One of the most important aspects of a culture tends to be its food. Given that different cultures often come to blows over some very trivial things, it is no surprise that there are many, many food-related disputes between different culinary regions. In this blog post, I’m going to cover some of the best-known ones, particularly those which come from the area somewhere around Pennsylvania. However, I am going to skip Wawa vs. Sheetz (for now, at least).
Pork roll was first widely sold by John Taylor of Trenton, New Jersey in 1856 and it has been a statewide staple ever since. The term refers to a roll of pork (from various parts of the pig) which has been spiced and smoked and traditionally wrapped in cloth. However, when Taylor first sold his product, it was known instead as “Taylor’s Prepared Ham.” It was only in 1906 that Taylor was forced to change the name of his product to “Taylor Pork Roll.” This change allowed a slew of imitators to make their own pork rolls, given that Taylor was unable to get a trademark on the term “pork roll” by itself. Nevertheless, many still referred to the product as “Taylor ham,” and for reasons I can’t seem to ascertain “Taylor ham” remains the preferred term in northern New Jersey, but not elsewhere. The term has become a source of North Jersey regional pride, which is curious given that pork rolls themselves are mostly particular to New Jersey. Barack Obama referenced the dispute in 2016 during a speech at Rutgers University in New Jersey, saying “There’s not much I’m afraid to take on in my final year of office, but I know better than to get in the middle of that debate.”
However, in spite of the controversy over its name, at least the inventor of the modern-day pork roll is not in dispute. The same cannot be said for many classic American foods, which have multiple stories explaining their origin. As most foods do not see widespread sale for many years after they are first released, this is not really much of a surprise. One dish whose origin is disputed between various American cities is the ice cream sundae, which originated somewhere in America in the latter half of the 19th century but whose origin remains a mystery. Stories of the invention of the ice cream sundae also must explain the dessert’s unusual name. The two cities with the best-known claims to the invention of the sundae are Two Rivers, Wisconsin and Ithaca, New York. The Two Rivers story claims that Ed Berners, of a namesake ice cream parlor, made a regular ice cream with chocolate syrup instead of an ice cream soda with chocolate (which were quite popular at the time, and chocolate syrup was mainly used for making ice cream sodas) because it was a Sunday and for whatever reason ice cream sodas weren’t considered sufficiently sacred. Traditionally, this incident is dated to 1881, but this date is considered doubtful as Berners was only 18 at the time. However, Two Rivers’ campaign is contested by claims that the sundae was invented in Ithaca in 1892, with Ithaca even writing a resolution rebuking the city of Two Rivers in 2006. Ithaca’s story states that in 1892 a minister wanted ice cream after his services, but in a twist the shop owner, who was a friend of the minister, added a cherry and cherry syrup on top of two scoops of vanilla ice cream. The dish was thus referred to as a sunday because that was the date it was made. Ithaca’s story has much more documentation than the Two Rivers story, as ads mentioning the “sunday” and referring to it as new have been found from 1892. Nevertheless, the Two Rivers claim persists and both towns will still claim to be the true birthplace of the ice cream sundae.
