soul food

Etymology

The term soul food became popular during the 1960s and 1970s in the midst of the Black Power movement. One of the earliest written uses of the term is found in The Autobiography of Malcolm X, which was published in 1965. LeRoi Jones (later known as Amiri Baraka) published an article entitled "Soul Food" and was one of the key proponents for establishing the food as a part of the Black American identity. Those who had participated in the Great Migration found within soul food a reminder of the home and family they had left behind after moving to unfamiliar northern cities. Soul food restaurants were Black-owned businesses that served as neighborhood meeting places where people socialized and ate together. According to author Laretta Henderson, middle-class African Americans embrace their "blackness" by preparing and eating soul food. Henderson wrote:In its culinary incarnation, "soul food" was associated with a shared history of oppression and inculcated, by some, with cultural pride. Soul food was eaten by the bondsmen. It was also the food former slaves incorporated into their diet after emancipation. Therefore, during the 1960s, middle-class blacks used their reported consumption of soul food to distance themselves from the values of the white middle class, to define themselves ethnically, and to align themselves with lower-class blacks. Irrespective of political affiliation or social class, the definition of "blackness", or "soul", became part of everyday discourse in the black community. This style of cooking is celebrated in the month of June, called National Soul Food month.

History

Transatlantic slave trade

During the period of the transatlantic slave trade, enslaved people ate African foods aboard slave ships. These included rice, millet, okra, black-eyed peas, yams, and legumes such as kidney beans and lima beans. These crops were brought to North America and became a staple in Southern cuisine. One enslaved African aboard a slave ship recalled later that all they ate were yams on the voyage from Africa to Charleston, South Carolina. Slave ships were provisioned with African vegetables, fruits, and animals to feed the enslaved people bound in chains below the ships' decks. These items were later planted and used in the New World for food and as cash crops. The introduction of African plants to the Americas that shaped American cuisine was part of the Columbian exchange. Researchers from Mercer University Libraries said: "The foods selected to bring to America were brought over for specific reasons. 'They all remain palatable long after harvesting and were thus ideal for use on the slow voyage from Africa. Secondly, they are all the edible parts of plants that thrive in the American South, and therefore they flourished once they had been planted hopefully by the slave in the garden space allotted to him on his owner's plantation'". Another way rice, okra, and millet came to North America was by enslaved African women on slave ships hiding the seeds of rice, okra, and millet in their braided hair as a precaution against an unknown future in the new land where they would be forced to work.

The guineafowl is a bird indigenous to Africa imported to the Americas by way of the slave trade; the bird was brought by the Spanish to the Caribbean, and introduced to the South of what is now the United States in the early 16th century. Guinea fowl became a source of meat for enslaved Black Americans and eventually part of the subsistence culture of the whole region. On American plantations, enslaved people consumed the eggs of the guinea fowl, as well as cooking the meat with rice like their West-Central African forebears. Enslaved Africans in the South continued to prepare their traditional dishes of guinea fowl and plant foods native to West and Central Africa. They adapted European and Native American foods and cooking methods to create new recipes that were passed down orally in Black families and later published in African-American cookbooks by the end of the American Civil War.

Slavery

Soul food recipes have pre-slavery influences, as West African and European foodways were adapted to the environment of the region. Soul food originated in the home cooking of the rural Southern United States or the "Deep South" during the time of slavery, using locally gathered or raised foods and other inexpensive ingredients. Rabbits, squirrels, and deer were often hunted for meat. Fish, frogs, crawfish, turtles, shellfish, and crab were often collected from fresh waters, salt waters, and marshes. Soul food cookery began when African American/Black American enslaved people learned to make do with what they were given to eat by their enslavers: leftovers and the undesirable parts of animals such as ham hocks, hog jowls and pigs' feet, ears, skin, and intestines, which white plantation owners did not eat. Soul food was created by enslaved African Americans, who made meals out of minimal ingredients. Slaves combined their knowledge of West-Central African cooking methods with techniques borrowed from Native Americans and Europeans, thus creating soul food.

Pork and corn were two staple items in the Southern United States for both slave owners and slaves. Many of the foods integral to the cuisine originated in the limited foodstuffs that poor southern subsistence farmers had at hand. This in turn was reflected in the rations given to enslaved people—typically a peck of cornmeal and 3–4 pounds of pork per week—and those rations formed the basis of African American soul food. Most enslaved people needed to consume a high-calorie diet to replenish the calories spent working long days in the fields or performing other physically arduous tasks. The slave owners would have smoked ham and corn pudding while the enslaved were left with the offal. The leftovers and scraps from meals cooked for the "big houses" (plantation houses) were called "juba" by the enslaved. They were put in troughs on Sundays for the slaves to eat. The term "juba" occurs in numerous African languages, and folk knowledge records that early on it had the meaning of "little bits" of food.

Archaeological and historical research concerning slave cabins in the Southern United States indicates that enslaved African Americans used bowls more often than flatware and plates, suggesting that they primarily made stews and "gumbo" for meals, using local ingredients gathered in nature, vegetables grown in their gardens, and leftover animal scraps rejected by their enslavers. This process allowed enslaved people to create new dishes, for which they developed a variety of ways to season and add spice using hot sauces they prepared. The research shows that white plantation families more often used plates and flatware, indicating that they ate meals consisting of individual cuts of meats and vegetables that were not blended into one dish like the stews made by enslaved people. Enslaved people living on plantations located along the Atlantic coast developed a diversity of foodways enabled by their access to seafood.

Foodways on the Underground Railroad

Freedom seekers (runaway slaves) foraged, fished, and hunted for food on their journey to freedom on the Underground Railroad. With these ingredients, they prepared one-pot meals (stews), a West African cooking method. Enslaved and free Black people left food outside their front doors to provide nourishment to the freedom seekers. The meals created on the Underground Railroad became a part of the foodways of Black Americans called soul food. For example, Thomas Downing was born enslaved in 1791 on Chincoteague Island, on the Eastern Shore of Virginia. He learned how to harvest clams, oysters, and terrapin from the Chincoteague Bay, a lagoon of the Atlantic Ocean between Chincoteague and Assateague islands, and prepared meals from this seafood. Downing left Virginia during the War of 1812 and traveled to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, a city that had Black Americans working in the culinary industry. There, he settled in the free Black community and found work catching oysters. Gaining his freedom in 1819, Downing, his wife, and sons moved to New York City, where the Hudson River provided work for New York's African American men working on the water harvesting oysters. By 1825 he had opened an oyster cellar, "Downing's Oyster House", on Broadway Street, in the city's business district. There he served raw, fried, and stewed oysters, oyster pie, fish with oyster sauce, and poached turkey stuffed with oysters. In the basement of his restaurant, Downing and his eldest son George hid people who were escaping slavery and seeking freedom. Downing became known as the "Oyster King of New York".

Slave recipes

In the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration paid American writers to gather stories from the last generations of African Americans born into slavery that are called slave narratives. Alongside the narratives are collections of recipes for sauces, desserts, and cooked meat and seafood dishes made by formerly enslaved African Americans. These records have been studied by John Blassingame, Michael Twitty, Jessica B. Harris, and other historians as they reveal the food culture and diets of enslaved people. The narratives show how enslaved people created new dishes that influenced Southern cuisine in the United States. The foods enslaved people prepared in the kitchens for white plantation families influenced the diets and cooking methods of European Americans.

Research from slave narratives showed enslaved people cooked sweet potatoes by roasting or frying them in lard. Sweet potatoes were mashed and sweetened with molasses. A traditional soul food dessert in Black families for Thanksgiving and Christmas is sweet potato pie. Enslaved people also consumed pot liquor, the liquid left behind after boiling greens. George Key, who was born enslaved in Arkansas, said: "We had stew made out of pork and potatoes, and sometimes greens and pot liquor, and we had ash cake mostly, but biscuits about once a month." Making pot liquor continued after emancipation. Jackie Torrence, an African American storyteller, remembers her grandmother making pot liquor from mustard greens, collard greens, pinto beans, peas, and white potatoes as gravy. Pot liquor was also used as a healing remedy to treat earache and ingrown toenails.

A former slave named Wesley Jones from South Carolina gave a recipe to make a vinegar-based barbecue sauce using black and red peppers and vinegar. Wesley said slaves barbecued meats often, smoking and basting their meats with this homemade barbecue sauce; they would stay up all night slow cooking the meat. Other slave narratives described barbecuing as a preferred method of cooking because it added flavor and spice to food. Slaves barbecued their foods for special occasions and on their days off. Henry Bland, a former slave who lived in Georgia, said slaves had July 4 (Independence Day) off from work, allowing them to barbecue food, play ball games, wrestle, and make music.

A former slave named Callie Elder from Georgia said her grandfather cooked catfish with lard, salt, and pepper, and rolled the catfish in cornmeal before baking. Former slave Clara Davis from Alabama cooked catfish using tomatoes and potatoes or prepared baked catfish with a tomato gravy and sweet potatoes. Slaves in the South fried catfish in lard or other fats and seasoned their food with salt acquired from evaporated sea water. Enslaved people made use of fruits like apples and peaches that had been introduced to North America by European colonists. Some fruits, such as apples, were battered and deep fried in oil, fruit fritters were also fried, and peaches were stewed. Former slaves Mose King from Arkansas and Rose Williams from Texas described eating goat. Mary Minus Biddie was a former slave from Florida and said enslaved people cooked goat in a smokehouse. David Goodman Gullins was a former slave from Georgia and said they prepared barbecued goat. Goat is a traditional meat in West Africa and was commonly cooked and eaten in the American south by slaves.

Barbecue traditions

Enslaved Africans in the American south contributed their own influence to the American barbecue tradition. The first people to barbecue food in North America were Indigenous people/Native Americans. West and Central Africans had their own method of barbecuing food that they brought to the Americas and the West Indies. The Hausa people in West Africa had a term for barbecue, babbake. This term is used "...to describe a complex of words referring to grilling, toasting, building a large fire, singeing hair or feathers and cooking food over a long period of time over an extravagant fire". The blending of Native American and African styles of barbecuing meat contributed to the creation of the current barbecuing culture in the US. During slavery times, white plantation owners left the labor-intensive work of preparing and barbecuing food to their slaves. Food historian Adrian Miller said the history of Black people and barbecue during slavery: "Blackness and barbecue were wedded in the public imagination because old-school barbecue was so labour intensive. Someone had to clear the area where the barbecue was held, chop and burn the wood for cooking, dig the pit, butcher, process, cook and season the animals, serve the food, entertain the guests and clean up afterward. Given the racial dynamics of the antebellum South, enslaved African Americans were forced to do that work. The media, in turn, took note that a barbecue, as a social event, was a black experience from beginning to end." On Fourth of July celebrations, the enslaved prepared barbecued food for white politicians and their enslavers.

Enslaved people brought their own influences on the creation of barbecue sauce. Hot and sweet sauces are used in West and Central African cuisine to add flavor, heat, and moisture to food. In 1748, Peter Kalm, a Swedish-Finnish botanist, noted enslaved Africans in Philadelphia cultivated guinea peppers and the pods were pounded and "mixed with salt preserved in a bottle" to make sauces poured over fish and meats. Frederick Douglass Opie, writing in his book Hog and Hominy, describes the origins of soul food in Africa: "African women cooked most meats over an open pit and ate them with a sauce similar to what we now call a barbecue sauce, made from lime or lemon juice and hot peppers." "Slaves made up a large percentage of the Texas population by 1860. During this time they brought with them the idea of cooking over an open fire and dousing meats with a sauce, that sounds an awful lot like the barbecue sauce we know today." After the American Civil War, a Black pitmaster named Arthur Watts, brought his family's barbecue sauce recipe and barbecuing methods to Kewanee, Illinois and became a well-known pitmaster. In African-American communities, barbecuing food became a preferred method of cooking during Emancipation Day celebrations.

Emancipation

On January 1, 1863, Gullah people in the Sea Islands of South Carolina celebrated their freedom on New Year's Day at Camp Saxton in Beaufort with food and barbecues. Black people in the barrier islands of South Carolina became free early during the American Civil War after the Battle of Port Royal on November 7, 1861, when many of the plantation owners and white residents fled the area after the arrival of the Union Navy and Army. As a result, over 10,000 African Americans became free on that day. However, their freedom was not official in government writing until the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation on New Year's Day in 1863. Thousands of newly freed people celebrated their freedom with food, song, and dance. Charlotte Forten, the first black teacher at the Penn School on St. Helena Island in Beaufort, attended the Emancipation Day celebration at Camp Saxton and recorded in her journal they ate roasted oxen and barbecue. Susie King Taylor, a Geechee woman born enslaved in Liberty County, Georgia, wrote in her memoir that she had also attended the Emancipation Day celebration at Camp Saxton: "It was a glorious day for us all, and we enjoyed every minute of it, and as a fitting close and crowning event of this occasion we had a grand barbecue". Other Emancipation Day celebrations were celebrated with a barbecue feast, a tradition that originated in the slave community.

After the American Civil War, 4 million African Americans were freed from slavery. They celebrated their newly won freedom with barbecues and Emancipation Day celebrations and prepared soul food meals. Two months after the Civil War ended in April 1865, slaveholders in Galveston, Texas refused to tell their slaves the Civil War had ended and they were free. On June 19, 1865, United States Brigadier General Gordon Granger and his troops arrived in Galveston and issued General order No. 3. This order enforced the Emancipation Proclamation which declared enslaved people in Texas were now free. To celebrate their freedom, African Americans in Galveston, and other Black communities in the United States, gathered at public parks and prepared red foods that represent the color of freedom. These celebrations are called Juneteenth, which became a national holiday under the Biden Administration in the year 2021.

According to food historian Michael Twitty, the reason African Americans eat red food on Juneteenth is that it reminds them of the blood of their ancestors that was shed during slavery, and the cultural colors of the Yoruba and Bakongo people, who were enslaved in the Southern United States and brought to North America under the slave trade. Among the Yoruba and Bakongo people, the color red represents power, sacrifice, and transformation. The red foods eaten at Juneteenth are, watermelon, red lemonade, and red velvet cake. In addition to red foods, BBQ, fried foods, and other cooked meals are prepared to celebrate the day of freedom.

Global spread of African-American cuisine

The global spread of soul food came during World War I and World War II. Thousands of Black Americans enlisted in the army as soldiers and nurses. Some Black soldiers chose to stay overseas than return to the United States where Jim Crow laws, racism, and lynchings were widespread. African American service men and women opened soul food restaurants in Europe, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, and Japan and introduced African-American cuisine to people in foreign countries. In the 1920s through the 1940s, African-American culture was popular in France. French people enjoyed jazz, African-American dance, and cuisine. Food historian Adrian Miller said the global spread of soul food: "The global spread of soul food really took off after the end of World War II. After the war, recently discharged black military veterans in the European theater stayed overseas to open and operate restaurants. At first, they cooked mainly for African Americans who were active-duty military and serving at nearby bases. In some of the countries where the United States had a military presence, like France, Germany, Japan, Vietnam, and Thailand, it was easy for these entrepreneurs to find the cheap ingredients they needed for their recipes, because the locals ate similar foods: chicken, fish, greens, okra, pork, sweet potatoes."

Mid-20th century to present day

The introduction of soul food to cities such as Washington, D.C., Baltimore, and Harlem came during the Great Migration as African Americans moved to the North looking for work. Sylvia Woods was born in Hemingway, South Carolina in 1926. When Woods was a teenager she moved to Harlem and worked in a Brooklyn factory. In 1954, Woods changed jobs and started working at Johnson's Luncheonette located in central Harlem. Seven years later, Woods and her husband purchased the luncheonette and opened it as a soul food restaurant in 1962, calling it Sylvia's Restaurant. Sylvia Woods became known as the "queen of soul food."

Food historian Adrian Miller studied soul food's development in Maryland and in Northern American states. Soul food in Maryland's Black communities added local flavors from seafood from the Chesapeake Bay. People in Maryland fried chicken in shallow fat in a frying pan, covering it with a lid, thus frying and steaming the chicken, which was served with waffles. Chicken and waffles became a common soul food item to eat in Black communities in Maryland and in Harlem, New York. During the blues and jazz era, musicians and singers performed and practiced late into the night and stopped at black-owned restaurants for food where cooks prepared fried chicken and waffles for their customers. Nightclubs in Black communities in the United States during the Jim Crow era were called the Chitlin' Circuit, named after the dish that was usually associated with Black southerners and soul food. The Chitlin' Circuit was given its name by entertainers because it included black-owned night clubs that served chitlins (chitterlings) and soul food.

During the civil rights movement, soul food restaurants were places where civil rights leaders and activists met to discuss and strategize civil rights protests and ideas for implementing social and political change. Paschal's Restaurant in Atlanta, like Georgia Gilmore's eatery in Montgomery, had an important part in the civil rights movement. Upon returning to Atlanta from Montgomery, Martin Luther King got permission "to bring his team members and guests to Paschal's to eat, meet, rest, plan, and strategize." The Atlanta History Center said: "Throughout the civil rights movement in Atlanta, soul food restaurants were hubs of change where civil rights leaders could convene, converse, and strategize, and in times of terror and violence, these places were retreats where leaders could plan their next tactical moves, giving many of these spots a legacy beyond good cooking". Soul food restaurants in Atlanta, Georgia served as the primary meeting places for numerous civil rights leaders and supporters of the movement. Many politicians and civil rights leaders gathered to discuss plans about the movement at Paschal's Restaurant on West Hunter Street. In the 1950s and 1960s, civil rights icons such as Andrew Young, John Lewis, Martin Luther King Jr., Julian Bond, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., and Jesse Jackson frequented the restaurant, staying late into the night talking about civil rights strategies and politics. Several soul food restaurants were located on West Hunter Street because Jim Crow laws restricted where African Americans were allowed to operate their businesses.

Influences

African influence

Scholars have found substantial African influence in soul food recipes, especially from the West and Central regions of Africa. This influence can be seen in the heat level of many soul food dishes, as well as many ingredients used to prepare them. Peppers used to add spice to food include malagueta pepper, as well as variants native to the Western Hemisphere such as red (cayenne) peppers. Several foods essential to Southern cuisine and soul food were domesticated or consumed in the African savannah and the tropical regions of West and Central Africa. The foods brought from Africa to North America include gherkin, cantaloupe, eggplant, kola nuts, watermelon, pigeon peas, black-eyed peas, okra, sorghum, and guinea pepper.

A species of rice, Oryza glaberrima was domesticated in Africa, and many people brought to the Americas preserved rice cooking techniques. Rice was a cash crop in the South Carolina Lowcountry, and during the slave trade, Europeans selected coastal inhabitants of West Africa who had knowledge of rice cultivation. Rice is a staple side dish in the Lowcountry region and in Louisiana. It is a main ingredient in dishes such as jambalaya and red beans and rice, popular in Southern Louisiana. Recipes for rice and beans developed in West Africa were brought to the South Carolina Lowcountry by enslaved Africans and continue to be prepared by their descendants, the Gullah people. A Gullah dish of rice, black-eyed peas, onions, and bacon is Hoppin' John. Food historian Jessica B. Harris traces this dish to a Senegalese food called Chiebou niebe, made with rice and beef. Enslaved Black Americans in the United States thus created new dishes with origins in West Africa but using North American ingredients. A Gullah New Year tradition is eating Hoppin' John to bring in good luck. Customarily eaten on January 1 throughout the Lowcountry region, it is often paired with cornbread and collard greens, which are also said to bring prosperity.

Charleston red rice is made with rice and tomato paste. This dish originated from jollof rice in West Africa, a dish made with a tomato product that gives the rice its red color. In the Lowcountry of South Carolina and Georgia, enslaved Gullah Geechee people's main source of food was rice paired with meats and shellfish. These rice cooking techniques, influenced by rice dishes made in West Africa, are practiced today in Gullah communities.

There are many documented parallels between the foodways of West Africans and soul food recipes. The consumption of sweet potatoes in the United States echoes the consumption of yams in West Africa. The presence of cornbread on African-American tables is analogous to West African use of fufu to soak up sauces and stews.

Native American influence

Southeastern Native American culture is an important element of Southern cuisine. From their cultures came one of the main staples of the Southern diet: corn (maize), either ground into meal or limed with an alkaline salt to make hominy, in a Native American process known as nixtamalization. Corn was used to make all kinds of dishes, from the familiar cornbread and grits to liquors such as moonshine and whiskey (which are still important to the Southern economy). Black Americans in Tuskegee, Alabama combined molasses and leftover cooked grease, a combination they called "sap", to pour over their cornbread and "hoe cakes". An additional Native American influence in soul food is the use of maple syrup. Indigenous people used maple syrup to sweeten and add flavor to dishes; this influenced the foodways of African Americans as they used maple syrup to sweeten their dishes and poured syrup over pancakes and other breakfast foods.

The foods of Black Seminoles in Florida and Oklahoma are influenced by Gullah rice and bean dishes and Seminole foodways. Black Seminoles cooked rice, "sometimes applying a sauce of okra or spinach leaves". Historian Ray Von Robertson conducted oral interviews with sixteen Black Seminoles from 2006 and 2007 and found that Seminole cultural influences were incorporated into their daily lives in practices such as foodways and herbal medicine. Black Seminoles cooked and ate fry bread, sofkee, and grape dumplings.

Many fruits are available in this region: blackberries, muscadines, raspberries, and many other wild berries were part of Southern Native Americans' diets as well.To a far greater degree than anyone realizes, several of the most important food dishes that the Native Americans of the southeastern U.S.A live on today is the "soul food" eaten by both Black and White Southerners. Hominy, for example, is still eaten: Sofkee lives on as grits; cornbread [is] used by Southern cooks; Indian fritters -- variously known as "hoe cake" or "Johnny cake"; Indian boiled cornbread is present in Southern cuisine as "corn meal dumplings" and "hush puppies"; Southerners cook their beans and field peas by boiling them, as did the Native tribes; and, like the Native Americans, Southerners cured their meats and smoked it over hickory coals...African, European, and Native Americans of the American South supplemented their diets with meats derived from the hunting of native game. What meats people ate depended on seasonal availability and geographical region. Common game included opossums, rabbits, and squirrels.

Sauces and seasoning

Since the mid-20th century, Black Americans have seasoned cooked meats and vegetables with Lawry's Seasoned Salt. Because Lawry's is economical and offers multiple herbs and spices in one product, Black Americans use it in most of their dishes except sweet dishes. For extra flavor and spice, hot sauce is sprinkled over fried chicken and fish, collard greens, and other cooked foods. West Africans made variations of hot spicy sauces using hot peppers indigenous to the region. After their enslavement and transportation to the southern United States, they continued to make their own versions of hot sauces using spices and peppers from North America. By the mid-20th century, Black Americans were turning to store-bought hot sauces to add flavor and spice to their food. During slavery times, enslaved people had flavored their vegetables with bacon grease or other parts of the pig. This tradition continues today with Black families using pig feet, bacon grease, or turkey necks to flavor collard and turnip greens.

Culinary historian Michael Twitty thinks enslaved African Americans likely influenced the creation of Old Bay Seasoning, saying, "It's not that African Americans necessarily invented it, but without us, the story is impossible." In his travels to West Africa, Twitty observed how West Africans always add peppers, salt, and a hot condiment to their seafood dishes. Twitty believes enslaved West Africans were probably the first to put "kitchen pepper" on shellfish. In colonial America, kitchen pepper was a common kitchen spice blend that often included nutmeg, cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, allspice, ginger, black pepper, and mace. He notes that "there's always a peppery, salty kind of thing that you eat crustaceans with. It's always with a hot condiment—it's never just plain." Twitty believes that hundreds of years of cooking shellfish with kitchen pepper developed into the crab spice blends common in the Chesapeake Bay area when Gustav Brunn came to Baltimore.

The founder of the Old Bay Seasoning company, Gustav Brunn, was a German Jewish immigrant who came to the United States in the 1930s with his family to flee Adolf Hitler's ascent to power. After Brunn arrived in Baltimore, he created his own seafood seasoning blend influenced by local seasoning recipes and called it Delicious Brand Shrimp and Crab Seasoning, but it was not popular with the locals. Brunn changed the name to Old Bay and sold a few pounds of Old Bay to a nearby seafood wholesaler. Word spread and over time it became a popular seasoning. Seafood dishes in soul food cuisine today will have Old Bay as the primary seasoning combined with other herbs and sauces to add robust flavor.

Cultural relevance

Soul food originated in the southern region of the US and is consumed by African-Americans across the nation. Traditional soul food cooking is seen as one of the ways enslaved Africans passed their traditions to their descendants once they were brought to the US. It is a cultural creation stemming from slavery and Native American and European influences.

Soul food recipes are popular in the South due to the accessibility and affordability of the ingredients. Scholars have said that while white Americans provided the material supplies for soul food dishes, the cooking techniques found in many of the dishes have been visibly influenced by the enslaved Africans themselves.

The bountiful vegetables found in Africa were substituted in dishes down south with new leafy greens consisting of dandelion, turnip, and beet greens. Pork, more specifically hog, was introduced into several dishes in the form of cracklins from the skin, pigs' feet, chitterlings, and lard used to increase the fat intake into vegetable dishes. Spices such as thyme, and bay leaf blended with onion and garlic gave dishes their own characteristics.

Red drinks are common at African American social functions. Restaurants with a mostly black clientele typically serve at least one red drink. Red drinks are important in soul food culture because they represent social connections between friends and family, and a link with the African diaspora. Newbell Puckett, a southern sociologist who documented African American folk beliefs in his 1926 study, Folk Beliefs of the Southern Negro, said that there was cultural and historical continuity between African American culture and West African societies where red had been an important ritual and royal color for hundreds of years. There were two notable red drinks in West Africa, kola tea and hibiscus tea, by the time the Atlantic slave trade began. Kola tea was made from the nuts of West African trees, especially Cola nitida. Tea made from the dried red flowers of the hibiscus (Hibiscus sabdariffa), a plant related to okra, is used to make a tea called bissap or zobo, which is served cool. It is popular in Senegal, Gambia, Nigeria and other West African countries. Bissap was called sorrel tea or red sorrel in the Americas.

Figures such as LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), Elijah Muhammad, and Dick Gregory played notable roles in shaping the conversation around soul food. Muhammad and Gregory opposed soul food because they felt it was unhealthy and was slowly killing African-Americans. They saw soul food as a remnant of oppression and felt it should be left behind. Many African-Americans were offended by the Nation of Islam's rejection of pork as it is a staple ingredient used to flavor many dishes.

Health concerns

Soul food prepared traditionally and consumed in large amounts can be detrimental to one's health. Opponents of eating soul food have been vocal about health concerns surrounding the culinary traditions since the name was coined in the mid-20th century.

Soul food has been criticized for its high starch, fat, sodium, cholesterol, and caloric content, as well as the inexpensive and often low-quality nature of the ingredients such as salted pork and cornmeal. In light of this, soul food has been implicated by some in the disproportionately high rates of high blood pressure (hypertension), type 2 diabetes, clogged arteries (atherosclerosis), stroke, and heart attack suffered by African-Americans. Figures who led discussions surrounding the negative impacts of soul food include Dr. Alvenia Fulton, Dick Gregory, and Elijah Muhammad.

On the other hand, critics and traditionalists have argued that attempts to make soul food healthier also make it less tasty, as well as less culturally/ethnically authentic.

The nutritional value of most processed foods, and not just those implicated in a traditional perception of soul food, has degraded as the agricultural system in the United States became industrialized, fueled by federal subsidies. This urges a consideration of how concepts of racial authenticity evolve alongside changes in the structures that make some foods more available and accessible than others.

An important aspect of the preparation of soul food was the reuse of cooking lard. Because many cooks could not afford to buy new shortening to replace what they used, they would pour the liquefied cooking grease into a container. After cooling completely, the grease re-solidified and could be used again the next time the cook required lard. With changing fashions and perceptions of healthy eating, some cooks may use preparation methods that differ from those of cooks who came before them: using liquid oil like vegetable oil or canola oil for frying and cooking, and using smoked turkey instead of pork, for example. Changes in hog farming techniques have also resulted in drastically leaner pork, in the late 20th and 21st centuries. Some cooks have even adapted recipes to include vegetarian alternatives to traditional ingredients, including tofu and soy-based analogues. Several Black chefs have opened vegan soul food restaurants to cook healthier foods rooted in African American culture. Others, such as Jenne Claiborne, author of the Sweet Potato Soul Cookbook, have started a YouTube channel and show people how to prepare healthier soul food.