Slavery In The Cuisine

1750 Words4 Pages

We will redefine the mythical “Mammy” image that is often portrayed in the slave owner’s kitchen to reveal the slave cook’s complex role in slavery and their legacy in reshaping Southern Cuisine with a semblance of the food that graces southern tables today. For centuries, African slaves were considered prominent cooks in Egyptian households. In Muslim Spain, too, male slaves prepared meals in aristocratic homes while their wives prepared food in poorer homes. Even today, women in sub-Saharan areas in Africa are often hired to prepare couscous. West African slaves in the colonies were also skilled cooks and took advantage of other cross-cultural ingredients that entered the country to create new cuisines. For over three hundred years, …show more content…

She was slightly lame in one leg..(She) was kept about the house and taught to cook (during her childhood). And right well did she learn her trade; for she became one of the most expert cooks in all that region of country. And she took special pride in her profession, especially when company came to visit the white folks. All they had to do was to give Granny the materials and tell her what to do with them, and it was done. She always carefully followed the instructions given by Mrs. Frierson or Miss Mary Ann, and all was right. When that breakfast, that dinner or that supper was sent into the dining room, especially when company was "in the house," if the reader had been privileged to look upon it, or to sniff its delicious odor, he would have thought that there was a Parisian caterer who presided over that …show more content…

Skill set
In slavery, the positions of seamstress and cook were the only positions for female slaves that were considered as skilled or artistic work. Many cooks that worked in the kitchen were raised in the kitchen at an early age and were taught how to cook across generational lines. Mandy Marrow, a former slave recalled:

Mammy and my grandma am cooks and powerful good and dey 's larnt me and dat hew I come to be a cook… W 'en I 's gits big 'nough to be larnt, I 's he 'p mammy an ' dat way, I 's larnt to p 'eserve an ' 'tend to curin ' meat an ' all sich. I 's follow de cookin ' w 'en I 's gits big an ' goes fo ' myself.

Plantation papers also reveal that some enslaved cooks did not inherit the position as a cook, but were chosen from the entire plantation community. No matter how enslaved cooks were chosen, they all embodied incredible skill and technique that separated them from the larger labor pool. Enslaved cooks were accountable for the full production of daily meals and presenting elaborate banquets for their slave owner’s many grand affairs. David Hunter Strother, a writer, eloquently summed up the talent of the slave cook after stopping for a meal at a house in Amherst County, Central

Open Document