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HUM2420: African Humanities

Open Education Resources created by Sarah Cervone PhD

HUM2420: African Humanities

Africa in American Cuisine

Food is an important part of culture; it is shared and passed down from generations. Cooking and consuming traditional cuisine can be an expression of cultural identity. This is the case in Africa as well as in America. This activity will explore the role of food in African and American culture.

Activity Objectives
  • identify the role of food in African culture and American history
  • describe a significant African recipe
  • produce an African meal
  • evaluate the experience of cooking and consuming an African dish
African Food and Culture in American History

 African food and culture entered European-American homes by the late 17th century through the enslavement of African people. In the plantation economy, particularly in the southern United States, enslaved people captured from central and western Africa were not only forced to grow crops and build structures, they also managed households, raised children and cooked meals in white households. Enslaved cooks lived in the kitchen, usually sleeping and cooking indoors during the winter and outside during the summertime. They baked bread, roasted meats, cooked soups, and prepared desserts and beverages several times a day. Although the female head of the European-American household likely weighed in on the menu, many of the foods available in the United States were unfamiliar to European culture. It was the enslaved cooks who used the African cultural knowledge to create the meals that have come to characterize American cuisine, especially Southern cuisine.

Folklore, archaeological evidence, and a rich oral tradition has shown that enslaved cooks, most of their names now lost, weaved their knowledge of African food and cooking into the fabric of America’s culinary heritage by creating a mixture of European, African, and Native American cuisines that became the staples of Southern food. Enslaved cooks invented unique flavors by matching new ingredients such as hot peppers, peanuts, okra, and greens. They invented dishes such as gumbo, an adaptation of a traditional West African stew; and jambalaya, a cousin of Jolof rice, a spicy, heavily seasoned West African rice dish with vegetables and meat. These dishes traveled with captured West Africans on slave ships, and entered into the kitchens of the elite.

In the video below, renown historical chef, Michael Twitty, explains the relationship between Africa, enslaved Africans, and America’s culinary history.

Africa in Early American Recipe Books

The multi-cultural manifestation of American cuisine is documented in handwritten cookbooks from the 18th and 19th centuries. These books contained a compilation of recipes collected by slaveholding women who worked with enslaved cooks inside the home. The early books not only include European dishes such as puddings, pies, and roasted meats, they also include African dishes using African foods such as pepper pot, okra stew, gumbo, and jambalaya. The inclusion of African foods and recipes in European-American recipe books proves the significance of the enslaved cook’s influence on household food and preparation techniques. Over time, African foods and recipes came to dominate southern American cuisine. Today however, the African influence of typically southern foods such as greens, okra, black-eye peas, fried foods, and other notable recipes is largely unacknowledged.

Depiction of Aunt Jemima, 1920, in the Saturday Evening Post
Depiction of Aunt Jemima, 1920, in the Saturday Evening Post (Courtesy of Internet Archive Book Images, via Wikimedia Commons)

By the 19th century, African wisdom was replaced with commercial caricatures of enslaved African cooks and domestic servants of color. After the Civil War and through the Jim Crow era, post-emancipation America continued to rely on the skills and labor of African Americans. In the midst of racial oppression and marginalization, a European-American mythology of happy cooks and servants emerged through advertising with characters like Aunt Jemima and Rastus. Although many African Americans continued to work on plantations and households as maids, nannies, butlers, cooks, drivers, and waiters well into the 20th century, the smiling happy characters created by European American media promoted a myth that black servants have always been cheerful and satisfied throughout enslavement and Jim Crow segregation. Contemporary movements to remove these images from commercial products aim to promote a more historically accurate representation of racial inequality in the United States.

African Food in Contemporary American Culture

African food and cuisine not only shaped America’s culinary history, new foods and preparation techniques from Africa are introduced to the U.S. through the immigration of African people and globalization technologies such as online cookbooks, televised cooking shows, and tourism. Food plays a central role in culture through the sharing of meals and passing down recipes through generations. Exploring African food is a great way to explore African culture.

References and Resources:
For Discussion in Canvas

African Dish: Research an African recipe and prepare it. Take a picture of yourself with the dish (and why not invite a friend or family member to join you!) Post the recipe, your picture, and write a 250 word review of the cooking and eating experience.

Africa in Your Garden and Africa on Your Farm: Visit the Florida Folk Life Project website and select an African plant or animal from the site. Research and describe how to grow and care for the plant and/or animal. Include a recipe. Be sure to cite your sources. Information from your submission will be used as content on the site. If you do not want to receive credit as an author, make a note on the submission or send an email.

When you complete the discussion, move on to the Final Project page to select the topic for your final project.