Professor Nicolaas Mink teaches history at the University of Wisconsin in Stevens Point. An award-winning author, his writings on food and culture have appeared in newspapers, magazines, and journals across the country. Professor Mink’s current projects include a manuscript that explores the growth of the restaurant industry in America. We have had the honor of interviewing Professor Mink on his life and his thoughts on the history and culture of Floridian cuisine. 

What inspired you to study history? 

I grew up just outside of Miami and when we were little, my parents traveled with us often. We took long trips, like ones to Cannon Beach, Oregon, Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Portland, Maine, and short trips, like weekend jaunts to Key West, Naples, and Orlando. There, too, were all those places in between.  Since my parents hated to fly, these journeys took place in our Ford Aerostar. My Uncle Sam dubbed that Ford our second home. During summer, it had most of our earthly possessions strapped to its roof or crammed underneath and behind its seats.

Although I did not know it at the time, these travels inspired me to study history.  Whenever we arrived somewhere, I always wanted to know why a place looked, smelled, felt, and acted the way it did. I would wonder why corn and soybeans grew in Iowa and Illinois and not Florida. I questioned why some folks rolled their ‘r’s and why other’s ‘boats’ sounded a lot like ‘boots.’ I ultimately relied on the study of the past to answer these questions. Although we live in a day in which digital technology has seemed to obliterate physical place, I still firmly believe that good history is history that has been wedded to its place, and that is one of the reasons I study food.

Why have you chosen food studies as your research focus?

Food reveals more about peoples and times than many realize.  Although some historians might disagree, I would argue that the study of food gives us the most intimate glimpse into the inner workings of culture that we have.  After all, societies organize themselves around how they produce food; families organize themselves around how they consume food. Thus, studying food helps us understand phenomena large and small, intimate and expansive. I’m glad to see more scholars asking questions that have food at their center.

When I wrote my first article on food, the professor whose class I was taking—who is a luminary in modern American history, mind you—had little idea that something called “food history” or “food studies” even existed. This is the piece that explores the links between stone crab consumption and production that appeared four years ago in a journal that should be on every foodies’ bookshelf, Gastronomica, and has since put me on the speed dial of anyone interested in knowing about that fishery or about Florida cuisine in general. Nowadays, I can say I study food and people know what I am talking about. It has been a very rapid change in just five years time.

How would you describe Floridian cuisine?  Does it vary by region?

Florida is one of the most culturally and ecologically diverse states in the country. Its cuisine defies easy characterization, and that is part of the beauty of Florida’s food.  Northern Florida’s cuisine resembles much of the lower South’s, with its reliance on various animal fats, legumes, meats, and, of course, corn.  If you’re interested in this tradition, I urge you to pick up Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ 1942 classic, Cross Creek Cookery. It is an honest and touching window into this culinary world (and it’s still in print!).  On the other hand, subtropical Key West’s cooks still often replace recipes that call for ground pork or beef with ground turtle, conch, and fish. Turtle meatloaf, anyone? Every cookbook published in Key West before the 1980s—when marine turtle consumption was banned—would have had multiple recipes for this dish.  The culinary influences from the Caribbean and South and Central America are well known, but the west coast of Florida has large pockets of Greeks and Italians that have left their own influence on Florida’s food.  The Greek restaurants in the little fishing village of Tarpon Springs are unmatched anywhere in the country.