ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to propose a model for cuisine regions and then attempts to determine how well it fits the complex reality in which people live. Urban or rural, these areas have embraced the new American cuisine in such a way that the traditional foodways that have survived continue more as trophies than as real preferences. The classic cuisine of the national interaction zones has little or no regional, ethnic, or historical identification with the areas that surround them. The historic transaction zones are portions of the country where sufficient in-migration occurred during the nineteenth century that the integrity of the traditional fabric was jeopardized. The Northeast easily contains the most varied sets of foodways in the United States because of its rich colonial tradition, complex immigration history, and highly localized zones of growth. The Northeast cuisine region is dominated by large areas of historic interaction zones throughout almost all of the eastern edge of the region.
