What Is Soul Food?
Caroline Randall Williams and Alice Randall. Photo: Penny De Los Santos
First and foremost, soul food refers to “the spirit in which the food was prepared,” novelist Alice Randall recently told us. “You feed your family and sustain them, both emotionally and physically.” Randall and her daughter, Caroline Randall Williams, just published a cookbook called Soul Food Love. It’s an homage to their heritage—the cooking of their family but also of many black Americans—and an attempt at changing people’s minds about what soul food is.
Many Americans associate “soul food” with “guilty pleasure”—mac and cheese, fried chicken, greens with bacon in them—but this shouldn’t be the case, says Williams. As she writes in the book: “The foods we think of now as ‘soul food’ are not the ones our families were eating day in and day out; they are the celebration foods that have claimed our attention over time. All that extra sugar, the flour, the cream—these things were luxuries. What were we eating, we have to ask ourselves, when we were working from can’t see in the morning to can’t see at night? Sustainable foods that sustained us. The food at the soul of our community, the food that kept us on our feet and marching forward, was clean and delicious, in many ways before its time.”
The term “soul food” didn’t really appear until the 1960s, and some blacks, chefs especially, objected to it, said Randall. “They thought it represented hard times.” Legendary black chef and cookbook author Edna Lewis, a friend of the Randall family, was hailed as “the South’s answer to Julia Child” and did not consider herself a soul food cook. “She called herself a country cook.”
Randall and Williams embrace the term. “African American history is a history that has a lot of creativity and wisdom in it,” said Randall. “It’s only been with the rise of more industrial food that this misconception has happened.” During our conversation with the duo, they shared more about the cuisine that’s both loved and misunderstood in this country.
Vegetarian pot pie from Soul Food Love. Photo: Penny De Los Santos
Soul Food Is Slow Food: “Fried chicken was never an everyday black food until we got corporate chains,” said Randall. “[Slaves] didn’t have flour or extra oil. Where would you be frying chicken? When? These people didn’t have the time for that. Sugar? That was a fantastic luxury.” What the slaves were making, she said, were stewed chickens, shrimp stews, vegetable stews—“things you could put on slow and low and go out for the day.”
Soul Food Is Fish: “We think fish, specifically baked fish, isn’t a black food,” said Randall. “But it was a black food in Africa, in slavery, and in the Reconstruction [period].” Williams pointed out that during slavery, many white owners would keep records of livestock, but not of fish, making it easy for slaves to nab them from ponds on the property. Randall confirmed by citing a recent archeological dig on a Louisiana plantation: “Excavators found fish hooks and bones near the slaves’ cabins.” Later, “when my father was growing up in Detroit, black people commonly ate fish on Fridays, whether or not they were Catholic,” she said. Red snapper, salmon, what have you—her family had a standing order at the fish market. Sardines, too, were popular among blacks in the 1960s, particularly in Detroit, where money was tight at the time. But, writes Williams in the cookbook, “It’s time to move sardines out of the shadows of Motown. They are cheap, delicious, and quick. They are also packed with nutrients, low in calories, and a highly sustainable food source. Sardines are a perfect now food that we abandoned after it became associated with being black and poor.”
Niçoise salad with okra from Soul Food Love. Photo: Penny De Los Santos
Soul Food Is Vegetables: “Home gardens go back to the slavery period,” said Randall. Many plantation owners allowed their slaves to keep private gardens by their living quarters. “Vegetables have always been a big part of black cuisine.” Also, like many black southerners, Randall’s grandmother was an Adventist; they believe that “flesh food” should be avoided. Collard greens and sweet potatoes are two key vegetables in soul food cooking.
Soul Food Is Sesame Seeds: We associate sesame seeds with Asian cuisine, but they’re native to sub-Saharan Africa, and are believed to have been brought to America by slaves. “In the Middle Passage, women would hide them in their hair to have something to feed a child or themselves on a boat ride,” said Randall. Thomas Jefferson caught wind of its enticing flavor, she said, and planted lots of sesame at Monticello.
Soul Food Is Native American: “There’s a Native American influence—smoking and barbecue and sassafras teas all came from Native Americans,” said Randall. And, of course, corn. “It’s clear [from the cuisine] that there were many interactions between Native Americans and black Americans.”
When it comes down to it, say Randall and Williams, soul food is about celebrating. “It’s a celebration mood not just celebration food,” said Randall. “That’s what the spirit of the movement is about.”
Check out these recipes from Soul Food Love:
