High on the Hog_ A Culinary Journey From Africa to America - Jessica B. Harris [49]
The Big House cooks wielded a fair amount of power. They were usually women, except on some very large plantations. (In southern Louisiana near New Orleans, however, there was a Gallic tendency to give the word chef a masculine article and more male chefs were found there.) They ruled their domains with iron discipline and often garnered praise for their culinary expertise from white visitors. R. Q. Mallard of Georgia wrote of one plantation kitchen where “French cooks are completely outdistanced in the production of wholesome, dainty and appetizing food; for if there is any one thing for which the African female intellect has a natural genius, it is for cooking.” Male or female, the results that came from Big House kitchens were overwhelmingly praised by whites. Stereotypes of the time suggested that, to whites, blacks were born cooks, and several even suggested that it was a racial talent. Louisianan Charles Gayarré echoed the prevailing sentiment of the time in an article in an 1880 issue of Harper’s magazine: “The Negro is a born cook. He could neither read nor write, and therefore he could not learn from books. He was simply inspired; the god of the spit and the saucepan had breathed into him; that was enough.” Throughout the period of enslavement, black cooks gradually had their way with their masters’ palates, and dishes that had the mark of the cabin and of Africa, whether through ingredients or method, became an established part of the Southern culinary lexicon.
In 1824, when Mary Randolph published The Virginia House-wife, she was certainly unaware that the ingredients that she called for, such as field peas, eggplant, and okra, arrived in this country from the African continent. Yet in her book there are recipes aplenty using what must have been new ingredients. They include fried eggplant, a field pea (black-eyed pea) cake fried in lard and garnished with thin bits of bacon, and a simple dish of boiled okra called “Gumbs—A West India Dish,” which she pronounces, “very nutricious [sic] and easy to the digestion.” Her “ochra” soup—requiring okra, onions, lima beans, squash, chicken (or veal knuckle), bacon, and peeled tomatoes and thickened with a flour and butter roux—could pass for a form of chicken andouille gumbo anywhere in southern Louisiana. She even suggests it be served with an accompaniment of boiled rice. There’s also a recipe for young greens. All are culinary refinements of dishes that certainly came from the slave quarters and were transformed in the hands of Big House cooks.
The 1839 Kentucky House wife, by Letice Byran, continues the pattern and includes a recipe for boiled field peas to be eaten with baked or boiled pork. There is also one for stewed eggplant that seems to be a variant of Randolph’s recipe and an early recipe for watermelon-rind pickles. There is another okra soup recipe; this one calling for beef, veal, or chicken broth as a base into which thinly sliced okra and tomatoes are placed. The whole is heated, and when ready, it is sieved and seasoned with cayenne pepper. Finally it’s served over toast in a tureen.
Sarah Rutledge’s 1847 The Carolina House wife includes another of the seemingly ubiquitous okra soups. This one, though, is roux-less and similar to the roux-less Charleston gumbo that is still served today. A groundnut soup seasoned with a “seed pepper” and a bennie soup prepared from sesame seeds using the same method also have a decidedly African feel. Rutledge’s recipes are wider ranging than the other two collections and include dishes like groundnut cheesecakes, a confection of ground peanuts and puff pastry topped with grated sugar. There’s a Guinea squash recipe for baked eggplant, a New Orleans gumbo thickened with filé, and a Seminole soup of squirrel and hickory nuts served with filé, or the tender top of a pine tree, which “gives a very aromatic flavor to the soup.” The book offers the first hints of