Section 2 · Origins
A living, expanding atlas of the peoples, lands, and journeys that built Black American cooking. Tap a region to open the record.
A living atlas. Tap a marker to open the record. Dashed lines trace the transatlantic routes the food traveled.
Origins
This is where the deepest roots run. The rice cultures of the Senegambia and the Windward Coast, the stew cultures of the Niger Delta, the yam and palm oil cultures of the Bight of Biafra. These are the places that sent the people whose knowledge built Black American cooking.
Before the South was the South, it was the homeland of the Muscogee, Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Seminole, and many others. The food Black Americans would come to cook was built on land they had tended for thousands of years, using the crops they had bred.
Most enslaved Africans taken to what became the United States did not come straight from Africa. They came through the Caribbean, through Barbados, Jamaica, Hispaniola, and the smaller islands, where they were 'seasoned' on sugar plantations before being shipped north.
This is not the story of European cuisine being 'given' to enslaved Africans. It is the story of African cooks being forced to master European techniques in the plantation kitchen, and then transforming them.