A look into the agricultural and culinary history of the American South and the challenges of its reclaiming farming and cooking traditions. Southern food is America’s quintessential cuisine. From creamy grits to simmering pots of beans and greens, we think we know how these classic foods should taste. Yet the southern food we eat today tastes almost nothing like the dishes our ancestors enjoyed, because the varied crops and livestock that originally defined this cuisine have largely disappeared. Now a growing movement of chefs and farmers is seeking to change that by recovering the rich flavor and diversity of southern food. At the center of that movement is historian David S. Shields, who has spent over a decade researching early American agricultural and cooking practices. In Southern Provisions, he reveals how the true ingredients of southern cooking have been all but forgotten and how the lessons of its current restoration and recultivation can be applied to other regional foodways. Shields’s turf is the southern Lowcountry, from the peanut patches of Wilmington, North Carolina to the sugarcane fields of the Georgia Sea Islands and the citrus groves of Amelia Island, Florida. He takes us on a historical excursion to this region, drawing connections among plants, farms, growers, seed brokers, vendors, cooks, and consumers over time. Shields begins by looking at how professional chefs during the nineteenth century set standards of taste that elevated southern cooking to the level of cuisine. He then turns to the role of food markets in creating demand for ingredients and enabling conversation between producers and preparers. Next, his focus shifts to the field, showing how the key ingredients—rice, sugarcane, sorghum, benne, cottonseed, peanuts, and citrus—emerged and went on to play a significant role in commerce and consumption. Shields concludes with a look at the challenges of reclaiming both farming and cooking traditions. From Carolina Gold rice to white flint corn, the ingredients of authentic southern cooking are returning to fields and dinner plates, and with Shields as our guide, we can satisfy our hunger both for the most flavorful regional dishes and their history. Praise for Southern Provisions “People are always asking me what the most important book written about southern food is. You are holding it in your hands.” —Sean Brock, executive chef, Husk “An impassioned history of the relationship between professional cooking, markets and planting in the American South which argues that true regionality is to be found not in dishes, but in ingredients.” —Times Literary Supplement

This volume in the American Antiquarian Cookbook Collection, published in New York in 1830, is a new version of a famous recipe collection previously published in London by William Kitchiner, adapted specifically for use by the American public. Dr. William Kitchiner’s The Cook’s Oracle was an enormous best-seller upon publication in London in 1824, and the author developed an international reputation based on his eccentricities and the extravagance of his writing. Unlike most food writers of the day, he cooked the food himself, washed up afterward, and performed all the household tasks he wrote about. He traveled around with a “portable cabinet of taste,” a folding box containing all of his unique mustards and sauces, and he was well known for his invention of the popular Wow-Wow sauce. No wonder that an anonymous American “medical gentleman” (as asserted on the title page of this edition) chose to adapt Kitchiner’s English cookbook for American kitchens. In addition to over 600 recipes that run the full gamut of nineteenth century cookery, the book includes information about etiquette, dinner invitations, weights and measures (one of the first attempts to standardize cookbook measurements), carving, marketing advice, and techniques of boiling, baking, roasting, frying, and broiling. This edition of The Cook’s Oracle was reproduced by permission from the volume in the collection of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts. Founded in 1812 by Isaiah Thomas, a Revolutionary War patriot and successful printer and publisher, the society is a research library documenting the lives of Americans from the colonial era through 1876. The society collects, preserves, and makes available as complete a record as possible of the printed materials from the early American experience. The cookbook collection comprises approximately 1,100 volumes.

Published in 1843 in Philadelphia, this volume in the American Antiquarian Cookbook Collection is derived from an earlier English work that author J. M. Sanderson heavily adapted for American usage, creating not only a cookbook that combined the best of American and European cooking of the time, but perhaps one of the first “international” cookbooks. James M. Sanderson’s The Complete Cook contains over 700 recipes, including “directions for the choice of meat and poultry; preparations for cooking, making soups and broths; boiling, roasting, baking and frying meats, fish; seasonings, colourings, cooking vegetables; preparing salads, clarifying; making of pastry, puddings, gruels, gravies, garnishes, and, with general directions for making wines.” According to the title page and his introduction, Sanderson clearly states that the majority of his book was copied heavily from a well-known English work, and he is but the adaptor. We now know the uncredited author was W. G. Lewis. Sanderson’s small contributions throughout create an excellent combination of American and English cooking. For example, he provides an American recipe for Pumpkin Pie alongside the English version, comments on cooking in the excessive heat of the West Indies, and refers to a superior English method for boiling meat without contact with the water. There are quite a few American recipes cited with their English counterparts and referred to as “the American mode,” for example, “The American Mode of Dressing Salt Fish.” This edition of The Complete Cook was reproduced by permission from the volume in the collection of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts. Founded in 1812 by Isaiah Thomas, a Revolutionary War patriot and successful printer and publisher, the society is a research library documenting the lives of Americans from the colonial era through 1876. The society collects, preserves, and makes available as complete a record as possible of the printed materials from the early American experience. The cookbook collection comprises approximately 1,100 volumes.

Published in 1874 in Leavenworth, Kansas, during the post-Civil War charity cookbook boom, The Kansas Home Cook-Book is a fascinating, genuine example of how women during this time were able to express their political influence through sales of cookbook collections. Besides the fund-raising that the cookbook provided, this culinary collection showcases the cooking talents of local women, what was common fare during the time period, and the local community opinions and prejudices. Each recipe is individually attributed and adds to the personal tone of the collection, which includes recipes with a Midwestern influence, such as Mrs. Elvira Burr’s Strawberry Short Cake, Prairie Chicken and Buckwheat Griddle Cakes, and Mrs. C. Foster’s Breakfast Rolls. With its special historical context and authentic local recipes, The Kansas Home Cook-Book is regional book in its origins, but it has modern-day appeal throughout the country. This edition of The Kansas Home Cook-Book was reproduced by permission from the volume in the collection of the American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts. Founded in 1812 by Isaiah Thomas, a Revolutionary War patriot and successful printer and publisher, the society is a research library documenting the lives of Americans from the colonial era through 1876. The society collects, preserves, and makes available as complete a record as possible of the printed materials from the early American experience. The cookbook collection comprises approximately 1,100 volumes.