As American as Shoofly Pie: The Foodlore and Fake/ore of Pennsylvania Dutch Cuisine. By William Woys Weaver. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2013. Pp. 328. $34.95.

William Woys Weaver, a colorful culinary writer and food historian-cum-ethnographer, argues for the essential American-ness of Pennsylvania Dutch cuisine as "the largest regional land-based cookery in the United States in terms of square miles covered."

Weaver also stakes the claim that it is a "food culture with authentic roots, a highly developed culinary tradition" worthy of study (2).

Weaver convincingly makes the point that the Pennsylvania Dutch (his preferred nomenclature, see below) are a thoroughly New World creation, "not a Little Germany captured like a butterfly in amber. . . frozen in time" (7)--but in fact, as American as--well, not shoofly pie, as Weaver points out in his text,(1) but as American as sauerkraut, this group's key culinary signifier and the dish that differentiated the Dutch from all other American groups.

Weaver critiques the equation of Pennsylvania Dutch with Pennsylvania German, arguing that the "Dutch" are a distinctively American metamorphosis; differentiation from the 1891 founding of the more elitist Pennsylvania German Society is also significant, as the Dutch represented a variety of socioeconomic groups with culinary variations.

Weaver discusses in interesting detail the "poverty soups" or gravies and the convenience dishes (one-pot meals like Gumbis, a cooked cabbage dish, and Apple Schnitz and Dumplings) of the rural, Buckwheat Dutch in contrast to the parlor dishes and cafe fare of the more gentrified and polished Hasenpfeffer Dutch urban merchants and professionals. Weaver contrasts the brewery culture of these older, educated elites with foods of "noble peasant roots" embraced by the tourist industry (29).

Pennsylvania Dutch cookery encompasses some 1,600 distinctive dishes, Weaver claims. Chicken potpie was "always working-class fare" (62). Pork consumption in general and pig's stomach in particular--"a status and icon food" (20) but deemed too unrefined for the tourist trade--were common foods among all those of Pennsylvania Dutch ethnicity. Also eaten were rabbit and,...