When the American soldier abroad speaks with nostalgia of “God’s own country,” I suspect he is thinking of New England fish chowder, ham and eggs, and pumpkin pie, rather than the Constitution, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, or the Smithsonian Institute. The Frenchman, dreaming of la belle France, really has in mind frog’s legs à l’Aurore or suprêmes of chicken Richelieu and not the Louvre or the Sorbonne. When an Englishman, stationed in one of the Empire’s far flung mandates, dreams of this plot of earth which is England, he is not thinking of the mother of parliaments, Shakespeare or the British Museum, but of roast beef, boiled-to-death vegetables and suet pudding—although why I cannot imagine. And so it is with us Jews who frequently speak of the heritage of Israel when what we really have in mind is—yes—Jewish delicatessen.

r CHARLES YALE HARRISON, “From the American Scene: One Touch of Delicatessen” (1946)