Abstract This paper explores the history of jumbles, a type of cookies, through the duration of American history from the colonial period through today. The evolution of jumbles illustrates the ways that recipes have been continually adapted and put to a variety of political and social uses. In particular, this essay seeks to further debates in food studies over the nature of authenticity by exploring the constant recreation of a single recipe (the jumble) alongside the cultural factors that shaped a particular iteration of the cookie at a given moment in time (including but not limited to the American Revolution, the partisan political battles in the early 1800 s, post-Civil War anxieties over heritage and identity, or periods of rapid social change brought about by industrialization in the late 19th and early 20th century). Contextualizing recipes in a particular historical moment suggests that there is no true “historical authenticity” when it comes to cookery. Modern cooks who engage in historical cookery are instead creating dishes that are authentic to their own moment in time, not some essentialized version of the dish rooted in a mythic past. Nor, as the study of jumbles suggests, is this a new process. Exploring the relationship between social, economic, and political trends at key moments in the history of the jumble demonstrates that Americans have long engaged in the process of recreating nostalgic dishes in search of historical authenticity that says more about the taste preferences, political agendas, and social geographies of those cooks than those to whom they pay homage.

中文翻译：

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一切混乱：美国烹饪史上的真实性

摘要 本文通过从殖民时期到今天的美国历史的持续时间，探讨了杂物（一种饼干）的历史。混乱的演变说明了食谱不断调整并用于各种政治和社会用途的方式。特别是，本文试图通过探索单一食谱（混乱）的不断再创造以及在给定时刻塑造饼干特定迭代的文化因素（包括但不限于美国革命、1800 年代初期的党派政治斗争、内战后对遗产和身份的焦虑，或 19 世纪末和 20 世纪初工业化带来的快速社会变革时期）。将特定历史时刻的食谱情境化表明，在烹饪方面没有真正的“历史真实性”。从事历史烹饪的现代厨师正在创造符合他们自己时代的真实菜肴，而不是植根于神话过去的菜肴的某种本质化版本。正如对混杂的研究表明的那样，这也不是一个新的过程。在混乱历史的关键时刻探索社会、经济和政治趋势之间的关系表明，美国人长期以来一直致力于重新制作怀旧菜肴以寻求历史真实性，这更多地说明了口味偏好、政治议程和那些厨师的社会地理比他们向谁致敬。