From Steaming Hearths : The Transition from English Colonial Fare to African Foodways in the Coastal Regions of the American Upper South

Abstract

Traditional southeastern American food evolved from a complex series of regional food elements emerging from cultural exchange between Native Americans, European settlers, and African slaves. A study of the regional foodways of the Coastal Upper South and surrounding areas, from the dawn of the colonial period through the Reconstruction era, examines this cultural exchange. Numerous journals and recipe collections from historical figures document food production, storage methods, and contemporary examples of culinary dishes common to the region. It is from the records of elite and educated English colonists that some historians based previous conclusions regarding southeastern American food creolization. These conclusions, skewed in favor of elite consumers, are deeply flawed. Setting themselves apart from common people, upper class English settlers clung tenaciously to the foodways to which they were accustomed. Lower class settlers, struggling to put any food on their tables, could ill afford the luxury of food selection their social betters enjoyed. Because the vast majority of the colonial population consisted of lower class working people and disenfranchised laborers, the upper class foodway record greatly favors a small minority. It is, therefore, not from the cloistered kitchens of the elite, but from the steaming hearths of the struggling poor, the yeoman farmer, the fisherman, the slave, the servant, the ordinary person whence the foodways of the Coastal Upper South evolved.