3. Western Cuisine Customs

Western cuisine, or alternatively European cuisine is a generalized expression referring collectively to the cuisines of the Western countries which is rarely used in the West except in the context of contrasting with Asian styles of cooking. To illustrate typical western cuisine, we just name some representative countries.

（1）French Cuisine

French cuisine is literally the cooking originated from France, a production of centuries social and political transformation. For instance, in the Middle Ages, the upper class favor extravagant banquets with ornate and strongly seasoned food; however, the era of the French Revolution witnessed a shift toward fewer spices and more liberal usage of herbs and polished techniques.

French cuisine is primarily associated with some celebrated chefs such as François Pierre La Varenne, Napoleon Bonaparte and Marie-Antoine Carême who are highly respected due to their contribution to the diet culture. The national cuisine evolved firstly in the city of Paris with the chefs to French royalty, but gradually it extended throughout the country and was even exported overseas.

French cuisine varies seasonally. Salads and fruit dishes are prevailing in summer since they are refreshing and abundant. At the end of summer, mushrooms are plentiful and are frequently applied in stews. The hunting season begins in September and runs through February. Game of various kinds is eaten, often cooked elaborately in the celebration of the hunting success. Shellfish are at their peak as winter turns to spring, with oysters appearing in restaurants in immense quantities.

With the advance of air-conditioning and freezing technique, those seasonal features are less remarkable as they used to be, but they are somewhat observed under certain conditions. For example, crayfish has a very rather limited season so it's forbidden to take them outside that time. In addition, they do not survive freezing very well.

Meals of common people follow regular routines. Le petit déjeuner（breakfast）is often a quick meal of crossiants, butter and jam, eggs or ham along with coffee, hot chocolate or tea. Breakfast is always served at home or in cafés early in the day.

Le déjeuner（lunch）of common folk often consists of meat and vegetables, fruits and cakes which used to be a mid-day meal lasting two hour but is currently shortened to an one hour lunch break. Maybe the former is still customary in some smaller towns. Sunday lunches are often longer and are taken with the whole family. Restaurants usually open for lunch at 12: 00 p. m. and close at 2: 30 p. m. Many restaurants close on Saturday and Monday during lunch.

In big cities, most working people and students have their lunch at a corporate or school cafeteria, which normally serve complete meals as described above; students usually do not need to bring their own lunch food. As to whitecollars, they are given lunch vouchers as a kind of employee benefits which can be used in most restaurants, supermarkets and traiteurs. Sometimes, people skip lunch due to price and time considerations.

Le dîner（dinner）often comprises three courses: hors d'oeuvre or entrée（introductory course often soup）, plat principal（main course）, and a cheese course or dessert, sometimes with a salad offered before the cheese or dessert, which can be replaced by yogurt as well, but a normal everyday dessert would be fresh fruit.

Besides, the meal is often served along with bread, wine and mineral water. Wine consumption has been declining recently among young people. Fruit juice consumption has jumped from 25.6% in 1996 to 31.6% in 2002. Main meat courses are often served accompanied with vegetables, rice or pasta. Restaurants are often at service at 7: 30 p. m. for dinner and stop accepting orders between the hours around 10: 00 p. m. or 11: 00 p. m.

Generally speaking, French cuisine owns a substantial history, and like many other native cuisines, French cuisine develops thanks to great chefs as well as the some influential impacts from neighbors. Like many cultures, the French spend many years to improve their cuisine, with each generation placing something new to the mix.

（2）English Cuisine

Multiple factors such as history, mild weather plus island geography determine the features of English cuisine. In addition, it is enriched by the interactions with other European countries and the introduction of ingredients and cooking concepts from regions such as North America, China and India as the product of British Empire extension and post-war immigration.

Accordingly, in addition to conventional British food like bread and cheese, roasted and stewed meats, meat pies, and freshwater and saltwater fish, spices and curries from India and Bangladesh, potatoes, tomatoes and chillies from the Americas, and stir-fries based on Chinese and Thai cooking are also welcomed among the British people. French and Italian cuisine, once thought to be alien, are also now favored and borrowed. Britain was also quick to learn to consume fast food from the United States, and keep on absorbing culinary ideas from all other nations.

For instance, spaghetti Bolognese, a typical British family meal since 1960s, is a perfect exemplification of the above mentioned mixture trend. The dish is influenced by Indian sub-continent but modified to please British taste. Furthermore, the British curry, used to be a leftover from the ages of the British ruling, and then transformed by immigrants, tastes spicier than the old North Indian counterparts.

Another notable food of English cuisine is Sunday roast dinner which comprises a roasted joint of meat like roast beef, lamb or chicken with potatoes and other vegetables, coupled with a gravy. Yorkshire pudding and gravy, the food which used to be treated as a“filler”is now always served with the main course.

What's more, fish and chips are specialties of the island with a large number of restaurants and take-away shops catering to them. It is probably the symbol of English dish, accompanied with a side order of mushy peas with salt and vinegar as condiments. A deep fried breaded prawn dish named Scampi, is also on offered as well as fishcakes or a number of other combinations.

In the United Kingdom and some other Commonwealth Realms, traditional tea time is still popular, which is believed to be related with Charles the II, who grew up in exile at The Hague and thus was exposed to the custom of drinking tea. He married Catharine of Braganza, a Portuguese also enjoying tea since she had grown up drinking tea, the preferred beverage of the time, in Portugal. Later on she became known as the tea-drinking queen of Britain.

Though fashionable tea drinking is attributed to Catharine of Braganza, it didn't gain popularity and evolved into a new social event until the late 1830's and early 1840's. Jane Austen mentioned afternoon tea as early as 1804 in an unfinished novel. Story has it that the afternoon tea custom was introduced by Anne, Duchess of Bedford. She demanded that light sandwiches be offered to her in the late afternoon because she had an unbearable feeling because of the long gap between meals. Later on she began to invite others to join her and thus it turned out to be a tradition.

There are various Tea Times in Britain such as：

·Cream Tea—A simple tea consisting of scones, clotted cream, marmalade or lemon curd and tea.

· Low Tea/Afternoon Tea—An afternoon meal including sandwiches, scones, clotted cream, curd, 2-3 sweets and tea. It is known as“low tea”because guests were seated in low armchairs with low side-tables on which to place their cups and saucers.

·Elevensies—Morning coffee hour inEngland

·Royale Tea—A social tea served with champagne at the beginning or sherry at the end of the tea.

·High Tea—High teaconnotes an idea of elegancy when in fact it was an evening meal most often enjoyed around 6 pm as laborers and miners returned home. High tea consists of meat and potatoes as well as other foods and tea. It was not exclusively a working class meal but was adopted by all social groups. Families with servants often took high tea on Sundays in order to allow the maids and butlers time to go to church and not worry about cooking an evening meal for the family.

Etiquette to follow when attending a tea party：

·Greeting/handshake

·After sitting down—put purse on lap or behind you against chair back

·Napkin placement—unfold napkin on your lap, if you must leave temporarily place napkin on chair.

·Sugar/lemon—sugar is placed in cup first, then thinly sliced lemon and never milk and lemon together. Milk goes in after tea—much debate over it, but according to Washington School of Protocol, milk goes in last. The habit of putting milk in tea came from the French. “To put milk in your tea before sugar is to cross the path of love, perhaps never to marry. ”（Tea superstition）

·The correct order when eating on a tea tray is to eat savories first, scones next and sweets last. We have changed our order somewhat. We like guests to eat the scones first while they are hot, then move to savories, then sweets.

·Scones—split horizontally with knife, curd and cream is placed on plate. Use the knife to put cream/curd on each bite. Eat with fingers neatly.

·Proper placement of spoon—the spoon always goes behind cup, also don't leave the spoon in the cup.

·Proper holding of cup—do not put your pinky“up”, this is not correct. A guest should look into the teacup when drinking—never over it.

An educated person ate with three fingers while a common person ate with five. Therefore, the use of the raised pinkie is viewed as a symbol of being elite. The former is still applicable when picking up food with the fingers and handling various pieces of flatware.

As to tea cups, they did not have handles at first under the influence of Chinese tea bowls since they were originally made in the conventional Chinese style. In the mid 1750's, a handle was added to prevent the ladies from burning their fingers, an improvement following a posset cup used for hot beverages.

Originally tea was placed into small china bowls that held approximately two to three tablespoons of tea. The idea of the saucer developed in the 17th century when the daughter of a Chinese military official found it awkward to deal with the hot bowls of tea she brewed and asked a local potter to design a little plate on which to put the bowl. In Victorian days, tea drinkers poured their tea into saucers for it to cool before being sipped, which was once a small dish for sauce.

Unlike people in U. S., Canada, Australia, and Ireland, who call the sweet“dessert”, citizens in the UK and other Commonwealth countries refer the sweet to puddings or afters, a reflection of the upper-class/upper-middle-class usage.

（3）American Cuisine

The cuisine of the United States is a cooking style originated from the United States. The cuisine is traced back before the colonial times when the Native Americans had a variety of cooking ways for an equally large amount of ingredients. With the progress of time, especially European colonization, the cooking style changed immensely, with countless ingredients imported from Europe, coupled with cooking styles and modern cookbooks. Despite that, the Native American food would be specifically highlighted in the following：

Native Americans distributed chiefly in five parts of the nation before Europeans settled down in the North America: the Northeast, the Great Plains, the Pacific Coast, the South, and the deserts of the Southwest. Ancient artifacts prove that native peoples fished off the coast of New England as long ago as 3000 B. C Some Native American tribes were collectors since they eat the fruits and vegetables native to their lands. Other tribes who practiced agriculture adopted farming methods to grow crops on the same soil for many years. Native Americans knew how to plant almost 100 different kinds of crops which were used as medicines and dyes, as well as food before the first white settlers arrived.

Apart from gathering and farming, most Native Americans hunted for meat. The Spanish brought horses to America in the 1500s, helping the Indians of the Great Plains to hunt buffalo. Later, however, the accumulation of more Europeans made it increasingly difficult for Native Americans to hunt for food. The white settlers destroyed many forests where once were the homes of wild animals. They also slaughter the animals by hunting, both for meat and for sport or to sell furs and feathers. Anyhow, some Native Americans went on hunting buffalo for food as recently as the end of the 1800s.

Native Americans living in the Northeast and Pacific regions take various seafood, particularly fish, as an indispensable part of their meals. Comparatively, Indians of the Midwestern plains always view meat as the key dietary ingredient, where large buffalo herds roamed. Deer and rabbits were also hunted. What's more, Native tribes of the Northeast hunted elk, moose, and bears.

For native Americans, corn is traditionally treated as being sacred, with different tribes having different names for corn, but all of them relates with the concept of“life. ”Corn was the most significant dietary staple which can be served at almost every meal. Ears of corn were boiled or roasted over a fire or the corn was pounded into flour to be cooked as cereal（mush）or baked in bread. According to legend, native Americans were also the first people to cook popcorn when an American Indian named Quadequina brought a bowl of popcorn to a Thanksgiving dinner in 1621.

Native Americans celebrated the corn harvest with feasts of several days. Large amounts of food and drink were consumed. In many tribes, the Green Corn Festival, a special event, was even held as soon as the corn began to ripe. For the Creek Indians, this festival was attached great importance that it was regarded as the beginning of the new year. Other occasions are celebrated such as the raspberry harvest or the killing of the first buffalo of the hunting season.

In addition to the above mentioned food, beans were also consumed as a major food. No matter they are fresh or dried, beans can be made differently, cooked in soups and stew, mashed into cakes, or ground into flour. Other popular Native American foods included squash, pumpkins, sunflower seeds, many types of nuts and wild berries, peanuts（first brought to America by the Spanish）, and wild rice. Indians of the Northeast tapped maple trees for sap to make maple syrup and maple candy. Chili peppers were also eaten by Indians in the deserts of the Southwest, where the fruit of cactus plants was used to make syrup and jam.

Native Americans possess many spiritual rituals associated with food. The Comanches used to express their gratitude to the Creator for their food. Holding a piece of food towards the sky, they would burn it as an offering. Cherokee medicine men particularly apologized to the Corn Spirit after their people cut down the ripened corn stalks. In the Southwest, hunters tried to breathe the last breath of the preys so as to ensure that the spirit of the animals would be kept alive.

A couple of food taboos are observed among natives. For example, the Comanches would never take in fish or poultry. In addition, many Native Americans dislike food that came in pairs because twins were thought to be signs of bad luck.

Potlatch is the special occasion for some native tribes to celebrate their day, exhausting as much wealth of the host as possible. Guests stayed for several days in a row and were distributed lavish gifts. Then it would be their turn to host a potlatch the next time.

It was the tradition for Native Americans to be thrifty and they seldom wasted any food. Every part of the buffalo was used in cooking when it is hunted, with the heart left behind, which was believed to help the herd to revive.

Usually, Native Americans ate simple one-course meals without any appetizers or desserts. Cherokee Indians had two main meals a day: cornmeal mush, or cereal was the breakfast and in the evening, they had meat and vegetable stew or broiled meat or fish. Corn was an important snack between meals.

Modern Native Americans have almost the same food as other Americans such as hot dogs, potato chips, hamburgers and ice cream. But fry-bread is still the most popular dish of the Natives, which is served with meals or eaten as a snack or dessert.