We will redefine the mythical “Mammy” image that is often portrayed in the slave owner’s kitchen to reveal the slave cook’s complex role in slavery and their legacy in reshaping Southern Cuisine with a semblance of the food that graces southern tables today. For centuries, African slaves were considered prominent cooks in Egyptian households. In Muslim Spain, too, male slaves prepared meals in aristocratic homes while their wives prepared food in poorer homes. Even today, women in sub-Saharan areas in Africa are often hired to prepare couscous. West African slaves in the colonies were also skilled cooks and took advantage of other cross-cultural ingredients that entered the country to create new cuisines. For over three hundred years, …show more content…
She was slightly lame in one leg..(She) was kept about the house and taught to cook (during her childhood). And right well did she learn her trade; for she became one of the most expert cooks in all that region of country. And she took special pride in her profession, especially when company came to visit the white folks. All they had to do was to give Granny the materials and tell her what to do with them, and it was done. She always carefully followed the instructions given by Mrs. Frierson or Miss Mary Ann, and all was right. When that breakfast, that dinner or that supper was sent into the dining room, especially when company was "in the house," if the reader had been privileged to look upon it, or to sniff its delicious odor, he would have thought that there was a Parisian caterer who presided over that …show more content…
Skill set
In slavery, the positions of seamstress and cook were the only positions for female slaves that were considered as skilled or artistic work. Many cooks that worked in the kitchen were raised in the kitchen at an early age and were taught how to cook across generational lines. Mandy Marrow, a former slave recalled:
Mammy and my grandma am cooks and powerful good and dey 's larnt me and dat hew I come to be a cook… W 'en I 's gits big 'nough to be larnt, I 's he 'p mammy an ' dat way, I 's larnt to p 'eserve an ' 'tend to curin ' meat an ' all sich. I 's follow de cookin ' w 'en I 's gits big an ' goes fo ' myself.
Plantation papers also reveal that some enslaved cooks did not inherit the position as a cook, but were chosen from the entire plantation community. No matter how enslaved cooks were chosen, they all embodied incredible skill and technique that separated them from the larger labor pool. Enslaved cooks were accountable for the full production of daily meals and presenting elaborate banquets for their slave owner’s many grand affairs. David Hunter Strother, a writer, eloquently summed up the talent of the slave cook after stopping for a meal at a house in Amherst County, Central
In Jack Hitt’s “A Confederacy of Sauces”, the reader learns that there is a sibling feud between two brothers over barbecue sauces. This feud was like the “icing on the cake” after numerous years of the two brothers not getting along. This dispute between Maurice and Melvin exemplify that barbecue has become mixed up with the concerns of race and heritage. Heritage refers to characteristics or practices that are passed down from generation to generation. In this particular story, Maurice and Melvin had a few other brothers in the barbecue business as well. Jack Hitt tastes each brother’s sauce, realizing that the brothers’ versions of their father’s original sauce had very subtle but noticeable distinctions (310). Thus, carrying on their father’s legacy through his sauce.
Slaves during the mid-1800s were considered chattel and did not have rights to anything that opposed their masters’ wishes. “Although the slaves’ rights could never be completely denied, it had to be minimized for the institution of slavery to function” (McLaurin, 118). Female slaves, however, usually played a different role for the family they were serving than male slaves. Housework and helping with the children were often duties that slaveholders designated to their female slaves. Condoned by society, many male slaveholders used their female property as concubines, although the act was usually kept covert. These issues, aided by their lack of power, made the lives of female slaves
Southerners compared themselves to the ancient Romans, another proud race of slave owners. Dipping back two millennia, they gave their slaves names like Cato and Cicero and celebrated a culture in which families were strong, men were in charge, and slaves did the physical labour. women were expected to follow the lead of the Roman matron, who presided over the hearth, took care of the children, and entertained her husband's guests. poor women, of course, did not get to stay home. They worked as seamstresses and washerwomen, often to support a family in which the man had run away or failed in his duties as a breadwinner. Slave women were expected to labour with their men in the fields. But plantation wives, who set the tone for Southern culture, despite their small numbers, did not do physical housework. Their letters, which are full of reports about gardening, smoking of meat, cooking, and sewing, actually referred to work done slaves, which the white mistress supervised.
insights into what the narratives can tell about slavery as well as what they omit,
Discuss the Relationship between sugar and slavery in the Early Modern Period. "No commodity on the face of the Earth has been wrested from the soil or the seas, from the skies or the bowels of the earth with such misery and human blood as sugar" ... (Anon) Sugar in its many forms is as old as the Earth itself. It is a sweet tasting thing for which humans have a natural desire. However there is more to sugar than its sweet taste, rather cane sugar has been shown historically to have generated a complex process of cultural change altering the lives of all those it has touched, both the people who grew the commodity and those for whom it was grown.
Many plantation owners were men that wanted their plantation ran in a particular manner. They strove to have control over all aspects of their slaves’ lives. Stephanie Camp said, “Slave holders strove to create controlled and controlling landscapes that would determine the uses to which enslaved people put their bodies.” Mary Reynolds was not a house slave, but her master’s daughter had a sisterly love towards her, which made the master uncomfortable. After he sold Mary he had to buy her back for the health of his daughter. The two girls grew apart after the daughter had white siblings of her own. Mary wa...
Many African-Americans consume what is known as “soul food”, for which, it is very popular within the black community. Soul food is an African-American cuisine that can be traced back as far as African, however, the term itself was not coined until the mid-1960s. It also comprise an important element of the cuisine of the general American south. Soul food was adopted and modify during the African slave trade and it was during this time food African cuisine and southern European cuisine became one big melting pot.
But corn meal bread, with little or no meat, and no vegetable diet, is extremely hard fare. I am very certain, from an attentive observation to this subject, that a negro deprived of meat diet, is not able to endure the labor that those can perform who are liberally supplied with it; and that the master who gives his field hands half a pound of meat per day, and two quarts of meal, (or something short of this when an allowance of vegetables is made,) is better compensated by slave labor, than those who give the ordinary quantity. Their food should be cooked for them twice a day, and carried out to the field. It is a general custom in this part of the state, to have their food cooked but once a day, and to require each negro to cook for himself at night, and carry with him his food for the morning’s meal in the field. (Web, para
The first arrivals of Africans in America were treated similarly to the indentured servants in Europe. Black servants were treated differently from the white servants and by 1740 the slavery system in colonial America was fully developed.
All ethnic groups have their own language, food, and way of living. Some can even call their food, “soul food.” Soul food can be described as “food made with feeling and care,” but in America, soul food simply refers to African-American cuisine (A History of Soul Food). In Imamu Amiri Baraka’s essay, “Soul Food” he describes how shocked he was to read an article that stated how “African-Americans have no language and no characteristic food.” So he argued against that supposed fact. I too was shocked and am agreeing with Baraka’s argument. African-Americans have had soul food for hundreds of years, if anything that is all they have ever had. Since slaves had no control or choice in life, cooking became a way to express feelings, share love and nurture family and sorrow (Helton). Soul food is more that just food; it is history, tradition, and family.
Most slaves in the country, as people well know, worked as field hands and jobs involving the crops and livestock, with the exception of the house slaves. In the city however, slaves worked different types of jobs. “City slaves were typically artisans and craftsmen, stevedors and draymen, barbers and common laborers, and house and hotel servants.” (Starobin 9). Frederick Douglass worked as a house servant and as ...
For most American’s especially African Americans, the abolition of slavery in 1865 was a significant point in history, but for African Americans, although slavery was abolished it gave root for a new form of slavery that showed to be equally as terrorizing for blacks. In the novel Slavery by Another Name, by Douglas Blackmon he examines the reconstruction era, which provided a form of coerced labor in a convict leasing system, where many African Americans were convicted on triumphed up charges for decades.
“I am a large, big boned woman with rough, man-working hands” Mama describes of herself in the short story Everyday Use by Alice Walker. Mama, who additionally takes the role of narrator, is a lady who comes from a wealth of heritage and tough roots. She is never vain, never boastful and most certainly never selfish. She speaks only of her two daughters who she cares deeply for. She analyzes the way she has raised them and how much she has cared too much or too little for them, yet most of all how much they value their family. Mama never speaks of herself, other than one paragraph where she describes what she does. “My fat keeps me hot in zero weather. I can work outside all day, breaking ice to get water for washing” (Walker, 60). She does not need to tell readers who she is, for her descriptions of what she does and how her family interacts, denotes all the reader needs to know. Although Mama narrates this story rather bleakly, she gives readers a sense of love and sense of her inner strength to continue heritage through “Everyday Use”.
When discussing the background of the many women who became maids, it is often questioned where they came from and when they started working. In almost every black town there were many ladies all over who were maids. As early as 10 years old, these ladies had worked for many white families all over southern states. They started off by just doing simple tasks such as answering doorbells and sweeping the yard. When they start to become older, they learn to become cooks and then eventually are suited to be a maid to white families in the south (History Matters).
Foods from Africa, which have impacted North American cuisine are numerous, and common in the everyday eating habits of Americans. In the 21st century, Americans take for granted the history of the food they eat, and the origins of the foods that are eaten today. In the early part of the history of the United States, people of European descent brought recipes from home and adapted their recipes to the ingredients which were available. The slave trade was directly responsible for what many Americans think of as American food, and those foods are traceable to Africa. Because slaves incorporated their own foods into the everyday lives of their masters, some of the unique foods from Africa and their history are not well known today. American