The cooking gene : a journey through African-American culinary history in the Old South / Michael W. Twitty.

ISBN:

9780062379290

Title:

Author:

Twitty, Michael, 1977-, author.

Personal Author:

Twitty, Michael, 1977-, author.

Edition:

First edition.

Physical Description:

xvii, 443 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : color illustrations ; 24 cm.

Contents:

ch. 1 No More Whistling Walk for Me -- ch. 2 Hating My Soul -- ch. 3 Mise en Place -- ch. 4 Mishpocheh -- ch. 5 Missing Pieces -- ch. 6 No Nigger Blood -- ch. 7 "White Man in the Woodpile" -- ch. 8 0.01 Percent -- ch. 9 Sweet Tooth -- ch. 10 Mothers of Slaves -- ch. 11 Alma Mater -- ch. 12 Chesapeake Gold -- ch. 13 The Queen -- ch. 14 Adam in the Garden -- ch. 15 Shake Dem 'Simmons Down -- ch. 16 All Creatures of Our G-d and King -- ch. 17 The Devil's Half Acre -- ch. 18 "The King's Cuisine" -- ch. 19 Crossroads -- ch. 20 The Old Country -- ch. 21 Sankofa.

Subject Term:

African American cooking -- History.

Cooking, American -- Southern style -- History.

African Americans -- Food -- Southern States -- History.

Format:

Books

Publication Date:

2017

Publication Information:

New York, NY :

Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers,

[2017]

Available:*

Shelf Number	Material Type	Copy	Shelf Location	Status
641.5975 TWI	Book	1	Standard shelving location	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

2018 James Beard Foundation Book of the Year | 2018 James Beard Foundation Book Award Winner inWriting | Nominee for the 2018 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in Nonfiction | #75 on The Root100 2018

A renowned culinary historian offers a fresh perspective on our most divisive cultural issue, race, in this illuminating memoir of Southern cuisine and food culture that traces his ancestry--both black and white--through food, from Africa to America and slavery to freedom.

Southern food is integral to the American culinary tradition, yet the question of who "owns" it is one of the most provocative touch points in our ongoing struggles over race. In this unique memoir, culinary historian Michael W. Twitty takes readers to the white-hot center of this fight, tracing the roots of his own family and the charged politics surrounding the origins of soul food, barbecue, and all Southern cuisine.

From the tobacco and rice farms of colonial times to plantation kitchens and backbreaking cotton fields, Twitty tells his family story through the foods that enabled his ancestors' survival across three centuries. He sifts through stories, recipes, genetic tests, and historical documents, and travels from Civil War battlefields in Virginia to synagogues in Alabama to Black-owned organic farms in Georgia.

As he takes us through his ancestral culinary history, Twitty suggests that healing may come from embracing the discomfort of the Southern past. Along the way, he reveals a truth that is more than skin deep--the power that food has to bring the kin of the enslaved and their former slaveholders to the table, where they can discover the real America together.

Illustrations by Stephen Crotts

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

In this tasty but overstuffed food odyssey, Afroculinaria historian Twitty recounts his "Southern Discomfort Tour" that he documented on his blog The Cooking Gene: revisiting the varied cuisines of the antebellum Tidewater, Low Country, and Cotton Belt South, talking to chefs and farmers, giving historical cooking demonstrations, and piecing together biographical and gastronomic lore on his enslaved (and enslaving) ancestors. On the peg of the tour he hangs a surfeit of information, from history and agronomy to genealogical research, recipes, and boyhood reminiscences of his grandmother's Sunday soul food feasts. Yet that information is not always well-digested: the author's DNA testing results prompt lengthy disquisitions on the ethnogeography of West Africa, and some cultural-studies verbiage-"our food world is a charged scene of culinary inquiry"-could use trimming. For food lovers, his descriptions are rich: "the collard greens spiked with hot pepper, sugar and fatback, fried chicken, Virginia country ham. sweet cornbread, biscuits, string beans that swim in potlikker." Throughout, Twitty integrates historical details into the narrative, as in accounts of the backbreaking slave labor of tobacco and rice farming or the emotional anguish of slave auctions-and the results are fascinating. (Aug.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Referring to the Old South as a forgotten Little Africa, culinary historian Twitty explores southern cuisine through the lens of the nation's troubled racial past, which has created an amalgam of races and cultures, a blend often denied. Through a crowd-funded campaign, the Southern Discomfort Tour, Twitty traveled from Civil War battlefields to southern plantations to black-owned organic farms, reviving old recipes and using old cooking methods to get a taste and feel for the food that sustained his ancestors. Along the way, he uncovers his own family history and rediscovers for himself a connection he felt he was losing. Twitty puts his revelations in the broader context of the heritage of black cooking, noting contributions by unsung great black American cooks, including James Hemings, enslaved by Thomas Jefferson. Hemings learned French cuisine while in Paris with Jefferson but added his own heritage to create a blend for Monticello that was credited to his master. In this amazing memoir of food culture, Twitty draws the connection between Hemings and many other historic individuals and contemporary notions of southern cuisine that have ignored a neglected and often-bitter past. This is a joyous journey of discovery by a man with obvious love for history and the culinary arts.--Bush, Vanessa Copyright 2017 Booklist

Family Tree	p. viii
Preface: The Old South	p. xi
Chapter 1 No More Whistling Walk for Me	p. 1
Chapter 2 Hating My Soul	p. 25
Chapter 3 Mise en Place	p. 43
Chapter 4 Mishpocheh	p. 65
Chapter 5 Missing Pieces	p. 81
Chapter 6 No Nigger Blood	p. 91
Chapter 7 "White Man in the Woodpile"	p. 99
Chapter 8 0.01 Percent	p. 119
Chapter 9 Sweet Tooth	p. 141
Chapter 10 Mothers of Slaves	p. 161
Chapter 11 Alma Mater	p. 199
Chapter 12 Chesapeake Gold	p. 219
Chapter 13 The Queen	p. 239
Chapter 14 Adam in the Garden	p. 265
Chapter 15 Shake Dem 'Simmons Down	p. 283
Chapter 16 All Creatures of Our G-d and Kind	p. 297
Chapter 17 The Devil's Half Acre	p. 321
Chapter 18 "The King's Cuisine"	p. 337
Chapter 19 Crossroads	p. 365
Chapter 20 The Old Country	p. 381
Chapter 21 Sankofa	p. 401
Author's Note	p. 417
Selected Bibliography	p. 423
Acknowledgments	p. 439

Available:*

Bound With These Titles

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Summary

Summary

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Booklist Review

Table of Contents