0:02 Hello friends my name is JJ and one
0:04 topic that I've had a lot of fun making
0:07 videos about lately is this idea of the
0:10 American cultural Canon a canon in the
0:13 one n non bang bang sense of the word
0:15 refers to an official list of things
0:17 that are understood to be part of a
0:19 recognized set and when it comes to
0:21 Contemporary American culture there are
0:23 all sorts of standardized sets of things
0:25 that are fun to explore in the past
0:27 we've done a video on the American
0:30 monster cannon that includes Franken
0:32 Stein Dracula and the mummy as well as
0:35 one on the American candy flavor Cannon
0:37 which includes lemon lime orange
0:40 strawberry and Cherry and today we are
0:42 going to talk about the American potato
0:45 chip flavor Cannon so when it comes to
0:47 the bestselling flavors of potato chip
0:49 in the United States the big four
0:52 consists of plain sour cream and onion
0:55 barbecue and salt and vinegar living on
0:56 this continent you just sort of take
0:58 these flavors for granted as normal and
1:01 probably don't often in pause to ponder
1:03 just how unique and arbitrary they are
1:05 in many foreign countries after all
1:07 their potato chip flavor Cannon is
1:08 completely different I remember when I
1:11 was in Holland pepper flavor chips in
1:14 the sense of green or red pepper flavor
1:16 were very common in many parts of Asia
1:18 meanwhile shrimp flavor is one of their
1:21 standards these are grilled prawn flavor
1:23 from Thailand even in America itself
1:25 there was a time when some companies
1:26 were trying to make peanut butter
1:28 flavored chips a thing but let us just
1:30 take a step back a bit and talk about
1:32 how potato chips came to be in the first
1:34 place because we cannot begin to talk
1:36 about flavors before getting into the
1:38 uniquely American history of this most
1:40 American of
1:42 snacks so potatoes are actually
1:44 indigenous to the United States with the
1:46 wild versions of the plant found mostly
1:48 in the southern half of the country it
1:51 was in Latin and South America however
1:53 where potatoes of the sort we know today
1:55 were first actively cultivated as a
1:57 versatile Food Source by the native
1:59 peoples It is believed that the Spanish
2:01 brought Poes to Europe sometime in the
2:03 late 16th century but because they were
2:06 so easy to grow even on really bad land
2:08 they quickly became associated with
2:10 peasants and were looked down on by the
2:13 European Elite as gross farmer food Only
2:15 The Wretched eat the roots was
2:17 apparently a common saying at the time
2:19 this was much less the case in the
2:22 humble and Democratic United States
2:23 however who really took to farming
2:25 potatoes in both the colonial and
2:28 postcolonial eras add in an influx of
2:30 Irish immigrants whose potato eating
2:32 ways had made them the subject of weird
2:35 scorn in Europe and by the 19th century
2:37 potatoes had become a very mainstream
2:40 American food enjoyed by men and women
2:42 of all social classes in fact in
2:45 Victorian era America potatoes were even
2:47 served at some of the country's most
2:50 fancy restaurants like Moon's Lakehouse
2:53 in classy Saratoga Springs New York
2:55 there is a very famous story about this
2:57 place that I'm sure you've heard about
2:59 how the restaurant had this very snotty
3:01 cook who really hated customers who sent
3:04 back the food and then one day in 1853
3:06 the great railroad Tycoon Cornelius
3:09 vanderbelt tried to send back some
3:10 potato dish that he considered
3:12 undercooked and the chef went ballistic
3:14 and responded by trying to make him the
3:16 most repulsive potato Abomination he
3:18 could muster but instead he just wound
3:20 up creating potato chips and everybody
3:22 loved them according to this excellent
3:23 book on the history of potato chips
3:25 however there doesn't seem to be a lot
3:26 of hard evidence that this story
3:28 actually happened although potato chips
3:30 were almost certain invented at this
3:32 restaurant the author seems to think it
3:34 is more likely that The Cook's sister
3:36 actually invented them in a less
3:38 theatrically compelling accident but in
3:41 any case the Saratoga chips as they were
3:43 first known were quickly put on the menu
3:45 of restaurants and stores across New
3:47 York and then surrounding states as well
3:49 particularly Ohio and Pennsylvania which
3:51 even today are said to have the
3:53 strongest potato chip culture in the US
3:55 the industry even refers to this part of
3:58 America as the potato chip belt just
4:00 because of how nuts people are for chips
4:01 in this area if you are from there you
4:03 can tell me if this Rings true so much
4:05 like candy potato chips only really
4:07 started to go mainstream in the early
4:10 20s century when Factory technology of
4:12 the late Industrial Revolution allowed
4:14 machines to process and peel and fry
4:16 potatoes at a massive scale as well as
4:18 seal them in little bags of wax paper or
4:21 foil that could be individually sold at
4:23 stores before then you had to buy chips
4:26 in bulk with the scoop like nuts now
4:27 America didn't really have a lot of
4:30 Nationwide food brands and until after
4:33 World War II a lot of the big iconic
4:35 companies that exist today are simply
4:37 the result of Savvy entrepreneurs buying
4:39 up a bunch of smaller Regional companies
4:41 and this was definitely the case with
4:43 chips throughout the 1930s 40s and 50s a
4:45 big company called Frito and another
4:48 company called Lei went to ruin the US
4:49 buying up all of the small chip
4:51 companies before merging into a single
4:54 giant chip conglomerate called freto l
4:57 in 1962 this company then merged with
5:00 Pepsi in 1965 creating a snack food
5:03 Juggernaut that still produces over 60%
5:05 of all chips sold in America second
5:07 place is Pringles which was a brand
5:09 created by the Proctor and Gamble
5:11 Corporation in 1971 the rise of these
5:14 companies heralded the dawn of a more
5:16 uniform standard of potato chip across
5:19 the United States in terms of shape
5:23 Crunch and of course flavor but first
5:26 onions so onions originate somewhere in
5:28 the Far East and were brought to Europe
5:30 by the Romans like potatoes onions are
5:32 also a pretty simple thing to grow and
5:34 as a result the Europeans had a lot of
5:37 similar snobbery towards people who grew
5:38 or ate them as a result although what's
5:40 interesting is that in this case it was
5:42 a very northern Europe versus southern
5:44 Europe sort of thing in England
5:46 especially from about the 17th century
5:48 on onions were considered an extremely
5:50 low class sort of food with people who
5:52 ate a lot of onions and thus smelled
5:54 like onions being considered the most
5:57 repulsive sort of person in the real old
5:59 days there was even a thinking that the
6:01 Pung Taste of onions would rile up your
6:04 blood and make you violent or horny but
6:05 in other parts of Europe it was a
6:07 completely different story the Spanish
6:09 Greeks and Italians all ate a lot of
6:11 onions which the British would cite as
6:13 evidence of their moral superiority over
6:15 the continent although it was sometimes
6:17 a bit surprising to the Brits that even
6:19 the French who they thought of as being
6:21 closer to their civilizational equals
6:24 ate onions too in this book about the
6:26 history of onions it describes the
6:28 British poet Percy Shelly visiting
6:30 France in the early 1800s and being
6:32 shocked to discover that Aristocrats in
6:35 Paris ate onions in their food like
6:37 common Hillbillies but once again the
6:39 egalitarian sensibilities of America
6:41 prevented that sort of snobbishness from
6:43 taking hold there America welcomed a lot
6:45 of immigrants from the unioning parts of
6:47 Europe in the late 19th century and they
6:49 helped normalize both eating and growing
6:51 the vegetable which is objectively very
6:54 delicious one popular onion dish that
6:56 wound up catching on with middle class
6:58 America was onion soup the French like
7:00 to take credit for inventing this but
7:02 it's not exactly the most radical dish
7:03 in the world and a lot of other
7:05 nationalities have their version of it
7:07 too Flash Forward to World War II in
7:09 order to make rations for the fighting
7:12 Men last longer new technologies of food
7:14 dehydration were developed and after the
7:16 war that same technology was put to
7:18 commercial use in the form of selling
7:21 dehydrated foods to the status conscious
7:23 Housewives of America who were eager to
7:24 buy up anything that purported to be
7:26 convenient and modern the one thing that
7:29 really took off was dehydrated soups and
7:32 and in 1952 the lipin corporation
7:34 started selling packets of dehydrated
7:37 onion soup an American staple reinvented
7:40 for the nuclear age so barbecue is
7:43 actually a very old American tradition
7:45 and one that has changed less over the
7:47 centuries than you might expect the word
7:49 comes from the tyo Indians of the
7:51 Caribbean and means rack for smoking
7:53 meat early European colonizers in the
7:55 Americas were fascinated with the ways
7:57 that Aboriginal peoples cooked meat
8:00 outdoors with fire and racks and eagerly
8:02 tried to copy them making barbecue one
8:04 of the earliest examples of either the
8:06 Great American Melting Pot or indigenous
8:08 cultural appropriation depending on how
8:10 you're feeling but yes from practically
8:11 the earliest days Americans were having
8:14 big barbecue parties cooking conspicuous
8:16 quantities of beef and pork and chicken
8:18 on open Flames I mean George Washington
8:20 went to barbecues much like onions and
8:22 potatoes barbecues were one of the great
8:25 equalizers of Americans of all social
8:27 standings with one notable exception as
8:29 wealthy Americans particularly in the
8:32 South outsourced more of their chores
8:34 like cooking to their slaves tending to
8:36 the barbecue became increasingly
8:39 associated with blacks who in turn added
8:40 their own unique spin to it having
8:42 mastered it in captivity
8:44 African-Americans became a dominant
8:46 force in American barbecue culture after
8:48 emancipation with barbecue restaurants
8:50 becoming a popular business for free
8:51 blacks looking to gain economic
8:53 self-sufficiency in the post Civil War
8:56 era after the second world war however
8:58 Americans started going to barbecue
8:59 parties and barbecue restaurants less
9:02 and less and started barbecuing at home
9:03 more and more owning your very own
9:06 miniature charcoal or propane powered
9:09 barbecue or better yet a stone Barbecue
9:11 Pit in the backyard became one of many
9:13 status symbols of prosperity and comfort
9:16 among the post-war American middle class
9:18 this fine book on the history of
9:19 barbecue refers to the years between
9:23 1945 and 1965 as the Golden Age of the
9:25 American barbecue a time when you would
9:26 have been considered a bit of a weirdo
9:28 or maybe a communist if you weren't
9:31 barbecuing all the time any Zoomers in
9:32 the audience may be delighted to learn
9:34 that this is where the cliche of the
9:37 barbecue man as an icon of unambitious
9:39 middle class sensibilities comes from
9:40 much like their little barbecues
9:42 themselves the meats that Americans were
9:44 barbecuing in the Golden Age tended to
9:47 be pre-fabricated and machine made with
9:49 Factory processed hamburger patties and
9:51 hot dogs taking the place of traditional
9:53 ribs and steaks and just so families
9:54 wouldn't have to go through all the
9:55 hassle of whipping up their own
9:58 seasonings or glazes for the meats
9:59 Supermarket soon began selling
10:02 ready-made barbecue sauce sauces like
10:05 this one by the craft Food corporation
10:06 which has since risen to become the most
10:08 popular barbecue sauce in America it is
10:11 a mildly Tangy concoction of tomatoes
10:13 and molasses sort of loosely based on a
10:15 type of sauce that had been popular with
10:18 some barbecuers in the South only with a
10:20 lot more sugar I know that to this day a
10:21 lot of the real hardcore barbecue
10:23 restaurant tours have nothing but
10:25 contempt for Supermarket barbecue sauce
10:27 which they view about the same way that
10:30 Mexicans view Taco Bell
10:32 by the 1970s your average American was
10:34 eating 4 lb of potato chips a year with
10:37 potato chips counting for 50% of All
10:39 American snack foods at least according
10:41 to this 1975 press release from the
10:43 American potato chip Institute but
10:44 delicious though they might be there are
10:46 only so many salty potato discs you can
10:48 choke down before you start to get bored
10:50 so what did the ever Innovative American
10:52 people do to make their chip eating
10:55 experience more exciting why dip them in
10:57 something of course like barbecue sauce
10:59 that stuff goes with anything others
11:01 were more creative shortly after that
11:03 lipin onion soup mix was invented The
11:06 Californians started a craze of mixing
11:08 onion soup mix with sour cream to create
11:10 a delightful new sauce that was perfect
11:12 for dipping chips in some people said it
11:14 was like biting into a delicious baked
11:16 potato with sour cream and chopped up
11:18 onions one of the most beloved of
11:20 America's many iconic potato based
11:22 dishes the lipin people certainly got
11:23 big dollar signs in their eyes when they
11:25 heard about this and began actively
11:27 pushing the idea that you could buy
11:28 their soup and make California dip in
11:30 all of their advertisements when you
11:31 read about the history of this they
11:33 often make a big deal of the fact that
11:35 lipon sponsored a very popular TV show
11:38 in the 1950s called Talon Scouts and the
11:40 host of that show often played up the
11:42 California dip angle as one of the great
11:43 selling points of why you would want to
11:45 buy the dehydrated soup even if you
11:47 weren't a big soup guy but while
11:49 Americans can be a very entrepreneurial
11:51 people they can also be a tad lazy
11:53 surely there has to be a more convenient
11:55 way to get sauces on our chips they
11:57 cried and the corporations heard those
12:00 cries in 1958 during the height of the
12:02 middle class barbecue craze lays
12:05 unveiled barbecue sauce flavored chips
12:07 and they became a huge smash hit in the
12:10 early 1970s lays followed up with sour
12:13 cream and onion flavored chips take that
12:16 lipin so vinegar is basically just
12:18 alcohol that has gone bad in fact the
12:20 English word vinegar is just an
12:23 anglicization of the French term vinagar
12:26 or sour wine it refers to how when
12:27 alcohol is exposed to oxygen for a
12:29 prolonged period of time it transforms
12:32 into a kind of sour acid that being the
12:33 case vinegar is one of the oldest and
12:36 most universal food stuffs on Earth
12:38 present in some form in basically any
12:40 culture that has ever had liquor in a
12:42 time before spices and sugar were widely
12:45 available vinegar was often used to give
12:47 food a bit more flavor like many early
12:50 condiments it was also a popular way to
12:52 mask the often disgusting Taste of old
12:55 timey food our old Pals the English who
12:57 were too good for onions used a vinegar
12:59 made from malt ale as one of their
13:01 favorite seasonings it was particularly
13:04 popular as a topping for deep fried fish
13:06 and french fries which became a
13:08 ubiquitous staple of the British diet in
13:10 the 19th century depending on who you
13:12 listen to dosing this kind of heavily
13:15 fried food and vinegar either covers up
13:17 or accentuates the greasy flavor so
13:19 British immigration to the United States
13:22 greatly declined in the late 19th and
13:23 early 20th centuries but well into the
13:25 postwar era there were still thousands
13:27 of Brits coming every year but the big
13:29 thing that changed was that this later
13:31 wave of British immigrants more
13:33 consciously thought of themselves as
13:35 exotic foreigners than the generations
13:37 prior because obviously after about the
13:39 first century or so of Independence
13:41 Britain and the United States had
13:43 experienced significant cultural
13:45 deviation from each other including in
13:47 the realm of food so this was when you
13:49 started to see the rise of the British
13:51 pub as one more style of ethnic
13:53 restaurant in America's Multicultural
13:55 milu offering Americans a taste of the
13:57 many foods that had Arisen in the
14:00 motherland since the nasty business of
14:02 1776 including fish and chips and
14:04 vinegar the thinking is that the
14:06 popularity of fish and chips in post-war
14:08 America and the association of vinegar
14:10 with salted potato products primed
14:12 Americans to eagerly Embrace what would
14:15 become the third and final Great
14:17 American chip flavor salt and vinegar
14:20 which was introduced not by lays but the
14:23 much smaller Tacoma based chip company n
14:25 in the early '70s salt and vinegar was
14:27 actually originally a British chip
14:29 flavor but the N people thought that
14:31 Americans might go for it given the
14:33 popularity of British pub food in the
14:35 50s and 60s as you can see from their
14:37 early chip bag design they really leaned
14:39 hard into the whole British angle at
14:41 first British pub food is still popular
14:43 in America and fish and chips in
14:44 particular has become a dish that you
14:46 can now Buy in basically every American
14:49 middle class chain restaurant from Red
14:51 Lobster to Cheesecake Factory but what's
14:53 fascinating is how the stylized
14:56 simulacra of salt and vinegar chips has
14:58 proven more popular with Americans in
15:00 the long term than the British practice
15:01 of actually putting vinegar on the
15:04 french fries that inspired the flavor in
15:05 the first place it is actually one of
15:08 the great paradoxes of American British
15:09 cultural relations that so many
15:11 Americans these days would regard
15:13 putting vinegar on their fries as
15:15 something very strange and foreign even
15:17 as they now wolf down more salt and
15:19 vinegar chips than anywhere else on
15:21 Earth so there you have it four distinct
15:23 flavors of chips each one containing
15:25 within them an elaborate tale of
15:27 America's cultural Evolution as a
15:29 vibrant independent nation if you are
15:31 from a non-american nation or have
15:33 merely spent some time in one I would be
15:35 curious to hear you share your insights
15:37 into the potato chip flavor Cannon of
15:39 another country in the comments below
15:43 and I will see you all next week [Music]
