Southern Regional Cookery: African American Influences

Traditional British and Continental meals, dominated by a large roast of meat, were replaced in the South by a more African meal as slavery spread throughout the region. Soups, stews, rice dishes, and other one-pot meals with little bits of meat (often smoked or cured) strewn in came to be more typical of the southern table. Brunswick stew, jambalaya, gumbo, catfish stew, burgoo (a stew containing mixed game, particularly squirrel meat), pilau, okra soup, and country captain (a tomato-based curried rice dish) are southern dishes that are now beloved beyond the region. Creole cooking emerged wherever African hands stirred the pots: a little hot pepper and the roe of blue crabs were added to a Scottish recipe to make Charleston’s classic she-crab soup, for example. Hams were cured in the traditions of the Northumbrian, Black Forest, and Bayonne settlers of the region. Whiskey was made from corn. Rum was served with fruits. Plants such as tomatoes and eggplant were grown on southern plantations decades before they were accepted in other colonies or in England. African words remained attached to certain foods, such as yams, benne (sesame seeds), okra, gumbo, and cooter (turtle).