The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South

In exploring his ancestry through food, Michael Twitty is concerned with African American heritage cooking, more commonly known as “soul food.” While Southern dishes permeate cooking shows, restaurant menus, and family tables across the United States, many do not know their histories. Popular dishes such as buttermilk biscuits, cornbread, gumbo, collard greens, black-eyed peas, okra, and grits trace their origins to the African diaspora and to the hands of Black cooks trying to survive in a country that had enslaved them. While these dishes are delicious, they have always been about more than their taste. They are about survival, dignity, community, and storytelling.

In the culinary anthology Black Food (2021) edited by Bryant Terry, Erika Council includes a recipe for buttermilk biscuits that she attributes to her great-grandmother Sara. Council explains that Sara baked her biscuits over a fire in the tobacco fields of North Carolina to feed laborers. Because yeast was difficult to keep alive in the 17th and 18th centuries and baking powder had not yet been invented, enslaved Black workers had to beat the biscuit dough for an hour or more to develop gluten. Histories of enslaved peoples, like that of Henry “Box” Brown, detail what it was like for them to escape to the North via the Underground Railroad with only biscuits in their pockets.

The second cookbook written by a Black author, What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking (1881) by Abby Fisher, included a recipe for “Maryland Beat Biscuits.” It also included dishes that featured rice, greens, and okra, which traveled to the Americas on enslavement ships from Africa. When the ships landed, Black enslaved individuals planted these crops and introduced them to the white palate. The success of some crops brought more enslavement ships as white landowners sought the knowledge and the labor of those familiar with the plants.

The foods enslaved Black cooks made drew on traditional African recipes. Jambalaya mirrors the African dish jollof rice, which is made with a tomato stew that features scotch bonnet peppers and fragrant spices. Okra, traditionally used as a soup thickener, spread across the Americas when Black cooks introduced it to American tables. African cooking also heavily features stewed greens, found in dishes such as Ethiopia’s gomen wat and Ghana’s kontomire stew. In many African cultures, the greens are eaten with fufu or injera, dishes designed to soak up the juices from the greens. In Southern culture, the juices are called “potlikker” and are soaked into slices of cornbread—a further example of how the African diaspora affected American soul food.

Twitty traces the origins of these foods, and he connects to the people who made them, including his own ancestors. He recognizes how food tells a story. A simple Sunday lunch can reveal historical truths and narratives about the experiences of Black people in the United States. Foods coopted by white Southern culture find their roots in violence, survival, and hope. They are complex dishes with complicated histories.