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In The Carolina Rice Kitchen: The African Connection, Karen Hess chronicles in painstaking detail the culinary importance of rice and traces the evolution of such southern classics as jambalaya, hoppin’ John, and pilau (pronounced purloo or purloe in the Lowcountry). Most were slave dishes, created by the Africans who had been imported to plant, tend, harvest, and mill the rice grown in South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, and elsewhere about the Deep South.

“As one views this vast hydraulic work,” David Doar writes in his description of a rice plantation in Rice and Rice Planting in the South Carolina Low Country (1936), “[one] is amazed to learn that all of this was accomplished in the face of seemingly insuperable difficulties by every-day planters who had as tools only the axe, the spade, and the hoe, in the hands of intractable negro men and women, but lately brought from the jungles of Africa.”

Most came from West Africa’s Windward Coast, where the cultivation of rice had long been known, and those in greatest demand were from the River Gambia and Gold Coast. One July day in 1785, Charleston’s Evening Gazette reported the arrival of “a choice cargo of wind-ward and gold coast negroes, who have been accustomed to the planting of rice.”

Some fifteen years earlier, Eliza Lucas Pinckney, mistress of more than one Lowcountry rice plantation, sent a bag of her best “Carolina Gold” to her sons’ headmaster in England together with a note explaining that South Carolinians liked rice with their meat “in preference to bread.”

The Civil War decimated the rice crop, and the subsequent freeing of slaves marked the beginning of the end. Around the turn of the twentieth century, rice was being replaced by more lucrative, less labor-intensive crops. The last crop of Carolina Gold, we’re told, was harvested near Charleston in 1935.

Today Carolina Gold is staging a comeback among “boutique farmers” in the South Carolina Lowcountry. And thanks to new disease-resistant strains, long-grain rice is once again a major crop in Louisiana and Mississippi, this country’s third and fourth largest producers after Arkansas and California.

In truth, much of the California rice crop is short-grain—good for risotto, maybe, but not for the fluffy boiled and steamed rices, the purloos and hoppin’ Johns so essential to the southern table.

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LOWCOUNTRY RED RICE

MAKES 4 TO 6 SERVINGS

You might call this a tomato pilaf; indeed it almost has the consistency of risotto even though it’s made with long-grain rice, not the short-grain variety preferred for risottos. Some cooks add no onion to red rice, but I think it improves the flavor of this humble dish. If tomatoes are in season and bursting with flavor, by all means substitute two medium tomatoes (or one large) for the canned crushed tomatoes. Peel them, core them, seed them, and chop as fine as possible. Serve red rice in place of potatoes; you’ll find it especially good with roast pork, chicken, or turkey. Note: There’s good reason to add the tomatoes at the end: Being acidic, they will toughen the rice if cooked along with it. Tip: Don’t rush the browning of the bacon; if you keep the heat low and let the drippings accumulate slowly, the bacon is less likely to burn.

5 slices smoky lean bacon, cut crosswise into strips ¼ inch wide

1 medium yellow onion, coarsely chopped

1 cup long-grain rice

2 cups chicken broth

1 cup canned crushed tomatoes (see headnote)

½ teaspoon salt, or to taste

¼ teaspoon black pepper, or to taste

1. Fry the bacon in a large, heavy saucepan over moderately low heat for about 15 minutes or until the drippings cook out and only crisp brown bits remain. Scoop the browned bits to paper toweling and reserve.

2. Add the onion to the pan, then cook and stir in the drippings for 3 to 5 minutes or until lightly browned. Add the rice, and cook and stir for about a minute until it glistens.

3. Pour in the chicken broth, bring to a boil, adjust the heat so