Soul food

[6] The concept evolved from describing the food of slaves in the South, to being taken up as a primary source of pride in the African American community even in the North, such as in New York City, Chicago and Detroit.

[43] Most enslaved people needed to consume a high-calorie diet to replenish the calories spent working long days in the fields or performing other physically arduous tasks.

The research shows that white plantation families more often used plates and flatware, indicating that they ate meals consisting of individual cuts of meats and vegetables that were not blended into one dish like the stews made by enslaved people.

Douglass wrote: "The men and women slaves received, as their monthly allowance of food, eight pounds of pork, or its equivalent in fish, and one bushel of corn meal".

[56] To add heat and flavor to seafood dishes, enslaved and free Africans in Baltimore and the Chesapeake region of Maryland grew fish peppers in their gardens.

Historical research at the Burroughs plantation in Franklin County, Virginia by the National Park Service showed that enslaved people there had a diet of cornbread, pork, chicken, sweet potatoes, and boiled corn for breakfast.

Sorghum seeds came from West Africa by way of the transatlantic slave trade and were grown by enslaved people on plantations in the New World and used to make sweet sauces.

House slaves ate the leftovers they prepared for white plantation families such as individual cuts from meats like chicken, turkey, or fish, along with pies and seasoned vegetables.

[85] Research from the National Park Service and professor George Estabrook said that enslaved people supplemented their diets "By boiling black-eyed peas, turnip greens, and pork fat in a single kettle and serving the mixture with grits made from home-ground corn, slaves cooked up meals that satisfied their dietary requirements, as well as their appetites."

The parts of the pig that white plantation owners did not eat they gave to the enslaved which they used to season food and prepared one-pot meals, soups, and chitlin dishes.

George Key, who was born enslaved in Arkansas, said: "We had stew made out of pork and potatoes, and sometimes greens and pot liquor, and we had ash cake mostly, but biscuits about once a month.

[107] A former slave named Wesley Jones from South Carolina gave a recipe to make a vinegar-based barbecue sauce using black and red peppers and vinegar.

[121] In 1748, Peter Kalm, a Swedish-Finnish botanist, noted enslaved Africans in Philadelphia cultivated guinea peppers and the pods were pounded and "mixed with salt preserved in a bottle" to make sauces poured over fish and meats.

[109] On January 1, 1863, Gullah people in the Sea Islands of South Carolina celebrated their freedom on New Year's Day at Camp Saxton in Beaufort with food and barbecues.

Black people in the barrier islands of South Carolina became free early during the American Civil War after the Battle of Port Royal on November 7, 1861, when many of the plantation owners and white residents fled the area after the arrival of the Union Navy and Army.

[131] Charlotte Forten, the first black teacher at the Penn School on St. Helena Island in Beaufort, attended the Emancipation Day celebration at Camp Saxton and recorded in her journal they ate roasted oxen and barbecue.

African American service men and women opened soul food restaurants in Europe, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, and Japan and introduced African-American cuisine to people in foreign countries.

In some of the countries where the United States had a military presence, like France, Germany, Japan, Vietnam, and Thailand, it was easy for these entrepreneurs to find the cheap ingredients they needed for their recipes, because the locals ate similar foods: chicken, fish, greens, okra, pork, sweet potatoes.

During the blues and jazz era, musicians and singers performed and practiced late into the night and stopped at black-owned restaurants for food where cooks prepared fried chicken and waffles for their customers.

Upon returning to Atlanta from Montgomery, Martin Luther King got permission "to bring his team members and guests to Paschal's to eat, meet, rest, plan, and strategize.

Several soul food restaurants were located on West Hunter Street because Jim Crow laws restricted where African Americans were allowed to operate their businesses.

[167] In Montgomery, Alabama, civil rights protestors convened and organized for the movement at soul food restaurants because they provided a safe haven and a place to eat and relax.

The foods the restaurant served were Virginia baked ham, pork chop dinner, jumbo shrimp, roast beef, and other classic Southern dishes.

[171] In 2011, culinary historian Jessica B. Harris published a book titled, High on the Hog that describes the origins and development of African-American dishes and their roots in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Bailey learned how to cook soul food from her mother and attended the Institute of Culinary Education; she then traveled to Burgundy, France, where she trained under French chefs.

Recipes for rice and beans developed in West Africa were brought to the South Carolina Lowcountry by enslaved Africans and continue to be prepared by their descendants, the Gullah people.

From their cultures came one of the main staples of the Southern diet: corn (maize), either ground into meal or limed with an alkaline salt to make hominy, in a Native American process known as nixtamalization.

Twitty believes that hundreds of years of cooking shellfish with kitchen pepper developed into the crab spice blends common in the Chesapeake Bay area when Gustav Brunn came to Baltimore.

The founder of the Old Bay Seasoning company, Gustuv Brunn was a German Jewish immigrant who came to the United States in the 1930s with his family to flee Adolf Hitler's ascent to power.

[243][244] Soul food has been criticized for its high starch, fat, sodium, cholesterol, and caloric content, as well as the inexpensive and often low-quality nature of the ingredients such as salted pork and cornmeal.