Best Pennsylvania Dutch Recipes
Pennsylvania Dutch are the descendants of Germanic
peoples who emigrated to the U.S. (primarily to Pennsylvania),
from Germany and The Low Countries prior to 1800.
The Dutch are generally regarded as one
of several Germanic peoples. The German, Deutsch,
the archaic Dutch, Deitsch, and the modern Dutch,
Duits, each mean 'German' yet are all cognates of the
English, 'Dutch'. Hostetler (1993) gives the origin of 'Dutch'
as a "folk-rendering" of 'Deits.
Pennsylvania Dutch are a
people of various religious affiliations, most of them
Lutheran or Reformed, but many Anabaptists, non-Christian,
and non-religious as well. They live primarily in
Southeastern Pennsylvania in the area stretching in an arc
from Bethlehem and Allentown through Reading, Lebanon, and
Lancaster to York and Chambersburg.
They can also be found
down throughout the Shenandoah Valley (the modern Interstate
81 corridor) in the adjacent states of Maryland, Virginia,
West Virginia and North Carolina, and in the large Amish and
Mennonite communities in Mifflin County, Pennsylvania, in
Ohio north and south of Youngstown and in Indiana around
traditions date back to the German immigrations to America
in the 17th and 18th centuries. Only then did German
immigration from various parts the southern Rhineland,
Palatinate, the southern part of Hesse, Baden, Alsace
Switzerland, and Tyrol Austria gain momentum, and soon
dominate the area. But the Pennsylvania Dutch language is
ultimately a derivative of Palatinate German.