American Heritage MagazineMay/June 1999    Volume 50, Issue 3
OVERRATED & UNDERRATED

Traditional Dish

BY RUTH REICHL

Most Overrated Traditional Dish:

Meat loaf. In my opinion it’s just a lazy man’s hamburger. It’s got the beef, but it lacks the sizzle. Americans gave the world great beef and then ruined it by grinding it, mixing it with a lot of absurd ingredients, and baking it dry. Real meat eaters want their stuff charred and juicy; this is just so much gray dust.


Most Underrated Traditional Dish:

The peanut butter and jelly sandwich. It’s the perfect American dish: sweet, salty, soft, chewy. It’s also infinitely portable. Relegating this wonderful invention to the school lunch is a terrible waste.

—Ruth Reichl is the editor in chief of Gourmet magazine.

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