High on the Hog_ A Culinary Journey From Africa to America Part 2

Described as a "celebrated artiste" and an "accomplished master of the culinary arts" by his contemporaries, Hercules had begun his life in the kitchen at Mount Vernon, probably as a member of a house servant's family. Little is known about him. Like many of the young boys who worked around Big Houses in the South, he was no doubt first tasked with hauling water and bringing in logs, removing ashes, and other menial jobs, and then he worked his way up the pecking order. It is known that he was named chief cook at Mount Vernon by 1786. Hercules was brought to New York when his master, George Washington, was displeased with the presidential fare there, and in 1790, when the capital moved to Philadelphia, Hercules moved there with Washington. He won accolades and was noted for his exacting efficiency and the flawless working of his kitchen at 190 High Street. Martha Washington's grandson, George Washington Parke Custis, called him "as highly accomplished and [as] proficient in the culinary art as could be found in the United States." Another observer was more eloquent: Iron discipline, woe to his underlings if speck or spot could be discovered on the table ... or if the utensils did not shine like polished silver ... His underlings flew in all directions to execute his orders while he, the great masterspirit, seemed to possess the power of ubiquity, and to be everywhere at the same time.

Hercules' duties extended beyond simply cooking; he also oversaw the smooth running of Washington's kitchens, which at one point contained a German cook and two French ones. He managed their work. No recipes attributed to Hercules have been found, but he certainly must have been adept at preparing the steak and kidney pie and trifle that were known to be among Washington's favorite dishes. Hercules was charged not only with overseeing all family meals, from the preparation to the service, but also with personally preparing the more formal Thursday dinners and congressional repasts. The latter were served up to the founding fathers with style and aplomb atop white linen and accompanied by glittering crystal, fine porcelain, and highly polished silver.

Although the food was closer to that of Britain, meals were served in what was called service a la francaise service a la francaise, or French service. The table was completely set with multiple dishes to tempt the diners. The number of dishes offered in each course had to be the same. Featured dishes occupied top, bottom, and central positions on the table and were large roasts, including a turkey and an entire pig. They were surrounded by arranged side dishes, making the entire tabl-escape a symmetrical array of china. The master and mistress would carve and serve the dishes, and the others would be served by those closest to them. At the conclusion of the first course, the dishes and napery were removed, revealing a new tablecloth underneath, which was then set for the second course-usually a dessert course of cakes, cookies, pies, and jellies in vast array. House slaves in service at the table would place the platters on it, bring fresh gla.s.ses and dishes as required, and serve drinks and the additional dishes that were displayed on the sideboards. At extremely formal occasions, the second tablecloth would be removed to reveal the mahogany table underneath, preserved fruits and nuts would be served along with beverages, and a series of toasts would be made.

This then was dinner; it was usually served between two and four P.M. P.M. Supper was served before bedtime and might be proceeded by tea in the early evening. Breakfast began the day at eight or nine in the morning and was similar to a continental breakfast of hot breads with the occasional addition of the previous day's leftovers in the form of sliced ham or a meat hash. Hercules oversaw it all. Respected by his peers, feared by his underlings (who dreaded his exact.i.tude and iron discipline), and renowned in Philadelphia as the president's chef, Hercules was known as a dandy. Although enslaved, he, like many free chefs of the period, was able to sell leftover food and tallow; his perquisites from the kitchen garnered him the tidy sum of almost two hundred dollars a year. Following the service of the presidential meals, he would step out into the streets of Philadelphia immaculately attired-linen, silk shorts, a waistcoat, a velvet-collared frock coat, silver-buckled shoes, and a c.o.c.ked hat-and brandishing a gold-headed cane, to head forth to meet with other fashionable black dandies of the time. The city was full of black notables; Hercules was one of them, and he was certainly aware of the others. Supper was served before bedtime and might be proceeded by tea in the early evening. Breakfast began the day at eight or nine in the morning and was similar to a continental breakfast of hot breads with the occasional addition of the previous day's leftovers in the form of sliced ham or a meat hash. Hercules oversaw it all. Respected by his peers, feared by his underlings (who dreaded his exact.i.tude and iron discipline), and renowned in Philadelphia as the president's chef, Hercules was known as a dandy. Although enslaved, he, like many free chefs of the period, was able to sell leftover food and tallow; his perquisites from the kitchen garnered him the tidy sum of almost two hundred dollars a year. Following the service of the presidential meals, he would step out into the streets of Philadelphia immaculately attired-linen, silk shorts, a waistcoat, a velvet-collared frock coat, silver-buckled shoes, and a c.o.c.ked hat-and brandishing a gold-headed cane, to head forth to meet with other fashionable black dandies of the time. The city was full of black notables; Hercules was one of them, and he was certainly aware of the others.

However, despite his princely income, his fame, and his relative freedom of movement, Hercules was not content with his lot. He wanted his freedom. He yearned for it and planned for it and escaped when he could. Tobias Lear, Washington's longtime personal secretary recorded his escape: It is sad to relate that Uncle Harkless was so captivated with the delights of Philadelphia that in 1797, on the day Washington left the city to retire to private life at the end of his second term, he ran away rather than return to Mount Vernon. Although diligent inquiries were made for him, he was never apprehended.

His escape troubled the Washington family. "The running off of my cook has been a most inconvenient thing to this family," wrote Washington, who spared no expense in attempting to find him. No doubt finding it difficult to understand why one such favored slave would leave, Washington charged Frederick Kitt, his former house hold steward in Philadelphia, with finding Hercules and returning his property to him, noting, "but little doubt remains in my mind of his having gone to Philadelphia, and may yet be found there, if proper measures were employed to discover (unsuspectedly so as not to alarm him) where his haunts are." Several weeks later, Washington renewed his request to Kitt, stating that any expenses incurred in finding Hercules and returning him to Mount Vernon would be paid by Colonel Clement Biddle, but it was to no avail. Hercules had slipped off into the night. His six-year-old daughter, who remained enslaved at Mount Vernon, expressed thoughts that were probably more representative of those of Uncle Harkless himself. When asked by a guest at Mount Vernon if she were upset to never see her father again, she replied, "O! sir, I am very glad, because he is free now." Despite our lack of knowledge of him or his dishes, Hercules, the chef who doesn't even have a last name for history, was more than a grace note to the history of African American chefs. He was the first black chef for the country's first chief executive.

Washington, though, was not alone in savoring food prepared by enslaved hands. Throughout the country, south and north, whites reveled in the foods that blacks cooked. The smooth running of many of the founding fathers' house holds rested on the strong black backs of the enslaved. It resided in the firm grasp of the laundresses who starched and ironed tablecloths and the scullions who scrubbed out pots both iron and copper. It depended on the young children who weeded the gardens and flicked flies from foodstuffs at the tables and on the serving men and women who walked briskly along the "biscuit express," bringing the food from the kitchen outbuildings to the main dining rooms. It was there in the sound agricultural judgment of the farmers as well as in the capable hands of not only the chefs but also the kitchen staff. The enslaved grew the squashes and tomatoes, prepared the broiled shad and macaroni pie, set the tables, served the food, and cleaned up afterward. The first chief executive may have set the bar with his black chef, but the preeminent bec fin bec fin of the founding fathers was undeniably Thomas Jefferson. of the founding fathers was undeniably Thomas Jefferson.

The man from Monticello and his culinary contributions to the American menu are legion. Less well known is the fact that Jefferson was also responsible for the inclusion of many African foodstuffs in the diet of Virginians. Furthermore he promoted African American chefs and cooks to the highest levels of their profession. The world now knows of Jefferson's liaison with Sally Hemings, the enslaved half sister of his wife. Yet little is known about another member of the Hemings family: James Hemings, Sally's brother, who was also one of the slaves on the farms that made up Jefferson's estates. In the kitchens at Monticello, James Hemings mastered hearth cooking and knew the functions of clockwork-turned spit jacks that roasted the joints of meat and how to wield the long-handled "spider" skillets to cook the food evenly. He had felt the heavy weight of the filled cast iron pots and endured the scorched arms and burned clothing that were occupational hazards for any eighteenth-century cook. Hemings excelled in the culinary realm and was singled out for his industry and his talent. On July 5, 1784, at Jefferson's request, he set sail from Boston Harbor on the Ceres Ceres. By the end of the month, he was in Le Havre, and by August 6, he arrived in Paris to join Jefferson there and be apprenticed to French chefs.

The Paris that James Hemings arrived in was a city in transition. Revolution was in the air, and the events that were going on in the capital's streets and cafes would transform the world in the five years of Jefferson's Parisian sojourn as America's minister plenipotentiary. Hemings lived through the American Revolution; in Paris he would witness the beginning of the French one! The city in the dying years of the ancien regime must have been an astonishing place for a young visitor from America. Paris was a formal capital with a history rooted in monarchy, where Jefferson, lord and master to Hemings, was regarded as ill-clothed and lacking in manners-a provincial. Despite that, Jefferson was much admired and received great adulation, but the world of the French aristocrats into which Hemings had been plunged was far removed from that of Tidewater Virginia.

Paris was also abuzz with the revolutionary thoughts of liberty, which could only have been galvanizing for the enslaved young man from Virginia. Hemings was in the city at a crucial time in modern French history. He surely had many a stroll through the Palais Royal, as Jefferson's Parisian residence, at the Hotel de Langeac on the Champs-elysees, was not far away. The popular spot was a favorite of the city's increasingly strident revolutionaries and also of the growing American contingent. On his daily walks he might have heard Camille Desmoulins exhort his countrymen to revolution at a Palais Royale cafe. Hemings was also in the city on July 14, 1789, as crowds ma.s.sed to head westward to storm the Bastille. As he went about his daily business for the Jefferson house hold, he was a witness to a world in transition.

Paris was surely a culinary wonderland to Hemings, whose prior experience was defined by what he'd learned in the kitchens of Monticello. The city was filled with cafes and the newly established eating venues known as restaurants, which were created by law only two years prior, in 1782. A revolution was taking place at the tables of the French capital as well, as the entrenched formality of court dining yielded to a more demo cratic type of cuisine, with the new eateries offering the public dishes previously unavailable outside royal palaces. The new restaurants offered menus that tempted the capital's diners with an embarra.s.sment of riches. Some offered as many as twelve soups, twenty-four hors d'oeuvres, twenty main dishes each of beef, lamb, poultry, veal, and seafood, and a choice of fifty desserts. The whole was washed down with copious quant.i.ties of wines from France and Europe and an array of liqueurs and mixtures, like punches, syllabubs, and the beverage of the moment, coffee. The refined fare was served in a sophisticated atmosphere unlike that of the more rustic inns and traditional taverns. Chefs began to be known for their specialties, like Chef Baleine of the Rocher de Cancale on the rue Montorgueil, who was famous for his delicate hand with fish dishes; and Chef Beauvilliers, who expertly paired fine wines with his fare.

Hemings, as one enslaved, was certainly aware of the underpinnings of poverty that upheld the lives of the French aristocracy. He apprenticed in their kitchens and worked alongside their impoverished help. But he also served in a diplomatic house hold where the elite of the time gathered and no doubt heard Franklin and Jefferson and Adams debate the relative merits of the American and French systems of government. French laws regarding slavery were a labyrinth of confusion. Once he landed in France, Hemings fell under the "Freedom Principle," which held that slaves were free on French soil, as French slavery was usually confined to its colonies. However, the laws were complex and often contradictory and slaves did exist in the capital, having been brought from the colonies by their wealthy masters. Their numbers were small, however. Indeed, the French were concerned with the growing presence of slaves in the country and tried to regulate their length of stay.

At the time, Paris numbered among its citizens only one thousand blacks and people of mixed blood, a small number when compared with the black inhabitants of London of the period or the large black populations in developing American cities like Charleston, Philadelphia, and New York. The free Parisian blacks were the manumitted sons and daughters of colonial plantation owners. The city though was comparatively open and even had its black elite. There was the mulatto Chevalier de Saint-Georges, son of a former governor of Guadeloupe and a black woman; he was the best swordsman in Europe, a Freemason, and a composer whose name alternated on concert bills with that of Mozart. Mixed-race Thomas-Alexandre "Dumas" Davy de la Pailleterie, the father of writer Alexandre Dumas, was a noted solider and another honored swordsman. Both were leaders of the elite black community. Hemings would have known of these other blacks and their stature in the city. Although enslaved, he was paid wages by Jefferson during his Paris sojourn and had relative freedom of movement.

Hemings was initially apprenticed with the caterer who provisioned Jefferson's Parisian house hold, Monsieur Combeaux. From him, he is certain to have learned the basics of French cuisine and how to create the multiple dishes that were required for the cla.s.sic service a la francaise service a la francaise, which offered multiple dishes set out on crisp napery that was de rigeur in the best houses of Virginia. Hemings also mastered the Europe an potager potager, or stew stove, a brick and plaster a.s.semblage complete with wood-fired burner holes, which was the precursor of today's modern stoves. The new stove granted the cook the ability to control the flame and the temperature in ways that were unimaginable in hearth cooking and allowed for the creation of the more subtle dishes. Jefferson was so taken with the novelty that he had a stew stove built in a kitchen of Monticello in later years, one of the few in the United States. In France, Hemings came to know the wide array of copper cookware that was essential for the preparation of meals in the French manner: turbotieres turbotieres (lozenge-shape pans for cooking fish), braising pans, roasting pans, boilers, molds, and more. Costlier than cast iron, but better able to conduct heat, the copper cookware was an integral part of the culinary equation that produced the fine dishes to be served on Jefferson's cornflower-sprigged blue-painted china, newly acquired from the royal porcelain factories. (lozenge-shape pans for cooking fish), braising pans, roasting pans, boilers, molds, and more. Costlier than cast iron, but better able to conduct heat, the copper cookware was an integral part of the culinary equation that produced the fine dishes to be served on Jefferson's cornflower-sprigged blue-painted china, newly acquired from the royal porcelain factories.

Hemings's work under the tutelage of Monsieur Combeaux was only the beginning of his Parisian apprenticeship. He was also sent for periodic training sessions with a variety of the city's notable chefs, including a pastry chef and a cook in the house hold of the prince de Conde. His Virginia repertoire of simple country fare was expanded with the addition of dishes made with a la mode ingredients like crawfish, truffles, and the newly adopted potato, all washed down or even seasoned with champagne and cognac. The entire French culinary world was undoubtedly quite an eye-opener for the young Hemings, who worked a.s.siduously for his first three years in Paris, going from apprenticeship to apprenticeship. By 1788, he was considered accomplished enough to be placed in charge of Jefferson's kitchens at his residence on the Champs-elysees. There he oversaw the meals that were served to the notables of Europe; it was a far cry from the kitchens at Monticello, where the lifestyle, although lavish, was closer to that of an English country squire than of a French prince of the blood.

Much about Hemings, though, remains an enigma. He could have declared his freedom while on French soil. He was literate, had used his wages to hire a French tutor, and given his culinary training, was highly employable in Paris or elsewhere in Europe. Yet, unlike Washington's Hercules, Hemings elected to remain enslaved. Perhaps because of his attachment to his sister, he chose, instead, to return to America with Jefferson. There he served as his chef in both Monticello and in Philadelphia when Jefferson became secretary of state of the fledgling republic under George Washington. No doubt Hemings knew the other black chefs in Philadelphia. Washington's residence, presided over by Hercules, was only three blocks away from his own.

Hemings clearly chafed under the bonds of slavery, and witnessing the fires of liberty in France surely made him fixed in his resolve. In 1793, four years after his return from Paris and four years before Hercules' escape, he pet.i.tioned Jefferson for his freedom. Jefferson granted his request, but his manumission was contingent on his training another slave to take his place. In a letter that hid no legal force, but that placed him on his honor to free Hemings, Jefferson wrote: Having been at great expence [sic] in having James Hemings taught the art of cookery, desiring to befriend him and to require from him as little as possible, I do hereby promise & declare, that if the said James shall go with me to Monticello in the course of the ensuing winter, when I go to reside there myself, and shall there continue until he shall have taught such person as I shall place under him for that purpose to be a good cook this previous condition being performed, he shall be thereupon made free, and I will thereupon execute the proper instruments to make him free. Given under my hand and seal in the county of Philadelphia and the state of Pennsylvania this 15th day of September one thousand seven hundred and ninety three.

Characteristically for the period, where Big House privileges were carefully guarded familial perquisites, the person selected to be trained by James Hemings was his brother, Peter. With Peter's selection, the Hemings culinary dynasty continued its hold on the kitchens of Monticello. Peter continued the work begun by his brother and ultimately added brewing to his culinary portfolio, having studied the art under the tutelage of an English brewer. James and Peter were not the only Hemings to take on the role of Monticello chef; other relatives also labored in the kitchens of the Virginia plantation, where the family became a parallel sepia culinary dynasty.

On February 26, 1796, Hemings left for Philadelphia with thirty dollars from Jefferson "to bear" his expenses. He was free. He was also restless. He lived in Philadelphia, then traveled-probably to Spain-and finally settled in Baltimore, where in 1801 Jefferson contacted him again. Following his election as the nation's third president, Jefferson chose for his chef the emanc.i.p.ated James Hemings, who initially accepted the position. However, a wrangle over Hemings's request for a formal letter of confirmation of his duties from Jefferson ensued. Communication through third parties and Jefferson's refusal to send such a letter resulted in Hemings declining the post, thereby depriving the country of its first official black White House chef.

The job went instead to a Frenchmen, Honore Julien, but slaves from Monticello worked under him and tended the pots in the kitchens of America's first house. The wooden spoons and turning forks pa.s.sed to another generation of cooks from the extended Hemings family. Later in 1801, Hemings did return to Monticello and was hired as chef, but he never a.s.sumed the post. That fall, word reached the plantation on the hill that Hemings had taken his own life.

The Jefferson-Randolph family cookbooks contain two recipes known to have originated with James Hemings: chocolate cream and snow eggs, both European desserts. Other recipes in the cookbooks display the culinary traditions of the enslaved, who brought their ways into the kitchen of the founding fathers and helped create such uniquely American dishes as catfish soup, peanut soup, and Virginia gumbo. It is to known chefs like Hercules and James Hemings and to the thousands of unnamed and unheralded others like them throughout the original thirteen colonies that the United States of America owes the fleeting tastes of Africa that mixed and mingled with those of Europe in the burnished copper pots and the porcelain serving bowls of the founding fathers.

TO MARKET TO MARKET.

It is a tribute to the indomitable spirit of blacks in this country and to the human need for self-betterment that the slaves made time for themselves when all of their time belonged to someone else, but they did. They carved minutes from tasks by doing them more rapidly, by helping one another, and by taking shortcuts. Having a minute's respite, they stayed up and toiled on their own projects after night fell and they returned to their cabins. In the cracks and quiet times that they created in their hara.s.sed lives, they found a way to make a world. Many worked for themselves and their own benefit. Some saved and foraged seeds and tended gardens by moonlight or fished and hunted nocturnal animals like possum; others raised yard fowl for their eggs or hogs for their meat. Still others wove rugs and quilted blankets from sc.r.a.ps using homemade lamps that burned tallow. They a.s.sembled brooms and created other myriad goods that could be traded or sold.

Masters knew of this industriousness; some even found that it was easier to distribute seeds and allow the enslaved to supplement rations by growing the vegetables that they preferred on their own time. Many of the plants-okra, watermelon, eggplant, and gourds-that appeared in the slave gardens harked back to distantly remembered African tastes. Others spoke of American adaptations: European collard greens were used instead of African ones, and sweet potatoes replaced the African yams, while New World hot chilies had become important ingredients on both sides of the Atlantic. Their production was such that in many cases throughout the South, masters often purchased surplus goods from their own slaves' gardens, paying them with cash, trade goods, or bartered privileges like pa.s.ses to visit relatives-a commercial symbiosis between master and enslaved that seemingly contradicted the conditions of enslavement. Thomas Jefferson bought cuc.u.mbers, sweet potatoes, and squash from his slaves. George Washington purchased hunted game and fish. In this manner, they and others like them acknowledged that these were indeed items that the enslaved had grown or made on time that was their own and, as such, had to be purchased.

In Natchez, Mississippi, Samuel Chase, a slave on a local plantation, raised hogs and poultry and grew potatoes and corn on his own time. With his mistresses' knowledge, he sold them to folks in the surrounding area from a wagon that was described as a virtual grocery on wheels. More important, he was allowed to keep the monies earned for his own benefit.

Chase's activities and those of others like him redefine our current ideas of enslavement. Even more surprising is the notion of markets maintained and patronized by slaves. Yet such markets existed throughout the Upper and Lower South during the period of enslavement, with the knowledge, if not the total approval, of masters. The slave-run markets were places where slaves would gather to barter or purchase the foodstuffs and goods they had acquired. (Masters worried that markets of this type encouraged pilfering and poaching, but there is scant evidence of this.) None was better known than the slave-run market in Alexandria, Virginia. This informal market was held on Sunday, a day on which many slaves were given a measure of leisure time on some plantations. It took place very early in the morning and all commercial activity was over by nine A.M. A.M. Slaves stayed up all night and walked for hours to reach it to trade their goods. Like all markets, the slave-run markets were more than simple commercial gathering places; they were also places for meeting and for exchange of news and information. Slaves traded not only eggs and chickens but also snippets of information that aided their survival. They learned which master might be selling off slaves, which plantation had a runaway, and even when the Underground Railroad was pa.s.sing through. There was also news about friends and family members on neighboring plantations and time to savor communion with other blacks, both enslaved and free, from the surrounding area and the city of Alexandria itself. Witnesses describe the scene of slaves sitting under shade trees with baskets of berries that had been foraged or with chickens or eggs. It must have seemed an African scene transported to the New World, an atavism of a now-forgotten homeland: men in their homespun trousers and women dressed in their Sunday best with their neatly braided hair tied up in fresh head ties. Slaves stayed up all night and walked for hours to reach it to trade their goods. Like all markets, the slave-run markets were more than simple commercial gathering places; they were also places for meeting and for exchange of news and information. Slaves traded not only eggs and chickens but also snippets of information that aided their survival. They learned which master might be selling off slaves, which plantation had a runaway, and even when the Underground Railroad was pa.s.sing through. There was also news about friends and family members on neighboring plantations and time to savor communion with other blacks, both enslaved and free, from the surrounding area and the city of Alexandria itself. Witnesses describe the scene of slaves sitting under shade trees with baskets of berries that had been foraged or with chickens or eggs. It must have seemed an African scene transported to the New World, an atavism of a now-forgotten homeland: men in their homespun trousers and women dressed in their Sunday best with their neatly braided hair tied up in fresh head ties.

The market provided not only a place for garnering a few coins to pay for additional food or a bit of tobacco or something else to alleviate the monotonous drudgery of enslavement; it was also a place where folks could smile and court and even listen to music if someone had brought along a fiddle. It was a spot where for a few brief moments, the yoke of enslavement was lifted, and blacks could be themselves among themselves.

CHAPTER 5.

IN SORROW'S KITCHEN Hog Meat, Hominy, and the Africanizing of the Palate of the South

River Road, Louisiana- As you fly into New Orleans, you can occasionally see, depending on the approach, Louisiana's River Road, surrounded by neat pie slices of acreage running from the Mississippi River inland. From the air, the slices make a lush green tapestry, with the dwellings raised like crochet knots. I'd been to the South many times before I came there with my mother for the first time. I'd seen the row of brick slave cabins that marched parallel to the mighty live oaks at Boone Hall outside Charleston and listened intently as docents at Drayton Hall verbally brought to life the look of the back of the house where slave and master lived out their lives in proximate and intertwined worlds. Middleton Place plantation had been another stop on my Southern journeys; there I'd explored the farmyard, watching the docents exhibit their skills with the intensity of one trying to recapture a lost thread. I knew that the hands that made the wrought iron work in Charleston and New Orleans had been black and recognized the high, small windows on ground-floor locations that signaled a slave depot. I once startled newly made friends in New Orleans by informing them of their home's history as a slave-trading location. I'd investigated hearth cooking and run my hands over the walls of kitchens that had been manned by slave cooks and surrept.i.tiously taken off my shoes to feel under my feet the dirt of the plantation yards that stretched beyond the Big House. I'd seen the slave cabin at Tullie Smith Farm at the Atlanta History Center and reproductions of others in museum exhibits around the South. I'd read much about the antebellum period and as a Northerner, born and raised, I had tried to understand the culture of enslavement and the people who created it and willed myself to form a mental link with my own ancestors who had been transformed by it. I could rattle off dates, facts, and anecdotes with fair facility. Nothing, however, brought home the depersonalizing realities of enslavement to me like my mother's reaction on her visit to Louisiana's River Road.

My mother, who died in 2000, was also a Northerner. Born and raised in New Jersey, she spent her entire life in the Northeast, except for a brief tenure as diet.i.tian at Bennett College in Greensboro, North Carolina, where she was miserable; she left rapidly, claiming to have gained nothing except a love for grits and the knowledge of how to cook them properly. While my own tendencies ran to the study of the African continent and its diaspora, my mother, though always a willing traveler, was more intrigued by the cathedrals of Europe than the Candomble houses of Brazil. I was astonished, therefore, when our affinities coincided in New Orleans. In 1998, when I bought a home there, she immediately understood the city's magic and visited frequently. She set about making herself a part of the lives of my friends in that town, which is a noteworthy conjoining of Africa and Europe. Her early training as a diet.i.tian left her with a lifelong love of food, and in New Orleans, with its vibrant food culture, many memorable meals were shared with the new friends who became our adopted family. With her questing mind and her artistic talents, she quickly became everyone's surrogate mother and delighted in her new role.

One of my friends, discovering that neither my mother nor I had visited the River Road, decided to drive us to see the glories of the state's plantation past. Taking off to explore tourist-like, neither of us had any idea of the impact the trip would have. The first stop was Laura Plantation, a French Creole dwelling that was nothing like the Tara-esque images that my mother had envisioned. More like a raised country house, it had none of the majesty and presence expected by one whose images of the plantation South had been formed by Gone with the Wind Gone with the Wind (the film not the book!). We were intrigued by its similarity to homes that we'd seen in the French Carib be an, but caught up in the myth of white pillars and sweeping lawns, it did not visually define a slaveholding past for us. However, the slave cabins on the grounds were a harbinger of things to come. (the film not the book!). We were intrigued by its similarity to homes that we'd seen in the French Carib be an, but caught up in the myth of white pillars and sweeping lawns, it did not visually define a slaveholding past for us. However, the slave cabins on the grounds were a harbinger of things to come.

At Evergreen Plantation, there were more slave cabins. While they were certainly depressing, in truth, many looked like the wooden shacks that we'd seen dotting some of the secondary roads-and some even seemed to be in better shape. The double row of cabins, though, coupled with the knowledge that 103 enslaved people lived on the plantation in 1860, brought the realities of enslavement closer to home, but we didn't tarry there.

The next stop was Tezcuco Plantation, which has since burned down. It was then home to a fledgling African American museum, and as we walked through the small museum, I could see my mother's demeanor change. As we read the captions and examined the potbellied stove and the other meager artifacts lovingly displayed, she began to have that pensive look I knew too well. Lunch was at Tezcuco with our friends and the museum's founder, Kathe Ham-brick Jackson. There, over Southern food that was nowhere as good as Mom's, we talked about Hambrick Jackson's plans for expanding the museum. I noticed that Mom's conversation had become "careful." We'd have much to talk about when we returned to New Orleans. The friends we were riding with (who were white) were unaware of my mother's inner turmoil, but I was attuned to her every move.

Ever polite, she soldiered on to the next stop, Houmas House, where we were greeted by a hoop-skirt-clad docent who regaled us with tales of the architecture and also of the home's owners; in deference to the PC times, a word or two was was given to those enslaved on the plantation as well. This plantation fit the profile; it had high white columns and a vast alley of venerable live oaks that ran down to the river. Majestic and monumental, it was a Palladian-style fantasy of power. My mother took me aside and whispered, "Who built this house?" I replied that I didn't know but that probably much of the work had been done by the people enslaved on the plantation. She thought for a moment and then said, "What artistry. What beauty they created for people who thought we were nothing but goods, not even human beings!" given to those enslaved on the plantation as well. This plantation fit the profile; it had high white columns and a vast alley of venerable live oaks that ran down to the river. Majestic and monumental, it was a Palladian-style fantasy of power. My mother took me aside and whispered, "Who built this house?" I replied that I didn't know but that probably much of the work had been done by the people enslaved on the plantation. She thought for a moment and then said, "What artistry. What beauty they created for people who thought we were nothing but goods, not even human beings!"

It was an affirmation of something that she had seen in the white columns and the carefully restored rooms. Where others might see only the degradation and pain of enslavement, she also saw triumph, transcendence, and art. No doubt she saw the pain. After all, she was a woman who had known her grandfather, who had been a house slave in Virginia and whose mother was sold South when he was two years old. No one I knew had a more intimate connection to enslavement than she did. My mother, who, like me, carried his blood in her veins, looked through the pain and the misery and the suffering and saw talent and artistry and ability and industry and amazing grace. Certainly she saw the enslaved-her grandfather, field hands, house servants, Big House cooks, and others-as victims of a horrific system, but she also saw them standing tall and proud in the dignity of their work.

No myth is more pervasive in the history of the United States than the myth of the plantation South-one that is celebrated by some and decried by others. In present-day consciousness our mental images hover somewhere between the happy tractable darkies of Gone with the Wind Gone with the Wind and the more embittered brethren of and the more embittered brethren of Roots Roots. In the decades since the publication of Roots Roots opened the floodgates of interest and historical exploration, the discoveries of new information and new ways at looking at chattel slavery in the United States seem to multiply daily. opened the floodgates of interest and historical exploration, the discoveries of new information and new ways at looking at chattel slavery in the United States seem to multiply daily.

Race-based chattel slavery is a keloid on the face of the United States, a thick scar that is our national birthmark. But like those that are tribal markings and symbols of rank on the African continent, America's scar has deep meaning and signals a past that must be carefully examined. It must be looked at in all its horror and degradation, complicity and confusion, for it tells us where and what we have come from. What my mother showed me as she sat in a chair on the veranda of Houmas House is that it must also be examined in light of the creativity and talent and grace expressed by the enslaved under situations that ranged from the unpleasant to the unspeakable. The American ways with music, dance, gesture, language, and, yes, food all bear witness to that inheritance.

Slavery's duration in the North did not equal its longevity in the South. During the colonial period, blacks made up 61 percent of the population of South Carolina and 31 percent of that of Georgia. But at the time of the American Revolution, fewer than 10 percent of the total population of enslaved in the United States lived in the North. Their numbers, however, continued to grow in the South. In 1680, slaves made up a tenth of the Southern population; by 1790, they made up a third of the population. Following the American Revolution, the slave population exploded in the South, and between 1790 and 1810 the population of enslaved almost doubled. By the late seventeenth century, however, att.i.tudes were changing in the North. Slave labor, which had been largely involved in agriculture in the North, was being eliminated as inefficient in the rapidly industrializing area.

Vermont outlawed slavery in 1777. Pennsylvania banned it in 1780, and it was outlawed in Ma.s.sachusetts in 1783. Gradual emanc.i.p.ation began in Rhode Island, a former leader in the slave trade, in 1784. New York state began to abolish slavery in 1799, although the pro cess did not end until July 4, 1827. New Hampshire became the last of the Northern states to end enslavement, in 1857. The Southern states were left with the "peculiar inst.i.tution"-an economic system that increasingly put them at odds with the world and with their former slaveholding countrymen in the North. The slave system, though, continued to grow and prosper in the South.

Most Americans today base their ideas of the antebellum South on images created in popular culture that have little to do with the realities of history. Despite a national tendency to generalize slave-holding into North and South, there was no monolithic South even in the antebellum period. The region was divided into upland and coastal, and then subdivided further into the Up South, the Caroli-nas and Georgia, the Deep South, and the Gulf South. The mountainous spine of the Appalachians further bisected the region and was an area in which slaveholding was minimal. Each area had a unique experience with enslavement. Our blue-versus-gray vision of slavery is further complicated by popular imagery of white-columned plantation houses manned by a flotilla of enslaved blacks hauling and toting and doing the bidding of Ma.s.sa and Miz Ann. In fact, even in slaveholding areas, in many cases hard-pressed whites had only a few hapless slaves; and in more than a few cases, owners were apt to be working in the fields alongside their one or two slaves. Less than one quarter of white Southerners held slaves, and half of those held fewer than five. Only I percent of Southerners owned more than one hundred, and a minuscule number owned more than five hundred and had the large spreads that we imagine; they lived mainly in South Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana. In 1860, the average number of slaves residing together was about ten. These realities, though, in no way mitigate the horror of enslavement. "Plantation," in most cases in the South, was just a fancy word for the farm on which slaves toiled for their masters.

The work done by the enslaved was mainly agricultural and varied from locale to locale. Different crops-tobacco, rice, indigo, cotton, and sugar-produced different working environments, and the enslaveds' daily tasks and degree of autonomy varied from crop to crop. In Virginia and the Upper South the crop tended to be tobacco or the Tidewater triad of corn, wheat, and tobacco. Coastal South Carolina and Georgia had rice-based economies where slaves had a particular task to perform, and once it was completed, their time was their own. As slavery progressed from North to South and onward toward the West, it became even more arduous. J. S. Buckingham, an Englishman who journeyed through the slave states of the South in 1839, recounted, All the slaves have a great horror of being sent to the south or the west,-for the farther they go in either of these directions, the harder they are worked, and the worse they are used.

The cotton kingdoms of the Deep South were the ones that have provided us with most of our mental images. The sugar empires of the Gulf Coast offered different systems based on Caribbean models, in which life was cheap and the enslaved were often simply worked to death then replaced. What ever the crop or the system, all were horrific in that the enslaved, whether under a beneficent or a harsh master, had no control over their own destinies. A gambling debt to be paid, a wedding in the master's family, a bequest given, or something as simple as an argument or a whim could result in a slave family being broken up forever.

Slaves, what ever their number in a house hold, were omnipresent, and they were dependent on their master for the essentials of life: housing, clothing, and especially food. Throughout the period of enslavement, discussion raged about how to feed the slaves. As the agricultural backbone of the region, the slaves not only produced the cash crops; they also were tasked with growing and processing most of the food that was consumed by all on the plantations, whether white or black. Feeding the enslaved, however, had of necessity to be an economically viable pro cess. Rations had to be sufficiently nourishing to allow the enslaved to perform their tasks but could not be so lavish as to be unprofitable. In some cases, however, rations were so parsimonious as to be tantamount to starvation. On plantations of some size, there were basically two different systems of food distribution: one in which the enslaved were fed from a centralized kitchen somewhere on the plantation, and another wherein the enslaved were given their rations on a schedule and allowed to prepare them in their own cabins or within what ever communities they might have created for themselves. The former system was more common in the early years of enslavement, when the enslaved were often housed in dormitories and lived communally. Distributing rations became more common as the slave populations grew.

In almost all cases, the enslaved supplemented their rations by hunting and trapping. The nocturnal habits of the opossum made it a prime target for the enslaved, who had to hunt after the work of their daylight hours. There was also fishing for catfish, porgies, mullet, and other denizens of the creeks and rivers to supplement the rations. Foraging in nearby woods allowed the enslaved to add wild greens like watercress to their diets, as well as such items as ramps, chives, and wild garlic. In more than a few cases, there was also pilfering and poaching from their master or the masters of others. Theft from masters' fields was so prevalent that the enslaved on one Mississippi plantation even created a song about it.

Some folks say dat a n.i.g.g.e.r won't steal,I caught two in my own corn field,one had a bushel,one had a peckan' one had rosenears [roasting ears]strung round his neck.

On some plantations that followed a more Caribbean model, the slaves were given provision grounds to raise their own crops, including vegetables like okra, chili peppers, and eggplant, which harked back to an African past. The slave gardeners were so successful that they occasionally sold produce back to their masters. At Monticello, Jefferson purchased items from his slaves and duly noted them down in his account books. Slave gardeners raised plants that they liked to eat and items they knew would sell, so it is telling to find on the listings of things grown in the provision grounds such crops as watermelon, cabbage, and greens-foods that even today remain totemic in the cooking of African Americans. They also raised cuc.u.mbers, white potatoes, and squash. Gardening was done in the little free time that the enslaved had after their daily work of running the plantation had been completed. This free time was usually on Sunday-a day of little work-or on weekdays after the sun went down. The oral history record suggests that animal fat and tallow were burned in old iron cooking pots to illuminate the gardens and enable the slaves to work after their day's labor. Alternately, they worked by the light of the moon. The quest for food, and enough of it, was a daily obsession for many of the enslaved, if the numerous mentions of food and eating found in the slave narratives of the antebellum period are to be believed. Slave rations were never fixed by national law in the United States, as they were in the French territories, where, the Code Noir (Black Code) of 1685 legislated the amount of ca.s.sava meal, beef, or fish to be given to all adult slaves over eighteen years of age. The lack of such uniformity in the United States meant that amounts were often established by individuals who were more interested in controlling costs than providing nourishment. George Washington, deemed a benign if not beneficent master, fed his slaves adequately. However, during the 1790s, after the revolution, he reduced their rations and estimated that eleven pounds of corn, two pounds of fish, and a pound and a half of meat were sufficient weekly rations for each of the twenty-three slaves on one of his farms. Not a lot when compared with those rations remembered by John Thompson, who had been enslaved on a plantation in Maryland: "The provision for each slave, per week, was a peck of corn, two dozens of herrings, and about four pounds of meat."

Even these amounts were lowered by the antebellum period on some plantations. James W. C. Pennington, enslaved to a wheat planter in Washington County, on Mary land's western sh.o.r.e, gave a more detailed account of his rations in his 1849 narrative: The slaves are generally fed upon salt pork, herrings, and Indian corn.The manner of dealing it out to them is as follows-Each working man, on Monday morning goes to the cellar of the master where the provisions are kept, and where the overseer takes this stand with someone to a.s.sist him, when he, with a pair of steel yards, weighs out to every man the amount of three-and-a-half pounds to last him till the ensuing Monday-allowing him just half a pound per day. Once in a few weeks, a change is made, by which, instead of the three-and-a half-pounds of pork, each man receives twelve herrings allowing two a day. The only bread kind the slaves have is that made of Indian meal. In some of the low counties, the masters usually have to give their slaves the corn by the ear; and they have to grind it for themselves by night at hand-mills. But my master had a quant.i.ty sent to the grist mill at a time, to be ground into coa.r.s.e meal, and kept in a large chest in his cellar, where the woman who cooked for the boys could get it daily. This was baked into large loaves called "steel poun bread." Sometime as a change it was made into "Johnny Cake," and then at others into mush.The slaves had no b.u.t.ter, coffee, tea, or sugar; occasionally they were allowed milk, but not statedly; the only exception to this statement was the "harvest provisions." In harvest, when cutting the grain, which lasted for two to three weeks in the heat of summer, they were allowed some fresh meat, rice, sugar, and coffee; also their allowance of whiskey.

Solomon Northup, a free black who had been illegally captured in New York City and sold in the South in 1841, bitterly recalled that all that was allowed the slaves on the Louisiana plantation where he was enslaved for twelve years was corn and bacon, which is given out at the corn-crib and smoke-house every Sunday morning. Each one receives, as his weekly allowance, three and a half pounds of bacon, and corn enough to make a peck of meal. This is all-no tea, coffee, sugar and with the exception of a very scanty sprinkling now and then, no salt. I can say from a ten year's residence with Master Epps, that no slave of his is ever likely to suffer from the gout, superinduced by excessive high living.

Unlike Pennington's plantation, where the master distributed cornmeal already ground, on the Epps plantation, where Northup was enslaved, the corn was given by the ear. So the slaves had to pro cess it, sh.e.l.l it, and grind it into meal on their own time, which added to their already overburdened schedules. Northup's account gives a sense of the never-ending, bone-numbing labor slaves did day in and day out. He notes that after the work in the fields was over, the slaves still had to attend to their other ch.o.r.es-feeding the animals, cutting wood, and the like-before they could finally go to their own cabins to build their own fire, grind the corn, and then prepare their meager suppers as well as the midday meal to take to the fields the next day. This midday meal was usually a form of corn ash cake with bacon. By the time all this was accomplished, he states simply, "it is usually midnight." The dreaded horn or the equally hated bell, depending on the plantation, rang before daybreak, calling them back to the fields for another day's toil. On the Epps plantation and many others, being caught in the quarters after daybreak was cause for flogging.

The midday meal was often taken to the fields and eaten there or was distributed by others so the rhythm of the fieldwork wasn't interrupted. Often superannuated slaves who could no longer do hard labor were selected to distribute meals. John Brown, who had been a slave in Virginia in the first half of the nineteenth century, noted that the first full meal at the plantation on which he was enslaved was served in the field at noon after the cotton was weighed. It was a soup made from cornmeal and potatoes, called "lob-lolly" or "stirt-about." A pint of it was served into a tin pan that each slave carried at his waist, and, as Brown remembered, "the distribution and disposal of the mess did not take long."

Young children were usually fed communally. They were given a mash of cornmeal and milk in a communal kitchen by women who were too old or too infirm to be otherwise useful. Fannie Moore of South Carolina remembered the midday meal in a 1930s account recorded by the Works Progress Administration (WPA): My granny cooked for us chillums, while our mammy away in the fiel'. Dey warn't much cookin' to do. Jes' make co'n pone an' bring in de milk. She hab a big bowl wif enough wooden spoons tro go 'roun'. She put milk in de bowl an' break it [the cornbread] upp. Den she put de bowl in the middle of de flo' an' all de chilluln grab a spoon.

Slave narratives generally agree that the location for eating evening meals was the slave quarters. Many recalled that after the labor on the plantation was finished, the yard that was common ground in the quarters would begin to hum with life as individuals and families began to prepare evening meals, socialized, and savored what few minutes of private time they had. The chimneys in the slave cabins, although frequently made of daub and wattle and not stone, served for heating and cooking, which was done indoors in the winter when fires were necessary for warmth. In the summer, when the additional heat would be oppressive, cooking was done outdoors over a fire of some sort in the plantation yard.

f.a.n.n.y Kemble was the reluctant mistress of a Southern plantation. A British actress, she met and married Pearce Mease Butler, scion of an ill.u.s.trious South Carolina family with plantations in the Sea Islands, following a successful American tour. Her visit to the plantations and the journal that she kept during her almost fifteen-week stay offers a view of the meals of the enslaved from the other side of the social spectrum. The meals on her plantation were distributed from a communal kitchen.

The second meal in the day is at night, after their labor is over, having worked, at the very least very least, six hours without intermission of rest or refreshment since their noonday meal (properly so-called, for 'tis meal meal and nothing else). Those that I pa.s.sed today sitting on their doorsteps, or on the ground round them eating were the people employed at the mill and threshing floor. As these are near to the settlement, they had time to get their food from the cookshop. Chairs, tables, plates, knives, forks, they had none; they sat, as I said, on the earth or doorsteps, and ate either out of their little cedar tubs or in an iron pot, some few with broken iron spoons, more with pieces of wood, and all the children with their fingers. A more complete sample of savage feeding I never beheld. and nothing else). Those that I pa.s.sed today sitting on their doorsteps, or on the ground round them eating were the people employed at the mill and threshing floor. As these are near to the settlement, they had time to get their food from the cookshop. Chairs, tables, plates, knives, forks, they had none; they sat, as I said, on the earth or doorsteps, and ate either out of their little cedar tubs or in an iron pot, some few with broken iron spoons, more with pieces of wood, and all the children with their fingers. A more complete sample of savage feeding I never beheld.

All the enslaved were not in the miserable conditions Kemble describes. On some plantations, they were a.s.signed their own tin pans or were able to barter for wooden utensils. Archaeologists began to look intensely at the remains of slave quarters for the first time in the 1960s, and they have been a remarkable source of information. In the slave quarters at Mount Vernon they have found items ranging from white and brown glazed stoneware to Chinese porcelain to Rhenish stoneware that must have come from the Big House-possibly they'd been cracked or broken. Of the pieces found, slipware and white salt-glazed stoneware seem to predominate, but the most intriguing sherds are those called colonoware. These pieces of hand-thrown, low-fired, unglazed earthenware were once thought to be Native American pottery, but increasingly evidence has pointed to the creation of colonoware by African Americans potters as well. More interesting, the African American forms of colonoware seem to resemble pottery still made in parts of Western Africa and used in cooking and serving food there. Many of the pieces found in both Virginia and South Carolina are from bowls that would have been used to hold the African-inspired one-pot soupy stews and porridgelike mashes that were the enslaved's daily fare.

The cooking of the slave yard inadvertently allowed the enslaved to maintain an African tradition of one-pot meals sopped with starches and stews of leafy greens seasoned with smoked or pickled ingredients. Ingenuity was called upon to relieve the forced monotony of the slave diet and inspired whatever creativity could be wrung from a peck of corn and three pounds of salt pork. Hunting by slave women and men after their hours of plantation labor allowed them to add new meats such as possum, turkey, racc.o.o.n, and rabbit to the pot.

Foraging and gardening in provision grounds produced greens and foodstuffs with the taste of Africa, like okra, eggplant, and chilies. The culinary monotony would change only at holiday time, most notably at Christmas, and occasionally at family weddings and harvest time. Then all but the most miserly master allowed the enslaved some modic.u.m of feasting. Solomon Northup writes: The table is spread in the open air, and loaded with varieties of meat and piles of vegetables. Bacon and cornmeal at such times are dispensed with. Sometimes cooking is performed in the kitchen on the plantation, at others in the shade of wide branching trees. In the latter case, a ditch is dug in the ground, and wood laid and burned until it is filled with glowing coals, over which chickens, ducks, turkeys, pigs, and not unfrequently the body of an entire wild ox, are roasted. They are furnished also with flour, of which biscuits are made, and often with peach and other preserves, with tarts, and every manner and description of pies ... Only the slave who has lived all the years on his scanty allowance of meal and bacon, can appreciate such suppers. White people in great numbers a.s.semble to witness the gastronomical enjoyments.

The feasting was followed by general merriment including dances, and on some plantations the enslaved were given hard cider or whiskey as well.

Harriet Jacobs, the first female slave to write a narrative, in 1858, describes the Johnkannus, bands of slaves masquerading in rags who played music on an instrument known as a "gumbo box." In an African parallel to European caroling, they would go from plantation to plantation, begging for Christmas donations, which they received in the form of money or liquor.

Christmas is a day of feasting, both white and colored people. Slaves who are lucky to have a few shillings, are sure to spend them for good eating; and many a turkey or pig is captured without saying, "By your leave, sir." Those who cannot obtain these, cook a 'possum, or a racc.o.o.n, from which savory dishes can be made. My grandmother raised poultry and pigs for sale; and it was her established custom to have both a turkey and a pig roasted for Christmas dinner.

Other occasions of relative feasting for the enslaved were harvest time or corn-shucking time. At these times and generally when there were guests or celebrations like birthdays, weddings, or other large gatherings at the Big House, there might be barbecues. The cooks for these events were black men, who used their talents to create the iconic Afro-Southern dish.

Night befo' dem barbecues, I used to stay up all night a-cooking and basting de meats with barbecue sa.s.s. It was made of vinegar, black and red pepper, salt, b.u.t.ter, a little sage, coriander, basil, onion, and garlic. Some folks drop a little sugar in it. On a long p.r.o.nged stick, I wraps a soft rag or cotton for a swab, and all de night long, I swabs de meat til it drip into de fire. Dem drippings change de smoke into seasoned fumes dat smoke de meat. We turn de meat over and swab it dat way allnight long til it ooze seasoning and bake all through.

The Christmas holiday, which might last as long as a week, was a welcome respite. When the holidays were over and the festivities ended, it was back to the work routine of up before the dawn bell, back after dusk, and meals that rang in all possible changes on monotonous rations of corn and hog with what ever additions could be found, foraged, or filched. The world of plenty, however, was never far away. It existed in the Big House, where the master and his guests dined nightly on foods raised, processed, prepared, served, and cleaned up by the enslaved. The Big House kitchen was where the tastes of Africa truly began to colonize those of Europe.

The Big House kitchen was one of the centers of power during the antebellum period in the South; from it, the cook, solo or in conjunction with the mistress of the house, fed the master's family and often oversaw the feeding of all on the plantation. At some of the loftier plantations there could be twenty or more guests to dinner every evening. By the early eighteenth century, it had become custom in the South for the kitchens at plantation houses to be placed in a building that was separate from the main house. John Michael Vlach, a specialist in the architecture of the Southern plantation, suggests that "the detached kitchen was an important emblem of hardening social boundaries and the everyday society created by slaveholders that increasingly demanded clearer definitions of status, position, and authority." Other reasons were more practical. If the kitchen was removed from the house, any kitchen fire would not endanger the Big House complex.

The Big House kitchens were the epicenter of food preparation on the plantation. They were equipped with ma.s.sive hearths, complete with turning spits and an array of pots and pans and the people to tend them. Mariah Robinson, who must have had intimate knowledge of hearth cooking, recalled these kitchens in the 1930s WPA slave narratives: Dere wuzn't any stoves long slavery times. An de chimb-leys wuz made special to cook an'warm by dem. Dey built dem out of rock or stick an'dirt. Ledges wuz lef' on each side an' a long heavy green pole wuz put 'cross from one ledge to another. Dis wuz high up in the chimbley to keep it from burning in de flames. On dis rod wuz hooks and chains to hang pots an' things to cook with. Dey call dese pot hooks, pot hangers, pot claws, and crooks. Dey wuz hung at different lengths so as to cook hot or jes warm. Effen dey wuzn't careful, dis long log would burn through an' spill everything an' bend or break de cooking vessels. Sometimes dey would burn a person when dey spilled.Some of the pots and kettles had legs an' de skillets an' sauce pans had slim legs, so dat day could be placed wid deir food on little beds of coals which had been raked to one side of the hearth. Dere was a trivet to set skillets and pots on over the coals. Dese trivets had [three] legs, some shot to put de pot right on de fire to cook quick, an' some had long legs so dat de food would jes keep warm and not cook much.

The hearth cooking that went on in these kitchens was an arduous endeavor punctuated by lifting heavy cast-iron pots and spiders, bending and arranging and maintaining flame levels, and hauling buckets of ash and used charcoal. In addition, there was always the omnipresent fear that the women's long skirts would sweep up a spark and catch fire. All this was accomplished under the watchful eye of the mistress, who, on any plantation of size, did none of the heavy lifting.

Usually, this world was presided over by a slave cook, who was under the direction of the mistress and in charge of all food preparation. The Big House slave cook was a trusted individual who was given the allowance of ingredients for the meals to prepare and made responsible not only for their preparation but also for overseeing the folks required to do it. The role was one of favor, as house servants occasionally had access to more food. However, the position of Big House cook as one to be envied was not always the case, as remembered by Harriet Jacobs. She recalled the eagle eye with which her mistress, the dyspeptic and aptly named Mrs. Flint, watched over her provisions. The raw materials that were allotted to her grandmother for the preparations of th