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Grits: Except in the South Carolina Lowcountry where grits (from the word grist) is coarsely ground dried corn, grits is ground dried hominy (yes, grits is singular). Supermarket grits is about the texture of polenta, but persnickety southern cooks prefer it stone-ground and coarser.

Groundnuts: Peanuts.

Ground peas: Peanuts.

Guinea squash: Another name for eggplant commonly used in the Deep South (Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia).

Gullah: The patois spoken by Lowcountry African Americans (Geechees), who influenced Lowcountry cuisine both as plantation cooks and as home cooks. Not so long ago, you could hear Gullah on the streets of Charleston as fish and vegetable vendors made their rounds.

Gumbo: A spicy Creole-Cajun stew (or soup) and culinary melding of four cultures: African (gumbo derives from the Bantu gombo), Native American, French, and Spanish. The best-known gumbos brim with crawfish or shrimp, sausages, okra (the thickener if filé powder isn’t used), tomatoes, peppers sweet and hot, onions, garlic, bay leaves, parsley, and assorted other seasonings. (See recipe, Chapter 2.)

Gumbo filé: See Filé powder.

Half moons: Fried fruit turnovers that are also known as mule ears and shirt tail pies. But there are nuances: Half moons can be made with almost any fruit; mule ears are usually filled with sun-dried peaches; and shirt tail pies are filled with dried apples.

Hicker nuts: Colloquial for wild hickory nuts in southern Appalachia.

Hoecakes: Campfire corn breads; in days past, simple cornmeal mush (cornmeal, water, salt) was shaped into patties, laid on the blade of a hoe, and propped near an open fire to bake.

Jambalaya: You might call this a rich Creole-Cajun pilau. But rice is merely the beginning. In addition to sausage, shrimp, crawfish, chicken, turkey, or other meat—not to mention onions, garlic, tomatoes, bell peppers, and a carload of heady seasonings—jambalayas usually contain ham. Some etymologists believe that its name comes from jamón, the Spanish word for ham. Food historian Karen Hess (The Carolina Rice Kitchen) dismisses this, however, citing several early jambalaya recipes that contain no ham. She further suggests that jambalaya derives from the Provençal jambalaia, jabalaia, and jambaraia defined by Frédéric Mistral in the late nineteenth century as an Arab word. Hess suspects that Arabs may have introduced jambalaya-like dishes to the South of France during their occupation there or perhaps, she adds, it may have been Sephardic Jews, who also settled in Provence before and during the Middle Ages. Whatever its origin, jambalaya is fusion cooking at its best: the flavors of the Near East, Africa, France, and Spain bubbling in a single pot. In his Dictionary of American Food and Drink, John Mariani offers yet another explanation for the recipe’s name. It seems that when a gentleman stopped by a New Orleans inn late one night, the cupboard was bare. Undaunted, the innkeeper told his chef, Jean, to rustle up a little something—balayez, in the local patois, according to Mariani. Pleased with his odds-and-ends dinner, the guest gave it a name: Jean Balayez. Which over time became jambalaya. Apocryphal or not, it’s a charming story. (See recipe, Chapter 3.)

Jimmy: A male blue crab. The tips of its claws are bright blue; the female’s are as red as fingernail polish.

Kentucky wonder beans: A popular variety of pole beans characterized by its plumpness and almost nutlike flavor. In size and taste, they’re more like Italian green beans than conventional snap beans.

Lady peas: The most delicate southernpea; the peas (actually beans) are small, pearly, and devoid of “eyes.” Lady peas are also sometimes called cream peas.

Lard: The snowy, creamy rendered fat of hogs; the Southerner’s shortening of choice. Nothing makes flakier biscuits or pie crusts and for many Cajuns, it is the only fat to use in a roux. Another plus: Lard adds subtle meaty flavor.

Leather britches beans (also called shuck beans): Green beans that have been