Every Italian American recipe I see has tons of garlic and it is also ultra common in restaurant dishes. I’m from Europe and here most Italian food doesn’t include garlic. It’s just a few dishes and basic Italian home cooking doesn’t start with: Fry at least 5 garlic cloves in the pan. Where does your preference for strong (and sometimes overpowering) garlic flavor in Italian American food come from?
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Italian Americans.
Garlic is easy and cheap to grow, so it’s used as major seasoning by people without much money. Most Italians that came over here were poor, why leave your country/community/family if you’re doing well, and they brought their cuisine over as the standard for Italian food.
I do not accept the premise.
It’s synonymous with Italian-American food, not Italian food.
Many Italian immigrants in the 19th and early 20th century were from southern Italy, especially Sicily, which uses more garlic than northern and central Italy. Differences have been amplified over the past ~150 years. They were also often poor and garlic is cheap.
Garlic is synonymous with all food. Because it’s delicious.
Common sense. Garlic is a spectacular addition to basically every meal.
I think italian might just go better with garlic than other foods we typically eat. Maybe it’s more about the garlic and Italian dishes just happen to accommodate extra garlic. Garlic is delicious but most people don’t want to eat just garlic unless it’s confit
Italian American food has lots of garlic because most Italian immigrants to America were from southern Italy. It was also a cheap flavoring that covered up lower quality ingredients available to the urban poor. Since this was most Americans exposure to Italian food (America being closer than Italy), it became how most Americans thought of Italian food.
Like some words that are pronounced differently in NJ and on LI, those roots come from Italian immigrants to NY/NJ in the late 1800s and early 1900s. They were predominantly Sicilian and southern Italian. They also mixed with Jewish immigrants who lived nearby and the two cultures mixed together. It is the same for Corned beef on St Patrick’s Day. This is a Jewish cut of meat. All of these cultures came together and lived in tenements on the lower east side of Manhattan.
Mine comes from my Italian immigrant grandparents who taught me everything I know about Italian food lol.
I associate Garlic more with Asian/Middle Eastern food. It’s got that worldwide appeal.
Vampires are a real nuisance over here and we’re trying to keep them away
“Anyone who had left Italy to pursue the American dream was used to incorporating garlic into their diet because it was tasty, easy to grow, and always cheap. The result was that Italian-American cuisine had a significant garlic presence, whether or not that was “authentically” Italian.”
I’m sure there’s plenty more to it than this, but the short answer is because Italian food here is Italian-American, and they use a lot of garlic.
Because Italian Americans arent Italian in general, the vast majority are Sicilian, and Italian American food is Sicilian, at least generally. Sicilian food uses a good amount of garlic.
It’s not.
Because most things in the Italian American cuisine heavily use it. Middle eastern and Asian cuisines are newer to the US but they can also be garlic heavy. I don’t think I had hummus before 2006. Italian just has the stereotype.
Most Italian-American families originated from southern Italy, where garlic is used more than northern Italy, and once here they developed their own Italian-American culture which is distinct from any Italian culture. Italian-American food is different from traditional Italian cuisine the same way Tex-Mex is different from traditional Mexican cuisine. It’s its own thing.
Mamma Mia! What in sam hell are you talking about?
In our Sicilian family garlic was and will always be part of our recipes. Besides, it’s delicious, and like bacon, should be in everything LOL
Bulk of Italian immigrants to America in the way back when were from southern Italy where garlic is more common…thus it was incorporated into Italian-American food which is what the vast majority of Americans have exposure to.
This is a bit awkward to answer. I mean if I asked Thai people why they use so much spice in their cooking would I expect a substantial answer? There’s no great reason behind it, it’s just what the national taste has grown to like. (Well, if there even IS a difference, it’s not like I have a database of how much garlic the world uses in their cooking)
Besides that, uhh, I personally wouldn’t call it “synonymous” with Italian cooking by definition, since I don’t immediately connect the two.
I hope this answer is helpful?
My family is from Sicily and they had garlic hanging in stockings in the closet year round because they used so much of it in everything. All of my Italian and Italian-American family uses garlic religiously.
Europeans love to use both the “you’re not European you’re American” and “why you no do everything like Europe” critiques seemingly interchangeably.
People moved from one country (Italy) to another (USA). Over generations of living in new country (USA) their culture changes and is then different from that of the original country (Italy). A different culture is going to produce different foods, and even changes to recipes.
Because it’s good? We put garlic in everything
Garlic is prevalent in a lot of food we eat. I love Cajun food, which used a lot of garlic for example.
It’s not Italian food we are cooking it’s Italian inspired American food. Why is chicken tikka masala so British?
There is a lot more variation in Italian food here than you think
A lot of groups who migrated here were generally very poor, but then became relatively wealthy- especially in material terms (access to more stuff and a bigger variety of stuff). This is especially true for food. So often you have a phenomenon of people in the diaspora group behaving (and cooking) in ways that they think that rich people behave. This has some interesting implications for food ways, and is particularly what is happening with some of the more popular Italian dishes in the US.
People immigrants come to the US and encounter new foods, get a taste for them and incorporate them into their own cooking. At scale, creates a new style of cuisine.
I associate garlic with Latin food. One whole side of my family is Puerto Rican. And I don’t know any Latin or Hispanic folks who don’t use a decent amount of garlic.
The explanation I’ve heard is that Italian immigrants were used to growing herbs in home gardens back in Italy but couldn’t in the US because so many lived in cramped tenements. Garlic was much more affordable to buy than fresh herbs so they leaned on it more in their cooking.
I don’t think it’s synonymous. If anything, maybe tomatoes or really tomato sauce is strongly associated with Italian food, even if garlic and herbs are used to give the sauce its characteristic flavor.
It’s literally not. I associate it more with Chinese and Mexican food if anything
I think Americans love garlic in general. It’s in every kind of cooking.
Garlic is in almost everything in USA foods. It might be just little enough that you haven’t noticed. But every recipe calls for garlic or garlic powder. From BBQ to casseroles. There’s even a joke that for garlic and vanilla extract, there is never too much and your whim is the only measurement you need.
Garlic is synonymous with American food. But honestly, almost every culture uses garlic. It’s delicious and easily grown in most climates. There are very few places in which garlic is not a staple ingredient.
Most people who immigrated here generations ago were poor and the cuisine they brought with them reflected that and adapted to what grows easily here. Onions garlic, garlic, corn, potatoes, carrots all grow pretty easily in most of the US so they became staples in many Americanized cuisines. Others are more regional. There are far more varieties of mushrooms that grow in the PNW than the rest of the country, turnips were fairly popular in northern farming communities but turnip greens are a staple in the south. Peanuts in Alabama, oranges in Florida, avocados in California. What grows locally tends to influence the cuisine and garlic grows everywhere and stores well.
It isn’t.
There’s a group of people who think it’s clever to say garlic can never be overused. They’re usually not good cooks.
You answered your own question – we’re broadly used to italian-american food, not italian food.
Italians from Italy, who left Italy in the 1880’s through the 1920’s, DID use metric fucktonnes of garlic in their cooking.
I don’t care what Italy does NOW. The Italians that traditionally settled in enclave communities on the east coast of the USA used a LOT of garlic. That’s what we’re talking about. That’s Italian-American culture.
Italians moved to the US and used the ingredients available. Garlic was one of them. The world was not as small as it is today even back when I was a child and I’m only 51. When my grandparents moved here as teenager less than 100 years ago they essentially left everything from their old lives behind.
TADA.
Our Italian immigrants were mostly from Southern Italy, where garlic is more plentiful in their dishes. My conversations online seem to limit Italian food in Europe to Northern Italy.
I love how you speak for all of Europe
It pairs well with many dishes provided you use it properly. I don’t think it is genuinely more complex than that. My grandmother was from Italy and used garlic. I understand it’s a very culturally Italian thing to be aghast at other country’s cooking habits, my grandma was the same way. American culinary tradition is about mixing different things together. Btw do you use Tomatoes in your cooking?
It isn’t. Many Italian dishes do not contain garlic. Many non-Italian dishes contain garlic.
I’m Canadian but half my family is Italian American, and I am a self proclaimed amazing cook. So I feel like I can answer this one.
Most Italian migrants to North America come from Calabria and Sicily, where garlic is a very fundamental aromatic. Northern Italy which uses more onion / carrot / celery type aromatics did not contribute nearly as much to the exodus.
Another reason is that garlic is awesome and you can never have enough of it.
Garlic isn’t just synonymous with Italian food in the state though, Indian food also has a lot of garlic, as does Mexican.
I have zero Italian ancestry. I only associate garlic with Italian food because that is what Italian Americans put in their food. If that is not what you find in Europe then I guess all the garlic loving Italians came to the US. Maybe garlic is more appreciated in the US.
Lots of cuisines use garlic.
Because the folks that came here were poor- and snobby Italians thought the smell of garlic was “the stench of poverty”. It was cheap and a replacement for a lot of expensive and unavailable ingredients in Southern Italy — and even more so when Italians came to the US and many more of the ingredients were unavailable. Saffron and capers and gorgeous aged Italian cheeses were out of reach.
I’m not Italian but there’s a lot of dishes I love with lots of garlic. Garlic, lemon, parsley smell on my fingers after preparing some dishes is practically intoxicating to me. I love it. I have zero bias one way or the other. I didn’t grow up with any opinion about it.
People seem to like garlic.
Historically Italian immigrants were relatively poor and garlic is a strong flavor. If you don’t have good ingredients you can mask that with cheap garlic. Over time garlic was adopted as a culinary staple in Italian American cuisine.