain party guests. Beilenson opens with a poem in which she tries to erase for her readers any reservations they might have about Asian and Pacific dishes:
From China, Hawaii From the Far-and Near-East We bring you these dishes On which you can feast They’re really quite simple; They’re really quite good; And really quite different From our Western food! You’ll like Sukiyaki And Chinese Chow Mein; You’ll come back to the curries
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Again and again! So don your kimono Your sari or lei; And fix your next party The old Eastern way!
The poem clearly reveals that Beilenson imagined her reading audience to be fellow white American women, specifically suburban housewives, who were searching for ways to make themselves more interesting through food practices. She emphasizes how different the cuisine is from “our Western food” and invites white women to playfully dress up in a “kimono . . . sari or lei” and act as walking, breathing exotic decorations during themed dinner parties. The poem illuminates how white women could use “Far-and Near-East” dishes to elevate their public status in a private sphere.
One challenge they faced when hosting an Asian/Pacific–inspired dinner party was to make the exotic familiar to the American palate while trying to maintain the food’s novelty and foreignness. One of the more effective, and undoubtedly inventive, strategies was giving Asian/Pacific dishes a “different twist” that fused “Oriental” and “American” foods. In 1962, Marian Manners offered some advice in a Los Angeles Times article that encourages suburban homemakers to plan an exciting Hawaiian-themed backyard Labor Day din- ner party that will provide “glamour at little price in time and effort for the hostess.”54 Hawai‘i, Manners insists, is the perfect theme for a party because of the island’s Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Filipino, and Portuguese influences, which meant the “foods of these people can be combined in an exotic, but not too bizarre, cook-out supper.” The “not too bizarre” dishes she suggests included a “Macadamian Pilaf,” which required simply sprinkling Hawaiian macadamia nuts over an American rice pilaf, and “Kim Chee Dip,” a blended mixture of Korean kimchi (spicy pickled cabbage) and cream cheese. Combin- ing or sometimes blending together (for better or worse) what was considered Asian/Pacific and American foods was a method used to appeal to a novice’s palate. But it was also an act that tapped into a broader discourse of global cul- tural exchange and understanding. In concocting the “Kim Chee Dip,” white women not only tried to represent the seamless, harmonious mixing of “East” and “West” (and perhaps in this case failed)—they reinforced their status as worldly middle-class individuals.
In addition to dinner parties, white American women sought to display their identity and expertise in Asian/Pacific food by teaching courses on Ori- ental cookery. Cooking classes carried important meaning during the Cold
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War era, particularly for women who tried to exercise autonomy outside their role as domestic housewives. In Homeward Bound, Elaine Tyler May points out that home economics courses and programs proliferated during these years as educators and counselors refashioned women’s education to fit domestic tasks and attend college to “become interesting wives for educated husbands” or accept a career as a “professional homemaker.”55 In Santa Monica, Califor- nia, Jennifer Brennan taught cooking classes to introduce Los Angelenos to Thai cuisine. Brennan’s previous teaching experience with Chinese and Indian cooking prompted her to teach evening Thai cooking classes for white house- wives in the recreation room of her apartment building.56 Her thirty-dollar courses, based on participation instead of demonstration, were wildly popular and often overcrowded.
Moreover, in several cases throughout the 1960s, Oriental cooking was used to bolster civic engagement. In Los Angeles’s San Gabriel Valley, the Alham- bra–San Gabriel Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, an organization for women who were direct descendants of men who participated in the American Revolution, selected “Oriental Hour” as the theme for a bene- fit brunch held at the Edison Company’s offices in February 1963. Margo Wells, a home economist, showcased a luncheon at which she provided a “cooking demonstration of Oriental foods,” its quick preparations, and the versatility of the electric skillet.57 Teaching cooking courses thus became an opportunity for white American women to enter the public sphere and build community.
Several white American women also wrote some of the first Asian/Pacific cookbooks in the United States, which were filled with recipes appropriated from China, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, India, and Hawai‘i. Writing cook- books meant more than introducing new cuisines, cooking methods, and ideas for dinner parties, as it allowed white American women to act as author- ities on Asian/Pacific cuisines in U.S. society. Describing in written form the cooking methods that had been passed down orally enabled these women to establish expertise and ownership of a food culture different from their own. Translating “inaccessible” cooking methods into “recipes” during the Cold War standardized and thus “modernized” Asian/Pacific food practices into an exact science in which ingredients could be measured, cooked, and replicated inside the home with new appliances. Also, being the first to present recipes in the English language turned white American women into authorities because they, by default, appeared to be the only ones with knowledge of this subject.58
In addition, writing an ethnic cookbook served as a platform for white housewives to further present themselves as worldly, cultured individuals and explorers of foreign cultures with exciting stories to tell. As cultural outsiders,
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they had to convince their audience of adventurous readers that the collec- tion of Asian and Pacific recipes was indeed authentic and vastly different. To achieve this, they described in detail their extensive travel through Asian and Pacific countries and their submersion in other ways of life. They demon- strated their knowledge of Asian ingredients and their mastery of cooking techniques. Above all, they played up their personal relationships with “native informants” in order to authenticate recipes and also to show their willingness to accept exotic others. Janeth Johnson Nix claims in Adventures in Oriental Cooking that
almost all of my life I’ve been surrounded by Orientals as friends, and for at least twenty years I’ve made very special demands upon them: “Tell me what it is. Show me how to do it.” Most of them are Japanese, Chinese, or Korean; some are nationals, some are second or third generation, all have been heroically obliging. You will meet many of them in this book.59
What is fascinating about these Oriental-inspired dinner parties, cook- ing classes, and cookbooks is not merely that it helped configure Asians and Pacific Islanders as exotic others within the frame of Orientalism. It is fasci- nating because it happened in a space and time—in the historical imagina- tion—characterized by mass consumption, suburbanization, nuclear bomb scares, and, most important, cultural and political conformity exemplified by U.S. citizens turning inward to the domestic sphere. All of this contributed to the consolidation of whiteness. Yet the evidence suggests that U.S. Cold War intervention in Asia and the Pacific also shaped the contours of race, gender, and class in profound ways. Alongside meatloaf and frozen TV dinners, U.S. citizens prepared and consumed Peking duck and chicken curry. White sub- urban homemakers used Asian/Pacific food culture to carve some room and maneuverability under Cold War gender conventions as they moved outside their domestic role and into the public sphere.
Taste and smell mattered. In a moment of conformity to whiteness when nearly everything looked the same—houses, appliances, cars, and even the housewives themselves—one way in which they distinguished themselves was to deliver new flavors, tastes, smells, and stories. White American women used the exotic tastes and flavors of Asian/Pacific cuisine to make themselves appear more interesting, cultured, and unusual in order to stand out from other sub- urban homemakers. The more exotic and thrilling the food, the better. Their relationship to Asian/Pacific food culture simultaneously allowed them to challenge gender conventions and enter into postwar middle-class whiteness,
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thus shaping their racial and class position. Above all, they benefited from U.S. intervention in Asia and the Pacific, which granted them access to the “raw material” of Asian/Pacific food and a chance to become players in U.S. global expansion.
Conclusion
In this chapter, I examined the historical roots of the relationship of Asian/ Pacific food culture, politics, and identity formation in the context of U.S. global expansion during the Cold War. Placing the history of white American women’s encounters with “Oriental cookery” in the context of the U.S. Cold War intervention in Asia and the Pacific, I argued that Asian/Pacific food cul- ture is one of the best ways to uncover the way that the post–World War II U.S. Empire turned foodways into a site of identity formation for white American women, particularly suburban housewives. I also showed how food became linked to imperialism and neocolonialism that extended beyond personal atti- tudes and cultural representations. Food practices are significant because they show us that food, as a practice of everyday life, help people make sense of the world around them. Thus food practices operated as a form of exploitation and exercise of power along racial, gender, and class lines in late twentieth- century U.S. society.
This story broadens and deepens the narrative of U.S. Cold War history by challenging the boundaries separating “foreign policy” from “domestic affairs” that prevent a more complex and accurate portrait of U.S. society. We see that ordinary U.S. citizens participated in the Cold War on the ground. They imag- ined themselves as members of a global community who tried to build mean- ingful relationships through supposedly equal cultural exchanges and under- standing. Therefore, we must take into account how U.S. global expansion shapes U.S. social, political, economic, and cultural milieus, and must examine how U.S. policies affect everyday life in other countries and in what capacity. The history of Asian/Pacific foodways in the United States is an excellent place to start.
Notes 1. I use the term “Oriental” at many points throughout this chapter because I want to place
in front of readers the exact terminology used to describe Asian and Pacific Islander food and peoples during this period. I have tried to replace “Oriental” with “Asian/ Pacific” when possible, but I have kept it where I believe it is useful for understanding white Americans’ attitudes toward and assumptions about Asia and the Pacific.
2. Winnifred Jardini, “The Secrets of the Far East,” Deseret News, February 13, 1970.
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3. For an excellent discussion of early American Orientalism, see John Kuo Wei Tchen, New York before Chinatown: Orientalism and the Shaping of American Culture, 1776– 1882 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999).
4. U.S. Census 1970, Social Explorer & U.S. Census Bureau (Washington, DC: U.S. Govern- ment Printing Office, 1972, P1–P9.