Food is essential to our well-being and daily lives. The traditions and rituals around food are an important component in uncovering a family’s history. It speaks to the sameness as well as the diversity of the human experience.
This article is designed to start the reader assessing the clues around them to uncover their own family history through food.
The influences on food
- Historical Significance:[1] Recipes passed down through the generations are generally steeped in history. With stories of migration, trade, and conquest, they reveal how ingredients and cooking techniques were spread, modified and adapted.
- Ingredients: Specific spices, sauces, gravies and broths tend to identify cultural practices and taste preferences. Mainstays such as lard, chitlins, collard and mustard greens may point to a rural Southern heritage rooted in slavery[2]. Aromatic spices may point to Middle Eastern, Asian or Mexican[3] influences.
- Traditions and Celebrations: Specific dishes are often associated with particular celebrations or rituals which can highlight important aspects of a community's heritage pointing to rites of passage and other recognitions.
- Cultural Identity:[4] Food is a direct reflection of a culture’s geography, history, and beliefs. For example, the hoe cake[5] has a direct correlation to slaves using a garden hoe as a griddle.
- Adaptation and Innovation: As people migrate, they bring their culinary practices with them but also adapt to new environments, ingredients, and influences. This fusion and its timing create a living record of a culture’s journey and evolution and offers insight into how ancestors lived and worked.
- Preparation: How food is prepared, served and viewed has much to do with the history of the people and the environment in which they live.
Identifiable characteristics
The United States began as a melting pot of the world. Be them conquerors, explores, outcasts or kidnapped, their practices around food evolved as they mingled with the indigenous people and one another. The outcome is a profound variety that can be broken down into regions, are distinctly identifiable and often overlap.
- Southern Cuisine: The sub-regions include Tidewater[6], Appalachian[7], Ozarks[8], Lowcountry[9], Cajun[10], Creole, Southern African American[11][12][13] and Floridian aka Floribbean[14].
- Coastal Regions:[15] Offer a rich variety of seafood dishes, overlap other regions and are bordered by the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. This category also includes the cuisine of the Gullah-Geechee.[16]
What you can do
These examples point to the way our ancestors viewed, treated and prepared food finding its way into our cooking and eating rituals:
- Initiate conversations around food. Look at what is being consumed. Find out what some of the mainstays of the diets are. When talking with others, get a variety of perspectives. Speak with the elders as soon as possible and even sooner before their rich memories are lost. Numerous insights may prove invaluable. Conversations about food have a way of uncovering information about a point in time, rituals and environment.
- Think outside of the box. Visit the specialty stores where family, neighbor and community shop. Search the ethnics food aisle at the grocery store and read labels to determine the origin of the products. Online research of these products may lead to a whole new area for exploration.
Learn from examples
The following offers an example, context and clues to lifestyle.
Growing up in rural Mississippi in the 1940s the mainstays, generally from the garden, were butter beans, which were similar to lima beans but were yellow in color, collard greens, okra, scallions and blackberries that grew wild on the fence. Picking blackberries required care because snakes liked them too.
Cupboards consisted of lard[19] a versatile product that came in block form, cane sugar, baking powder, baking soda, vinegar, cinnamon and nutmeg that had to grated. Eggs came from their hens but long, thin, colorful snakes called chicken snakes would hang out around the eggs making it an adventure. There were also blue runner snakes in the grass, lifting his head to look left, then right as if he were looking around for something.
Store bought items such as flour, baking powder and baking soda were sold from barrels. Bring your own container and for 5 cents or 10 cents stock up on essentials. People didn’t have dollar bills, just coins because there were no jobs like today. Everyone worked their piece of land and ate the food grown[20]
Stories such as the one depicted above are packed with little details that provide insight into lives and a time long ago. Listening closely can reveal rich details to enrich your genealogical journey. So go out and start those conversations and don’t forget to document who said what and when, making it easier for follow-up questions.
Explore more about how to trace your family history through Southern U.S. food traditions
- Top French Chefs Make Incredible Family History Discoveries on the MyHeritage blog
- The Lamb Stew Recipe Still Delicious After 4,000 Years on the MyHeritage blog
- Ethnic Foods: Eating around the world on the MyHeritage blog
- Researching Women – Community Cookbooks and What They Tell Us About Our Ancestors webinar at Legacy Family Tree Webinars
- Biggers, Ashley M. The Chef Using Historical Records and Intensive Research to Revitalize Ozark Cuisine. Mental Floss. May 5, 2021
- Malinda Russell: African American Cook and Author
- Lumpkins, Charles L. Soul Food. Oxford African American Studies Center. December 1, 2009
- "Soul Food" in America, a story. African American Registry
References
- ↑ Food History: A Complete Guide Through Time (thehungryhistorian.com)
- ↑ Celebrating Black History with Collard Greens. Finger Lakes Wine Country
- ↑ “Traditional Mexican Cuisine – Ancestral, Ongoing Community Culture, the Michoácan Paradigm.” YouTube video, aired November 8, 2010. UNESCO.
- ↑ Brulotte, Ronda L., and Michael A. Di Giovine, eds. Edible Identities: Food as Cultural Heritage. Published May 5, 2016. eBook. ISBN 9781315578781. Edible Identities: Food as Cultural Heritage | Ronda L. Brulotte, Mich (taylorfrancis.com)
- ↑ Horton, Emily. “You’re Doing It Wrong: Corn Bread.” Slate Magazine, July 2, 2014. . Hoecakes recipe and history: how the Southern cornbread got its name. (slate.com)
- ↑ Tidewater. Encyclopedia Britannica
- ↑ Black, Jane (2019-09-09). Long Misunderstood, Appalachian Food Finds the Spotlight. The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2023-03-14.
- ↑ The James Beard Award-Nominated Chef Revitalizing Ozark Cuisine | Mental Floss
- ↑ “Real Lowcountry Food!! Shrimp & Grits – Gullah Geechee Food in Southern USA!” YouTube video, aired July 1, 2023. Real Lowcountry Food!! 🦐 SHRIMP & GRITS - Gullah Geechee Food in Southern USA! (youtube.com)
- ↑ A GUIDE TO CAJUN AND CREOLE FOOD IN NEW ORLEANS. NEWORLEANS.COM
- ↑ "Soul Food" in America, a story - African American Registry (aaregistry.org)
- ↑ ↑ “How Black Culture Helped Define American Culture.” CBS Sunday Morning. YouTube video, aired April 3, 2022. How Black culture helped define American cuisine - YouTube.
- ↑ “Recipes For Respect: African American Meals and Meanings.” YouTube video, HEC Culture. Aired November 5, 2019.
- ↑ What Is 'Floribbean' Cuisine And How Did It Come About? Tasting Table
- ↑ A Beginner’s Guide to Charleston’s Gullah-Geechee Cuisine - AFAR
- ↑ Gullah Geechee - Southern Cast Iron
- ↑ Curtis, Susan (1995.) "The Santa Fe School of Cooking Cookbook: Spirited Southwestern Recipes." Gibbs Smith. ISBN 0-87905-619-3, ISBN 0-87905-873-0
- ↑ Nusom, Lynn (1999.) "Authentic Southwestern Cooking." Western National Parks Association. ISBN 1-877856-89-4
- ↑ 10 Practical Uses For Lard – Self Reliance Outfitters
- ↑ 2021 Interview of African American Child Growing up in Rural Mississippi. Interview in author’s collection.