Perhaps in no other discussion about the South are the contrasts and tensions of the region more salient than in discussions of our Southern foodways. And for all the paradoxes between white plantation cuisine and lunch counter sit ins and a revival of Southern food as true farm-to-table cooking, there is also so much hope in the way we speak of the South through the meals we cook and eat together.

At the outset, I should clarify the term Southern foodways, which is both at once a brand—referring to the powerful research and programming institute at the University of Mississippi as well as an attempt at an all-encompassing vocabulary that speaks to the multiple intersections between food, history, and culture. It is meant to be a catch-all phrase that considers not simply eating, but growing, farming, producing, cooking, and preparing as all useful sociological points of inquiry. It is by no means a term born in the south, but the breadth of foodways—trapsing in and out of geography, history, sociology, labour history, and more—has made the South ripe for foodways scholarship.

For the South from the 1960s to the modern day, the journey has been tumultuous, and while it is swell to imagine that food has remained a pillar, a kind of constant, it is only in recent years that the region has become comfortable approaching the table and discussing the traditions that underpin the important and sacred act of eating—and as it turns out, it is often over food that icy relationships are thawed, prejudices are challenged, and common ground is discovered. We can do this at a number of scales: we can look at the rice harvested in the Carolina Lowcountry and trace a history of Charleston, SC and indeed the South as a whole through the ebbs and flows in production of Carolina Gold rice. Brought to South Carolina in the late 1600s, Carolina Gold flourished as European immigrants brought the know-how to harvest rice and slavery provided an essential workforce to bring the product to the table. But a Civil War and the abolition of slavery would threaten the crop, which faded out of production for good in the midst of the Great Depression. We could look as well at lunch counters and the notion of a ‘welcome table’ that coursed through Civil Rights hymns and remains a pervasive facet of the way Southerners today break bread and dine together. While Kress, Woolworth’s, and Walgreen’s are largely gone from the Southern streetscape, and the lunch counter is mostly a curiosity of the past, the South remains united around the food that is eaten and consumed in a way that has helped to heal wounds.

To this point we could speak of the tensions that undergird this unity—the decades of black labour in kitchens and homes that prepared the feasts of the Antebellum South. And yet, we can see today in these food traditions a commonality, a shared narrative of process and of tastes that connect people across the region. As well, Southern tenets of economy and seasonal cooking as a matter of fact and need have allowed a for a revival of Southern agriculture and local production, meaning that today’s Southern table reflects a more diverse and eclectic food chain then ever before.

When I mention that one of my research initatives has long been the food and culture of the US South, someone invariably comments that biscuits and bacon must get old. There is a sense conjured up in the darkest moments of the Civil Rights era that the people of the South were backward, dated, old-fashioned, and so it would only stand to reason that our food would be equally simple and drenched in a kind of ‘Gone with the Wind’ nostalgia.  Yes, there is fried chicken. Yes, there are biscuits, and yes, a warm, creamy bowl of grits is my comfort food, but Southern food is so much more—and the actual eclectic tastes of Southern eaters gives us I think valuable insights in to the diverse assemblage of farmers, cooks, and eaters who comprise the Southern foodways. I have often called the South the ‘first farm-to-table’ cooks, doing local before it was trendy, instead borne out of necessity.

And yet, to speak to those contradictions again, perhaps a recipe is needed. When I finish class each week, I do so with a big pile of pimento cheese and white bread. It is a dish that is decidedly unglamorous, barely evocative of any sort of agricultural tradition. Still, the spreadable cheddar cheese compound with roasted red peppers is a mainstay of Southern potlucks and gatherings. Many a new baby and wedding has been celebrated with spreadable cheddar cheese speckled with pimentos nearby. By all accounts, pimento cheese is a strange dish, calling it the “Caviar of the South” neither downplays its oddity on the table nor explains its origins, but as one Southern chef calls it, pimento cheese is part of the ‘common dialect’ of Southern cooking and eating. It also challenges notions of a cloistered, idiosyncratic region much as it hardens those cultural borders. Pimentos and indeed the cheese itself come from elsewhere—the peppers in particular harken to a moment in American eating when Europe set the bar for good taste on this side of the Atlantic. So the dish has a deep narrative of globalization wrapped up in it as much as it is a dish that is so unwelcoming to outsiders at first glance so as to make the lines around ‘the South’ seem impenetrable.

I would be remiss if I didn’t speak as well about the role of a good drink in the South, by which I do necessarily mean bourbon. Certainly, the oak trees of the region make for beautiful barrels and the limestone filtered water give those barrels a lot to work with. Bourbon is Southern through and through, but it was not cocktails that speak to my childhood in sweltering hot Southern sun, but sweet tea. It is a staple of the welcome table—big pitchers of tea are fixtures at the communal lunch tables in Nashville and Savannah. It is a drink of the Southern daytime, much as bourbon and its Cajun cousin Sazerac are elemental to the vibrant nighttime. Iced tea, almost always sweetened with a hefty dose of a homemade simple syrup, is a drink for an industrious South, meant to beat the heat, keep the energy and spirits up until the dinner bell rings. Southern line cooks slurp the elixir out of plastic storage containers and gracious hosts pull out a glass pitcher and highball. It is a drink that says ‘welcome’ as much it is built upon hard work under the oppressive heat of the Southern sun. And still, the pervasiveness of the drink—from rooming houses in Nashville to the governor’s mansion in Georgia—have meant that the offering and sharing of tea is not limited by knowledge, race, class, or education.  It excels as an example of the democratic way Southerners speak of their food—one does not need a vast new vocabulary to negotiate a Southern kitchen or menu while ordering a coffee at Starbucks has become an elaborate, if not contrived practice that bends in and out of the old world with often absurd and exclusionary effect.