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A Feast for All: Texas Barbecue as a Meal and Social Gathering
| Article
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20331 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
6 / 1992 |
3,214 Words |
| Author
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Sharon Hudgins
Sharon Hudgins is an author and journalist who lived for
fifteen years in Germany. Her ancestors emigrated from Prussia
to the United States in the 1860s. |
Etymologists have long disputed the origin of the English word barbecue. Most believe that it comes from the Spanish barbacoa, whose roots can be traced to the Taino language of the now-extinct Arawak tribe of the West Indies. The word was first used in the New World in the seventeenth century to describe a lattice or grill of green wood, placed over or near an open fire, open which the Indians smoke dried meat, fish, and fowl. During the eighteenth century, the term was firmly established in North America as applying both to the meat (usually a whole animal carcass) roasted over an open fire and the social gathering at which the meat was cooked and consumed.
Stuart Berg Flexner, in Listening to America, points out that by 1800 a "barbecue" in the United States had also come to mean
"a political rally at which barbecue was served--a good way to attract and hold a large group of people through a long series of speeches. For example, William Henry Harrison, Whig candidate for President, held a mammoth political barbecue in 1840 at which party workers and prospective voters consumed 18 tons of meat and pies (he won the election)."
Throughout the nineteenth century, barbecues gained popularity in America as outdoor social gatherings--family reunions, community picnics, church socials, political rallies. Around 1900, individual entrepreneurs began setting up barbecue stands on street corners in American cities, in the back rooms of meat markets (butcher shops), and along the roads in rural areas, especially in the South. As more and more Americans acquired automobiles, roadside barbecue stands became increasingly popular. The financial success of many urban street-corner stands allowed them to evolve into small, unpretentious restaurants often affectionately (and accurately) referred to as "barbecue joints."
After World War II, large numbers of Americans began moving to the suburbs, into single-family dwellings with grassy yards in back. The 1950s ushered in the era of the backyard barbecue, or "cookout," at which the man of the house (almost never the woman) cooked steaks, hamburgers, hot dogs, or chicken on a small portable grill in the yard behind the home--often on weekends, and only for the family or a small group of friends. Many Americans use the word barbecue to describe this type of outdoor cooking and eating--especially in regions that do not have a firmly established, or specifically defined, commercial or cultural barbecue tradition. But barbecue purists tend to wince when the term is applied to the cooking
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