Snapshots into how Americans grow, prepare and serve food
1500-1600 | 1600-1700 | 1700-1800 | 1800-1900 | 1900-1950 | 1950-2000+
1700-1800
Settlers from all parts of Europe and Africa . . . A mixing of cultures and cuisines . . . Family farms and large plantations.
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 | | Yams and Roots
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Enslaved Africans: Introducing New Foods to America
Enslaved Africans carried with them seeds from their native foods, including yams, watermelons, okra, and several varieties of beans, and cultivated them in secret. As cooks in the plantations' kitchens, they began combining their native foods with those of European colonists and slaveholders and created new dishes such as sweet potato pie and candied yams, thereby inventing what is now considered southern cuisine.
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 | | Pigs
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Enslaved Africans: Resourceful Use of Meat
Enslaved Africans were often forced to use the cast-off ingredients from plantation kitchens. They developed creative, hearty, and delicious ways to cook the unused parts of pigs, including the snout, ears, feet, and thighs (ham hocks); for example, chitterlings or "chitlins" are the cleaned, boiled, and fried intestines of the pig. These pieces were also used to flavor stews and vegetables.
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 | | A southern United States dinner spread with chicken, gumbo, sweet potatoes and turnips.
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Enslaved Africans: Resourceful Use of Vegetables
Besides preparing animal parts discarded by slaveholders, enslaved Africans also had to make meals out of vegetable parts that were considered inedible. For example, greens - mostly kale, collards, turnip, spinach, and mustard greens - were simmered in water with fatback (a layer of fat from the back of a pig). Like in Native American communities, corn was the key ingredient in myriad dishes such as cornbread, grits, and hush puppies (deep-fried cornmeal fritters cooked with onions and spices). Many of the dishes that originated in enslaved persons' kitchens still survive today as staples of southern cooking.
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 | | Barbecue cook-off, Memphis, Tennessee
Memphis in May International Festival, Inc. | |
Barbecue: South Meets West
The mingling of Native American, Anglo, and African traditions gave birth to what present-day Americans know as barbecue. Native communities in North America were pit-cooking meats as early as AD 1100. Many enslaved Africans brought to the South basted their meats, primarily pork, with sauce while cooking them slowly over an open fire. In the Southwest, the merging of Hispanic, Native American, and Anglo cooking also gave birth to another type of food that shared the name "barbecue" - only, in this case, because of differences in livestock, pit-cooked sides of beef. Still today, the word "barbecue" means pork in the South and beef in the Southwest.
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 | | Gumbo
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Creole Heat: Meat and Fish Over Rice
Cajuns trace their ancestry from the Acadian French expelled from Nova Scotia. When Cajuns settled in remote parts of the southwest Louisiana prairie and bayous, they combined their French-Canadian cooking techniques with local foods. In southern Louisiana, Spanish and Caribbean cooking styles were an important part of historical traditions, dating back to the time of Spanish colonial Creole cooks whose culture combined African, Caribbean, and French elements. Cajun and Creole cooks served meats and seafood together over rice. Dishes such as jambalaya are still loved today for the smooth but spicy heat of their seasonings.
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 | | "Soldiers standing in snow-covered military camp during the American Revolution"
Library of Congress
Artist: George Peter | |
Revolutionary War: An Army of Cooks
If today's army doesn't like the taste of MREs (Meals, Ready-to-Eat), they should try a bite of what soldiers during the Revolutionary War stomached. Rations were doled out in raw form, consisting of flour, cornmeal, or bread, and some beef, pork, or fish. The men, who cooked the rations themselves, sweetened their dishes with maple sugar and molasses and flavored them with dried fruit such as apples or cranberries.
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 | | Cup of Hot Chocolate with Marshmallows
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Hot Chocolate: Introduced by Native Americans
For thousands of years, native civilizations in Mesoamerica enjoyed drinks made from cacao beans. A popular hot beverage introduced by the Maya was called "chocolatl". The hot cacao-based drinks were introduced to the Spanish. Adding cinnamon, sugar, and grated Mexican or bitter chocolate to "atole", a common corn-based drink makes it "champurrado" or "full-bodied" hot chocolate.
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1500-1600 | 1600-1700 | 1700-1800 | 1800-1900 | 1900-1950 | 1950-2000+
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