American cuisine, much like American English and history and sociology and politics and so much else, is a messy, sprawling business, difficult to define. Sarah Lohman, author of the blog Four Pounds Flour, has attempted to do just that with her book, EIGHT FLAVORS.

Using a relatively sophisticated algorithm based on her substantial collection of historical American cookbooks and the use of Google’s Ngram Viewer, Lohman came up with a list of the eight flavors that surfaced most often in recipes (actually, she came up with 10, but excluded chocolate and coffee because they’ve been so widely written about before). In EIGHT FLAVORS, Lohman (who also teaches courses on food and food history, and has a background as a historical reenactor) tells the stories of these eight flavors, or, more specifically, about the individual people who introduced them to American palates. As she writes in the book’s introduction, “the study of culinary history isn’t about food --- it’s about the people who prepare and consume this food.”

"[T]he stories Lohman tells are...engaging and even mouthwatering, hopefully inspiring readers to further research, reading and experimentation with new flavors, whether at restaurants or in their own kitchens."

The eight flavors Lohman outlines run the gamut from tastes that would have been known in colonial America to those that are only recent additions to the American table: black pepper, vanilla, chili powder, curry powder, soy sauce, garlic, MSG and sriracha. She even adds a short afterword speculating on what might be the next flavor to define American cuisine: matcha, smoke, the omnipresent “pumpkin spice”?

Each chapter focuses on a single flavor/ingredient. Lohman includes historical and scientific information where necessary (I found much of this info especially relevant having recently toured the “Flavor: Making It and Faking It” exhibit at Brooklyn’s Museum of Food and Drink), as well as recipes and personal anecdotes about her own experience researching, sampling and experimenting with various flavors.

But the bulk of her narrative focuses on the people who introduced or popularized flavors --- from the Salem, Massachusetts merchants who made a killing in the black pepper trade to the Tex-Mex “Chili Queens” and their first-generation food trucks to Ranji Smile, the first Indian chef in the United States (and an early example of the “celebrity chef,” of sorts).

Some of these stories, like Smile’s, seem worthy of their own full-length biographies and can actually detract from the focus on flavor. But what’s most notable is the extent to which the story of these eight flavors is the story of American immigration and of the literal melting pot that American cuisine has become.

A small quibble: EIGHT FLAVORS is riddled with punctuation, particularly possessive apostrophe, errors, to an extent that becomes distracting. It’s too bad because the stories Lohman tells are otherwise engaging and even mouthwatering, hopefully inspiring readers to further research, reading and experimentation with new flavors, whether at restaurants or in their own kitchens.