Exploring intangible cultural heritage in contemporary Pennsylvania Dutch food culture through food memories

Introduction Food memories provide an important yet underexamined means through which communities articulate, transmit, and negotiate intangible cultural heritage, particularly when commercial heritagization privileges selected foods and cultural representations. This study examines how contemporary Pennsylvania Dutch cultural insiders construct food memories and what those narratives reveal about the maintenance and transmission of Pennsylvania Dutch food culture. Methods Using a narrative-based approach, we analyzed semi-structured interviews with seven cultural insiders, including chefs, home cooks, food-business owners, and cookbook authors, from Berks and York counties in Pennsylvania. We analyzed our interviewees’ narratives using a hybrid deductive–inductive approach guided by an adapted framework for analyzing food memories across four dimensions: embodied knowledge, emotions, people and communality, and evocative settings. Results Our participants’ narratives suggested that food-related knowledge is passed on through experience, family connections, and regional and seasonal food practices. Their food memories also suggested that assimilation, commodification, and heritagization processes can marginalize certain food practices and meanings important to community members. Discussion We contend that food memories may be understood as examples of narratively constructed intangible heritage through which culturally meaningful knowledge, skills, values, and practices become visible. Empirically, this article contributes to the study of food memories by providing insider perspectives concerning an underexamined regional food culture and by adapting a food memory framework for use in narrative interviewing.