Salt and sugar not included

November 11, 2015 9:23 AM

What Are the Defining Ingredients of a Culture’s Cuisine? Priceonomics examines a dataset of Epicurious recipes to pull out the most common ingredient and the most distinctive ingredient by cuisine, plus a "Meat-o-Meter" that looks at commonly used meats in various cuisines.

In order to determine which ingredients distinguish the cuisines of the world, we used a publicly available dataset. The dataset consisted of the ingredients for over 13,000 recipes posted on Epicurious by late 2013, and the recipe's cuisine tag. The data set includes both savory and sweet dishes from 26 different cuisines (42 cuisine choices are now available, but there were only 26 when the data was collected), and no drinks. Because many of the recipes on Epicurious come from American publications like Gourmet and Bon Appetit, the findings do however represent a US-centric view of world cuisines.

(For a meatier examination of spice use, the academic paper "Darwinian gastronomy: Why we use spices" [PDF] used traditional cookbooks of 36 countries to pick out the most common seasonings, condiments, herbs, and spices used with meat-based dishes to query the relationship between spoilage and spice use.)

In other exercises in gastronomic reduction, this infographic attempts to identify the three key spices of 36 regions (to perhaps greater or lesser accuracy), but if we want to flatten things even further, we must go au poivre with the most widely used spice in the world, enjoyed since at least 2000 BC.

Also... Useful: 25 Spice Mixes From Around the World; and Some Recipes: A World Map of Flavors – 36 Regions, 36 Herb and Spice Combinations

posted by taz (71 comments total)

Jewish is EGG? this is an outrage
posted by poffin boffin at 9:26 AM on November 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

From The Kitchn link I realize that wow I have a lot of these mixes to hand in my pantry.
posted by Kitteh at 9:27 AM on November 11, 2015

poffin boffin, I'm guessing some Passover recipes might be screwing with that one (No leavening? MORE EGGS). If you scroll down, "apricot" is the distinct ingredient for Jewish cuisine.
posted by damayanti at 9:29 AM on November 11, 2015

that is also an outrage. where is prune lekvar.
posted by poffin boffin at 9:31 AM on November 11, 2015 [4 favorites]

I'm from suburban Toronto. The defining ingredients of my culture's cuisine are Timbits and whatever goes into takeout fast food.
posted by tallmiddleagedgeek at 9:40 AM on November 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

I thought beef would be higher for American cuisine.
posted by bgal81 at 9:40 AM on November 11, 2015

Are the recipes at Epicurious authentic? Priceonomics assumes as much but I couldn't find verification or what criteria Epicurious uses to label foods as regionally distinct.
posted by mayurasana at 9:43 AM on November 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

This is really interesting. Korean is not on the list but if I had to take a guess I would say most common ingredient: Garlic. Most distinctive: Red chilli powder.
posted by like_neon at 9:44 AM on November 11, 2015 [4 favorites]

"pork, perhaps the most charismatic of meats,"

I just envision it with a lil' tiara and sash saying "Most Charismatic".
posted by Hypatia at 9:44 AM on November 11, 2015 [9 favorites]

Which unsurprisingly are two main ingredients of the national dish: Kimchee
posted by like_neon at 9:45 AM on November 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

At a Navajo goat slaughter I was told, the most commonly consumed meat on Earth is goat. Yet, goat is not offered as a meat option in this work up.

Wikipedia backs up this claim.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goat_meat
posted by Oyéah at 9:49 AM on November 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

I just envision it with a lil' tiara and sash saying "Most Charismatic".

PORK runs in late because it was napping backstage.
posted by poffin boffin at 9:49 AM on November 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

(I just want to say, if you haven't added Pricenomics to your RSS reader, you really really should, because of super interesting stuff like this and because they pay $1000.00 (that's a ONE followed by THREE zeroes, a decimal point, and TWO more zeroes) per accepted, published freelance article. Which seems impossible and maybe a good topic for a pricenomics article?)
posted by notyou at 9:51 AM on November 11, 2015 [7 favorites]

A lot of these things are also covered in Tom Nealon's series Stuffed and De Condimentis on HiLoBrow, which I recommend every chance I get.
posted by ernielundquist at 9:51 AM on November 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

Huh, yeah, no goat.

As much as I like goat I have a tough time imagining it has anywhere near the aggregate mass of pork or beef.

This 2005 report has a "world meat inventory" pie chart a few pages in and puts worlwide meat proportions at:

Pork 39%
Chicken 26%
Beef/veal 23%
and goat at 2%
posted by GuyZero at 9:54 AM on November 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

Wikipedia backs up this claim.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goat_meat

That article says right there that goat meat is 4% of world meat production. Maybe I'm not clear on what assertion is being backed up.
posted by GuyZero at 9:56 AM on November 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

According to that chart, my genetic and ethnic heritage is made up entirely of butter. This explains everything.
posted by Mary Ellen Carter at 10:01 AM on November 11, 2015 [8 favorites]

rice rice rice saffron guilt saffron rice rice rice
posted by Foci for Analysis at 10:17 AM on November 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

At a Navajo goat slaughter I was told, the most commonly consumed meat on Earth is goat.

I would like to go to a Navajo goat slaughter, if only so that I could begin more sentences with "At a Navajo goat slaughter I...."
posted by dersins at 10:20 AM on November 11, 2015 [14 favorites]

Irish: The most distinctive ingredient is Whiskey. The most commonly used meat is Bacon.

This explains SO MUCH and pleases me.

And my genetic and ethnic heritage is also made up of butter.
posted by theBigRedKittyPurrs at 10:20 AM on November 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

a cooking lubricant like butter or oil

Before accepting any dinner invitations from Dan Kopf, one really ought to ask for a bit of clarification about this.
posted by RogerB at 10:20 AM on November 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

I want to see the cardiac disease statistics running alongside the butter, bacon, whiskey, cuisines. Killjoy that I am.
posted by Oyéah at 10:23 AM on November 11, 2015

I have learned from the spice infographic that sour cream is a spice. This changes everything.
posted by Frowner at 10:26 AM on November 11, 2015 [4 favorites]

At a Navajo goat slaughter I was told, the most commonly consumed meat on Earth is goat. Yet, goat is not offered as a meat option in this work up.

The data was pulled from "recipes entered onto the Epicurious web site", and I have a feeling that there isn't much overlap on the Venn diagram for "recipes on Epicurious" and "recipes involving goat meat".
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:26 AM on November 11, 2015 [5 favorites]

++ for Meat-o-Meter. Beyond goat; no fish? Still great.
posted by Ogre Lawless at 10:28 AM on November 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

OK the article says goat meat is the most widely eaten meat in the world, though pork is the most consumed meat. However, a broad swath of cultures do not consume pork, while China representing a large population, Russia, Europe, America, South East Asia consume a lot. However goats live on marginal feed and are consumed in some of the poorest cultures, and cultures with religious probibitions to both pork and beef. Nevermind. I think a lot of goat herding is ad hoc, DIY, and falls off the money radar. It is kind of difficult to raise a pinky and say in marginal societies, extra billy goats are traded for underaged brides, and slaughtered for the wedding feast.
posted by Oyéah at 10:39 AM on November 11, 2015

Huh. I would have guessed "corn syrup" for the USA.
posted by JoeZydeco at 10:44 AM on November 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

Goat would be interesting although we know that the cuisines that it dominates (African, Jamaican, etc) would be heavily represented. I think you can probably assume that mutton is also very common in most of the lamb dominated cuisines.

Game meat would be an interesting addition as well because you can probably guess what cuisines have a lot of rabbit or venison or pheasant.

Seafood should largely reflect the areas that the seafood is native too because of the relatively new practice of having seafood shipped all over the world and having farmed raised fish. I can't imagine that barramundi is going to be really well represented in mediterrean cusines for instance.
posted by vuron at 10:44 AM on November 11, 2015

Huh. I would have guessed "corn syrup" for the USA.

Really? Why? Do you cook often? The only recipes I can think of which call directly for corn syrup are some candy recipes and a couple of candied frostings. (Note that "corn syrup" and "high fructose corn syrup" are not the same thing, either.) Plus maybe some pie fillings? I make pecan bars that have corn syrup in them, so maybe pecan pie?
posted by Frowner at 10:47 AM on November 11, 2015 [5 favorites]

Are the recipes at Epicurious authentic? Priceonomics assumes as much but I couldn't find verification or what criteria Epicurious uses to label foods as regionally distinct.


The article has a (very brief) nod to the fact that what they're actually looking at is mostly American interpretations of these cuisines:

Because many of the recipes on Epicurious come from American publications like Gourmet and Bon Appetit, the findings do however represent a US-centric view of world cuisines.
posted by damayanti at 10:49 AM on November 11, 2015

Huh. I would have guessed "corn syrup" for the USA.

According to USDA data there's about 3.6M pounds of corn syrup produced in the US annually vs nearly 3 BILLION pounds of beef.
posted by GuyZero at 10:54 AM on November 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

I would have guessed "corn syrup" for the USA.

This is a measure of home-cooked food as opposed to manufactured/processed food. My hunch is that an analysis of processed food would have some inexplicable soylent-type product that no one really knows about ahead of even HFCS.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 10:56 AM on November 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

Jewish is EGG? this is an outrage

Excuse me while I cry into my latkes, matzoh ball soup, and kugel.
posted by grobstein at 11:03 AM on November 11, 2015 [4 favorites]

Jewish is EGG? this is an outrage

Excuse me while I cry into my latkes, matzoh ball soup, and kugel.

Second highest is salt water a.k.a. your mother's tears falling into the bowl would it kill you to call her once in a while
posted by Mchelly at 11:08 AM on November 11, 2015 [21 favorites]

Corn syrup is a kind of sugar. Sugar and salt are not included here.
posted by monospace at 11:12 AM on November 11, 2015

German here. Yes to butter. Butter everything.

Occasionally I will cut off a slice of butter and eat it on its own. So good. If you have access to good butter anyways.
posted by Hairy Lobster at 11:19 AM on November 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

So they distinguish between American, Southern, and Southwestern, but lump all the different Mexican regional cuisines into one category? Yeah no. Sonoran and Oaxacan cuisine have less in common than "American" and "Southern."
posted by yeolcoatl at 11:21 AM on November 11, 2015 [4 favorites]

Are the recipes at Epicurious authentic? Priceonomics assumes as much but I couldn't find verification or what criteria Epicurious uses to label foods as regionally distinct.

There's also the issue that many recipes are very infrequently cooked so they may not be giving a look at the regular diet of a culture. Saffron might be distinctive of Spanish cuisine, but I'm not aware that it's used outside paella (not eaten daily), and if you cook paella at home you might use colorante alimentario instead of saffron (which is quite expensive for a few pistiles).
posted by sukeban at 11:26 AM on November 11, 2015

The left out English cuisine from the key spices infographic: water, mint and regret
posted by Hairy Lobster at 11:30 AM on November 11, 2015 [5 favorites]

If you have access to good butter anyways.

are Germans as focused on finding the "good butter" in Germany? or is it a hysterical reaction to being in the US and not being able to f find the "good bread"?
posted by ennui.bz at 11:33 AM on November 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

but lump all the different Mexican regional cuisines into one category?

Again, this is based on a US-centric commercial US magazine, not an academic work.
posted by GuyZero at 11:34 AM on November 11, 2015

Second highest is salt water a.k.a. your mother's tears falling into the bowl would it kill you to call her once in a while

Where else you gonna dip the karpas?
posted by leotrotsky at 11:35 AM on November 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

Man, the Western granularity is pretty fine in this list but they're really covering all their regional bases with the American, Cajun/Creole, Southern/Soul Food, Southwestern breakdowns.
posted by bonobothegreat at 11:37 AM on November 11, 2015

Excuse me while I cry into my latkes, matzoh ball soup, and kugel.

WHY NOT THE MAJESTIC POTATO
posted by poffin boffin at 11:43 AM on November 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

*Checks the tag anyway*

Yeeeeah it's 30% variations on paella, 20% potato omelette, 10% gazpacho, and the rest is random stuff. Of course they'll get saffron, the sample is anything but representative.
posted by sukeban at 11:47 AM on November 11, 2015

covering all their regional bases with the American, Cajun/Creole, Southern/Soul Food, Southwestern breakdowns.

Uh I don't see Canada on that list. We're not just poutine, you know. Well maybe 95% poutine and 5% maple syrup.
posted by Ashwagandha at 11:48 AM on November 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

WHY NOT THE MAJESTIC POTATO

Honestly, that's what I was expecting when I first clicked on the link

Cue my Mizrahi friend ranting about Ashkenormativity
posted by damayanti at 11:56 AM on November 11, 2015 [4 favorites]

now i want an angry crowd pelting one another with potatoes and chickpeas
posted by poffin boffin at 12:01 PM on November 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

So they distinguish between American, Southern, and Southwestern, but lump all the different Mexican regional cuisines into one category? Yeah no.

Yeah, I'd blame the "we pulled the data from the Epicurious recipe list" data source for that. Epicurious is part of the Conde Nast web site, and thus is coming from a USA perspective and therefore thus probably not all that fussy about distinguishing between Sonoran and Oaxacan cuisine. That also probably explains the dearth of Canadian recipes.

I'm not all that thrilled about the mention of "Whiskey" being the predominant ingredient for Irish recipes, to be honest (hello, what about the POTATO?). But considering the source, I'm just gonna shrug and go back to my Darina Allen cookbooks.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 12:19 PM on November 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

now i want an angry crowd pelting one another with potatoes and chickpeas

That is a horrible waste of food :(
posted by bgal81 at 12:20 PM on November 11, 2015

Besides, potatoes and chickpeas are friends!
posted by moonmilk at 12:23 PM on November 11, 2015

Yeah, this is one of those pieces where the headline is writing checks the data can't cash.

I mean, this ain't a peer reviewed journal, I think what they're doing is fine. But what they're actually looking at isn't the entire cuisine of a culture. It's

A culture's cuisine

Now cull from that cuisine all the recipes a bunch of gourmet food writers found interesting

Then take out all the recipes that the editors thought would be impossible for the readers to replicate in a typical American kitchen

And now you have a couple dozen recipes per culture that they're analysing

Even then, you end up with a lot of dumbness. I'd bet dollars to donuts that the reason onions end up as the most widely used ingredient in African dishes is because there are a lot of stew recipes. But about 95% of all stew recipes on earth start with onions. Peanuts or palm oil on the other hand, are ingredients that you find a lot in African cuisines but not as much elsewhere.
posted by Diablevert at 12:29 PM on November 11, 2015 [2 favorites]

The three spice "this infographic" link from visually is a little strange. Four distinct palettes for France (France, Normandy, Provence, and Southern France), but only one for China.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 2:29 PM on November 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

It's what's for dinner.
posted by valkane at 2:30 PM on November 11, 2015

Four distinct palettes for France (France, Normandy, Provence, and Southern France), but only one for China.

I'm getting the impression that people here have not ever read these particular magazines.
posted by GuyZero at 2:40 PM on November 11, 2015

EmpressCallipygos I'm not all that thrilled about the mention of "Whiskey" being the predominant ingredient for Irish recipes, to be honest (hello, what about the POTATO?). But considering the source, I'm just gonna shrug and go back to my Darina Allen cookbooks.

Yeah, this is kind of my point. I'm not critiquing the methodology, so I'm not sure why people are using "it's not peer-reviewed" as an excuse. I'm saying that because the data is so heavily ethnocentric, the results turn out to sound pretty racist, and publishing racist results in any venue causes problems. "Whiskey" for Irish cuisine is an even better example. That's pretty blatant racism invoking a very harmful stereotype. Last I checked, not writing racist things was considered good manners for everybody, not a standard that only applied to peer-reviwed research.

Not saying that the researchers are racist. To be fair, the authors do mention that this ethnocentrism is a problem. "The findings do however represent a US-centric view of world cuisines." So good for them on that.

But, then, even though they distinguish between U.S. perceptions of cuisine and actual cuisine, they they go right back to equating U.S. perceptions of cuisine with the actual cuisine by saying "What Ingredients Are Most Common in the Cuisines of World?" on the very next line. And there's a lot wrong with that sentence. U.S. perceptions of world cuisine are not world cuisine. Adopting a U.S. perspective alienates other readers not for the U.S. (Like the Canadians upthread). Epicurus perceptions of cuisine is not U.S. perceptions of world cuisine (The U.S. has a lot of immigrants, and people who identify with other cultures). Adopting Epicurus as the U.S. perspective alienates a lot of U.S. residents with different perspectives. The U.S. has the second largest Spanish speaking population in the world, and that's just Spanish. There are a lot of different perspectives in the U.S. and not all of them post recipes to Epicurus.

So I guess what I'm saying that when writing a post about "World Cuisine" accessible by everybody in the world who reads English and has an internet connection, the authors could have benefited from being a little bit more careful in their use language and who that language excludes.

[Also, I'm not sure what distinction Diablevert was trying to make between "the cuisine of a culture" and "a culture's cuisine." Most languages can't even make that distinction. They only have one possessive construction. So Diablevert, if you could memail me to clarify how you see the two possessives in English as different, or clarify what you were trying to say by using them differently, that would help me out.]
posted by yeolcoatl at 2:40 PM on November 11, 2015 [5 favorites]

I wasn't trying to draw a distinction in meaning, just varying my phrasing.

Perhaps I can express the thought more clearly this way: The database they're useing to make inferences about the characteristics of these cuisines, is not in fact "the cuisine of blank". It's a very, very limited, non-random sample of the cuisine of blank, filtered though some strong biases.

Personally speaking, for the purpose of writing a mildly diverting blog post I think a premise of, "hey, what can a bunch of recipes from Gourmet tell us about the distinct flavour profiles of different regional cuisines" isn't a bad one. But "stuff that Julia Child might have whipped up if she were bored on a rainy Sunday" ≠ "the world's cuisines".
posted by Diablevert at 3:03 PM on November 11, 2015

I'm getting the impression that people here have not ever read these particular magazines.

I'm not actually sure what the graphic at visually is using as data for its spice palettes. There's no accompanying article I could find, and the website on the guide (kitstone.com) redirects to a UK design firm.

Although I guess it does have Burma and Yamen (unless that's a typo meant to say Yemen... it does list "Norther [sic] & Easter [sic] Europe" so it's not immune to mistakes), so I guess "China" isn't as monolithic as it appeared. The Indo-Persian region gets better coverage at least.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 3:25 PM on November 11, 2015

Uh I don't see Canada on that list. We're not just poutine, you know.

On a trip through Nova Scotia and PEI a ways back, I was interested to see that virtually every "ethnic" restaurant made sure to mention on their sign that they also had "normal" food:

Chinese and Canadian Cuisine
Italian and Canadian Cuisine
Mexican and Canadian Cuisine
posted by Chrysostom at 4:17 PM on November 11, 2015 [1 favorite]

Are the recipes at Epicurious authentic?

Some are, some aren't. Given that the #1 ingredient for Mexican is "cayenne", I would say most are not.
posted by cell divide at 4:22 PM on November 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

Yeah, if you look at the recipes tagged Mexican on Epicurious, they're definitely not all authentic or traditional Mexican foods. It just looks like a wide variety of recipes that have a Mexican tag on them, overwhelmingly from a US centric perspective. (Do you see what I see in this one?)

But this story linked to in the first link expands on what people call "Mexican" food.

True fact: I could eat about 100 Mexican tacos right about now. Or I could eat 50 of those American Tex Mex kind of tacos. And you know what else? Does anyone remember I think it was Jack in the Box used to have these fucked up tacos with hamburger and Velveeta in a nearly translucently grease soaked corn tortilla? I could eat 20 of those.
posted by ernielundquist at 5:10 PM on November 11, 2015

I don't use online recipes very carefully -- I'll do a search if I'm trying to figure out the right temperature to cook a roast or what might go into a braised chicken dish, say, and I'll scan a bunch of recipes to look for patterns and ideas, but I never follow one recipe from beginning to end.

I have not found the Epicurious recipes to stand out as interesting or useful at all -- they are better than the really terrible recipes where all the "ingredients" are actually canned food and prepared flavor packets, but not nearly as good as some of the NY Times recipes and especially some of the cooking blogs. It's as ethnocentric as any other source, but an ethnocentrism that I don't find very interesting, compared to other options that (like the link ernielundquist posted about multicultural Mexican food) are more dynamic.

So when you are starting with such poor data, of course you get dubious results.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:45 PM on November 11, 2015

lol peanut oil what
You can make any Chinese dish without using peanut oil...
posted by pravit at 7:22 PM on November 11, 2015

Jewish is EGG? this is an outrage

My wife having dinner with my parents: Mmm, this spinach is so good!
Me, quietly: That's because of all the egg.
My wife, quietly: What? No, you don't put eggs in spinach.
Me: Hey, mum? How many eggs do you put in your spinach?
Joe's mum: Oh... not many. Six?
posted by Joe in Australia at 9:50 PM on November 11, 2015 [3 favorites]

It's a culture's cuisine that's put on the internet in English. Which is why you don't really get the impact of PORK on Danish (sorry, Scandinavian) cuisine. My Scottish partner still talks about the breakfast my parents once served him - it included six types of pork and no bacon in sight.
posted by kariebookish at 3:11 AM on November 12, 2015

That whole study is somewhat stupid in it's approach. First, it's (as they acknoledge, albeit just in an aside) US American recipes. And, of course, these are recipes with ingredients residents of the USA can easily find in shops (supermarkets) - this might, for example, explain all the cayenne in the mexican recipes, instead of the vide variety of chilis actually used.

It would've been better if they'd called their study "The somewhat stereotypical view Americans have on world cuisine". Like, in reality, we don't eat much Sauerkraut (rather red cabbage and kale) here in Germany, but if somebody in the US wants to cook "German", s/he is probably inclined to do something with sauerkraut, as it is the stereotypical staple.

And it does say absolutely nothing about what people actually eat - here in Germany people eat, irl, mostly Pizza, Döner, Currywurst and Bratwurst. (In England, Curry seems to be the most popular dish. In France, Couscous is extremely popular. And so on...) And the most common ingredient in recipes are, of course potatos - close to 100% of traditional German meals include or are served with potatoes.

I would not go as far as calling that study racist, but framed as it is, it only serves to "scientifically" reinforce stereotypes.
posted by ojemine at 3:47 AM on November 12, 2015

As a random, tangential datapoint:

I'm currently in Islamabad. In my quarters, I have a locally sourced microwave with a bunch of presets for dishes that were initially unfamiliar to me.

Because I had a certain degree of time on my hands, as well as access to the internet, I was able to explore what they were. I found the results interesting and distintive (if ultimately unilluminating).

Here's the list; food definitions typically from wikipedia:
1. Qalaqand : a popular Indian sweet made out of solidified, sweetened milk and cottage cheese.
2. Gajar Halwa : a sweet dessert pudding made by placing grated carrot in a pot containing a specific amount of water, milk and sugar and then cooking, often served with a garnish of almonds and pistachios.
3. Suji Halwa : another pudding, made with semolina, cardamom, and almonds, but without milk.
4. Zarda : a traditional South Asian sweet dish, made by boiling rice with food coloring, milk and sugar, and flavoured with cardamoms, raisins, saffron, pistachios or almonds.
5. Kheer : a South Asian rice pudding made by boiling rice, broken wheat, tapioca, or vermicelli with milk and sugar; it is flavoured with cardamom, raisins, saffron, cashew nuts, pistachios or almonds
6. Crème caramel
7. Cocoa delight

So … all of the default settings are dessert-related, and I'm not entirely sure what to make of that.
posted by The Outsider at 8:31 AM on November 12, 2015 [4 favorites]

You should make dessert.
posted by poffin boffin at 9:29 AM on November 12, 2015 [4 favorites]

virtually every "ethnic" restaurant made sure to mention on their sign that they also had "normal" food

What that "normal" is can be any number of things in my experience. In the Chinese restaurant in a small town near me it means they serve french fries and souvlaki. Which is funny because in the small village I grew up in, the "foreign" restaurant was a Greek restaurant. My grandmother thought she was being exotic when she served pâté chinois [literally Chinese Pie but really it is just good ol' cottage pie and has nothing to do with Chinese people]. Locally, the Ethiopian restaurant used to sell fish & chips and milkshakes. As we were eating injera one time I looked over at a nearby family snacking on hamburgers. I have a friend who thinks dosa is weird but thinks butter chicken is normal.
posted by Ashwagandha at 5:25 PM on November 12, 2015

That also probably explains the dearth of Canadian recipes.

I would agree, on first glance, but Epicurious does in fact have a Canadian cuisine tag. There's not many things there but tourtière, ployes, cretons, Pouding Chômeur are all Canadian.
posted by Ashwagandha at 5:44 PM on November 12, 2015

Have you ever noticed that when you eat Sri Lankan, Korean, Malaysian and Mongolian food they all kind of taste the same?

Neither have I, but it's nice to finally learn about the defining ingredients of "Asian culture" and its cuisine. (At least as they exist in the minds of people who think that the term "Asian cuisine" has some meaning, which seems to include the authors of this ridiculous study.)
posted by Umami Dearest at 6:30 PM on November 12, 2015