A Conversation with Betty Fussell
by Cheri Sicard
Page 1

Cheri Sicard: I guess a good place to start this conversation is with corn. It seems like you're most known for your book The Story of Corn, which is, to say the least, an in-depth study. What inspired you to take up this subject?

Betty Fussell: The subject, which I took up earlier, was the question: is there anything that could be called American cuisine? Out of that came the book I Hear America Cooking. I ran around the country looking for regional differences, in the course of which I discovered that the one major food that united all the regions was corn. Since I had left out the Midwest, the heart of corn country, in the first book, because I was looking for immigrant cooking, I decided I had better center next on what was native. That's why it ended up being a book about Native America.

Cheri Sicard: That's interesting. On my recent trip to Japan, I had your book with me.

 

"People who are not of my generation, who are younger, have no idea how isolated America was before World War II. After the War, we just exploded into Europe and everything was new and surprising. Since France was the traditional center of food, French food was a great surprise."

Betty Fussell: You lugged that heavy thing on an airplane to Japan?

Cheri Sicard: Yes, and it was well worth it. Some of the Japanese people I was working with saw me reading The Story of Corn and they were curious about why there was such a big book about corn. I told them it was because corn was the basis of American cuisine. They said, "There is no American cuisine, American cuisine is just hamburgers and steaks." That's all it was to them.

Betty Fussell: Europe thinks the same way. Those places feel that they have a continuous history and therefore the only thing that can be defined as history is that which is continuous. But we are the opposite. It's two different languages.

Cheri Sicard: The book was wonderful and there were a lot of facts that surprised me. In all your research, what surprised you most about corn, that you didn't know before?

Betty Fussell: What I didn't know was everything. I didn't know how complex, how ancient, how complicated this subject was. I am still immersed in it years afterwards because there's no end to it---corn is in everything.

Cheri Sicard: You mentioned the other book, I Hear America Cooking, and I know you traveled extensively for the research on that book. You must have some secrets or tips for finding great food on the road.

Betty Fussell: It doesn't work that way because once a spot is discovered, as in road food, its' over, it's gone within the next two years. It's very hard to find patches in our particular society that remain patches of regionalism. You can still go into Cajun country and find crawfish in season and find local dialects. You could still go into the Southwest and go visit the Hopis and do the pueblos in midsummer. It gets a little harder when you go up to places like Michigan and try to find...well let's see, when is that whitefish festival? We don't operate regionally the way Europe does. We are always looking for that analogy and the analogy is wrong. We have a dialogue between incredible mobility and the changes that brings, with pockets of ethnicity that are a little slower to change. Again, the model is neither Europe nor the Far East.

Cheri Sicard: So things change much slower in those countries?

Betty Fussell: Correct.

Cheri Sicard: I know you have lived extensively in other countries. Which ones influenced your cooking styles the most?

Betty Fussell: Obviously France, for everybody in my generation I think. People who are not of my generation, who are younger, have no idea how isolated America was before World War II. After the War, we just exploded into Europe and everything was new and surprising. Since France was the traditional center of food, French food was a great surprise.

Cheri Sicard: Something I found really interesting about I Hear America Cooking is how much the way we cook and what we eat has changed in so short a time. Things we take for granted were just unheard of even twenty or thirty years ago.

NEXT: Betty on changes in the way we cook and eat, where to get find good British food and the writing of her memoir My Kitchen Wars. Click here for the rest of the interview.