Chicago's immigrant tradition has shaped the city since its beginning, said Bruce Kraig, emeritus professor of history at Roosevelt University and a culinary historian. "It's what makes Chicago so interesting, more interesting than other places--it is lots of competing groups that still come together to be Chicagoans and Americans."
Since its founding in the 1670s, when Illinois Indians met French coureurs de bois (traders) where the river meets the lake, Chicago has been more culinary caldron than cultural melting pot. Newcomers add their favorites to the kettle, and what comes out--after a few years' stewing--is uniquely American.
Chicago's reputation as a food manufacturing and processing center started early: Archibald Clybourne opened the city's first slaughterhouse in 1829, according to the Chicago Historical Society's Encyclopedia of Chicago. By 1832, George Dole's packing company provisioned both Chicago and the surrounding region, and the city had become the "hog butcher for the world" of Carl Sandburg's gritty love poem. In 1857, the city boasted 46 candymakers, and by the end of the 19th Century, Chicago led the country in candy manufacturing.
The men and women who found work in those abattoirs and factories first came from Ireland, Germany, Poland, Italy, Greece, Russia, Czechoslovakia and Lithuania. Later tides brought waves of Chinese, Mexican, Caribbean, Central American and Asian immigrants.