Pages of the Past

Immigration and the effect on Portuguese Cuisine in New England

Immigration has greatly impacted cultural both for those who have immigrated and on the culture of their new home. The United States of America is a nation of immigrants. Although maintaining ethnic and one’s heritage can become more difficult, food becomes a sensorial connection to one’s identity both old and new. The Portuguese have been coming to North American since the 17^th century and, in the 18^th century, the whaling industry brought a new wave of Portuguese immigrants to New England. Today, an Luso-American communities can be found in the Midwest and on the west coast. Margaret Koehler’s 1973 cookbook Recipes from The Portuguese of Provincetown highlights the foodways that Portuguese immigrants brought to America, the role of food in maintaining connections to one’s heritage, and the how food becomes an important symbol in immigrant literature.

Immigration Shaping Food

Maintaining foodways gives immigrants a way to preserve and celebrate their culture and identity. In fact, continuing to cook food from one’s homeland is the longest lasting cultural reminder, outlasting cultural practices like dances, dress, and even language.  “By observing cultural practices and preferences, such as food choice, we may gain valuable insights into the levels of individual or collective tendencies.” (Koc and Welsh, 2) Food choice and how immigrants eat is a great way to study the changes immigration can impose on families, cultures, and singular people. By viewing the food patterns of immigrant societies, we see both their “resistance to change” (Koc and Welsh, 3) and their acceptance of new ways of life. By adapting to what ingredients and cooking methods available to them, they can acculturate or resist change.

Food and Identity

Portuguese towns of New England, especially Provincetown, Massachusetts, were settled by fishermen, food has played a key part of their identity as a community. For Portuguese immigrants, food was (and still is) a great way for them to honor their ancestry. In immigrant communities, “food is an important anchor for ethnic identity and a means to connect with times which have completely disappeared.” (Silva, 127) With the Portuguese of Provincetown, they still celebrate their history and culture. “If you walk along a narrow street, you my catch a whiff of something…Portuguese bread” and “going by a restaurant, you may see a sign in the window that says: ‘Portuguese soup today.’” (Koehler, 18) and the town of Stonington, CT continues to celebrate the Blessing of the Fleet, followed by a feast at the Portuguese Social Club to eat clams with linguiça and pastel de nata. 

Portuguese Identity in Literature

There have been many stories published allowing one to glance into the lives of Portuguese immigrants and their food through words. Frank Gaspar, a poet from Provincetown, incorporates Portuguese and Portuguese-American food into his writings. Although Portuguese-Americans may feel as though they have lost part of who they are, their food (and how food is portrayed in literature) is able to solidify their heritage. In the Recipes from The Portuguese of Provincetown, Koehler gives examples of food and recipes in a poetic form. Many of the recipes do not actually have descriptive instructions, but instead give vague descriptors, “Lean bacon, 3 or 4 slices or a 2-inch wide chunk” or “The number of people this recipes feeds depends on what you put in the pot” (51). Poetry doesn’t have to be just be rhythmic ideas, but can also be food and recipes.

Sources

Koc, Mustafa, and Jennifer Welsh. Food, Identity and Immigrant Experience, Nov. 2001, https://doi.org/10.32920/24084654.

Koehler, Margaret H., et al. Recipes from the Portuguese of Provincetown. The Chatham Press, 1973.

Silva, Reinaldo. “The tastes from Portugal: Food as remembrance in Portuguese American literature.” Ethnic Studies Review, vol. 31, no. 2, 2008, pp. 126–152, https://doi.org/10.1525/esr.2008.31.2.126.