Boise Soul Food Extravaganza August 2nd, 2008
Popularized in the 1960s, the term soul food refers to a distinctive, traditional southern style of cooking. Use of the term implies that this cuisine is limited in popularity to blacks, but it is in fact the native fare of both black and white southerners of all economic and social strata.
The distinctive ingredients of southern cuisine, as well as the distinctive styles of cooking them, have been common for centuries in Africa but not in Europe. Sweet potatoes, okra, chicken and fish rolled in meal or batter and deep fried, greens and cowpeas boiled with pork and served with pot liquor, and corn bread in many varieties form the basis of a regional cuisine whose roots may be more African than European. Maize and sweet potatoes were taken from America to Africa by Portuguese traders in the 16th century, and peas of the black-eyed type have been eaten in Africa for some 400 years. Even specialized local cuisine with identifiable European roots, such as French cooking in Louisiana, have been heavily influenced by Afro-American taste in such things as the heavy use of red pepper and the creation of dishes like gumbo based on ingredients, such as okra, that came from Africa. In fact, the black presence may explain why foods like maize and cowpeas, which will grow anywhere in America and were eaten in other parts of the country while the frontiers lasted, remain staple foods only in the South, aside from those areas of the Southwest where they were staple foods of Native Americans. Some scholars see Native American influences on soul food as well.
Margaret Jones Bolsterli
University of Arkansas