The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, Volume 7: Foodways by John T. Edge

The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, Volume 7: Foodways Reviews

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  EdibleNotesReviews

  Southern food, the real southern food of the kind piled high on tables from the Appalachians to Texas, flourishes today. It thrives in our culinary era of uniformity, blandness and convenience; where often the food takes a backseat to technology or ‘molecular-gastronomy.’ It is appreciated today in food circles for its reliance on local, seasonal ingredients prepared in a myriad of time-honored fashions that bear witness to the racial and cultural mélange that is the South.
  
  Most discourses on the subject approach food by way of simple examination; descriptions of the food upon the table after a bit of poking and prodding. Little space is devoted to the stories behind the food; of the cooks and provisioners or the foodstuffs and concoctions, that ever ventures beyond the quaint, the stereotypical or the darkness of our past. Yet, food is as much a part of southern history and society as it is of our nourishment; from its role in helping to elect our politicians and the struggle for civil rights to our fanatical football tailgating and our close connections between religion and family.
  
  Foodways—or the story of foods intertwined with history, culture and society, is a fairly recent discipline. Entire university departments are now devoted to it, each seeking to give the foods of its own area a larger, more contextual framework for examination in both real-time and in history. Its importance as a discipline is to document and preserve where we have been and where we are at without the slightest nod toward self-importance or remorse.
  
  The Southern Foodways Alliance (SFA)—an institute of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi has at the core of its mission to tell the stories of our southern foods and the cooks, consumers and the bigger societal picture into which they all fall. The Southern Foodways Alliance is responsible for Volume 7 of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, titled appropriately enough Foodways and is edited by SFA director, John T. Edge.
  
  Under his leadership the SFA cohort has bounced down the rugged trail from the mountains of West Virginia to the far-reaches of the west Texas plain in search of our foodways. They’ve documented everything from the ethereal potlikker of cooked greens to tamales too hot to eat. They’ve sat with the masters of whole-hog barbecue and shoreline oystermen to learn of their ways and their disappearing futures. They have sought the plainly wrapped, the obscure and the almost-forgotten elements of our sustenance as well as the clichés, con-men and champions of what makes our foods unique.
  
  The Foodways volume is based on contributed pieces for each topic from different writers; some are stewed in scholarliness, others slick from the deadlines of big-city writing. The pieces bobble and bounce from voice to voice, occasionally darting below the surface of objectivity, yet never flinching from the telling however sweet, soured or sourced.
  
  The entries for the iconic southern ingredients, people and places that make up the second half of the volume are hunger- and thought-provoking; each providing more than a cursory definition, depiction or glimpse into the past. But it is the first section, devoted to the specific foodways of our past and present that lifts our pangs with a sublime salaciousness.
  
  Here, Edge and a host of contributors including Jessica Harris, John Egerton, Marcie Ferris and Charles Reagan Wilson draw upon a wide range of reference materials and their own abundant knowledge to bring the challenging diversity of the southern foodways into clearer focus. Their discourses on the impact and influence of the foods brought to the mixture of ancestries, religions, classes and races making up the South throughout history bear witness to the truths behind the vitality of southern foods today.
  
  They leave us feeling of the South as one community—born of a diaspora of many, brought together by traditional foods and bound by a place, a future and a past. William Faulkner is often quoted as saying “In the South, the past is not dead. It’s not even past.” No doubt Faulkner knew a thing or two about our foodways before we even knew of their importance.
  
  I asked John T. recently about the volume and his feelings about his duties as its editor. “The publication of this volume is a signal step in the documentation and codification of Southern food culture” he replied from his Blackberry, no doubt while rumbling down a gravel road in search of the next SFA subject. “I’m honored and humbled to have had the opportunity to work with so many smart and capable writers, all vested in the idea that foodways are expressions of who we are and what values and beliefs we hold dear.”
  
  There is no doubt that Foodways expresses those values and beliefs in a way we can all enjoy, learn from and go forward from—remembering that in the South, the past will always be with us.
  
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  Kristy

  The seventh volume of the New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture focuses on the southern table: not only the groaning board, but also the rich history and lore surrounding southern delicacies, personalities, restaurants and products. In 149 articles, contributors from around the world describe Moon Pies, mudbugs, and the dozens of gustatory delights in between in an infinitely readable book that deserves space on any self-respecting Southerner’s bookshelf.
  
  Editor John T. Edge's long association with the Southern Foodways Alliance and the enlightening and delightful Cornbread Nation series informs both his selections and contributions to this volume. Indeed, the thirty-two longer articles in Foodways seem to blend almost seamlessly with those older writings; here, the culinary offerings of various ethnic groups and particularly iconic dishes receive a broader treatment than later, shorter articles. These longer submissions constitute the most fascinating portion of this volume; they bring together Southern culture, environment, literature, and history in a remarkably instructive celebration of the region's inimitable foods.
  
  The shorter articles that follow are also informative. Anticipated entries for collard greens, cornbread, and okra are seasoned with welcome contributions about benne, poke sallet, and that most southern of groceries, Piggly Wiggly. In scope, the selections are both broad and unpretentious: gourmet venues K-Paul's and The Brown Hotel sit cheek-to-jowl with chitterlings, Ale-8-One, raccoon, and possum. Longstanding feuds concerning potlikker and barbecue are treated with diplomacy: contributors side neither with Huey Long nor Julian Harris on the eternal question of how cornbread and greens should be introduced, while they also treat Carolina, Memphis, and Texas barbecue deftly and without impugning the integrity of any particular camp. In-text citations and contributions describing southern cookbook authors and food writers provide the curious with a ready-made second course.
  
  While Foodways fills a very important lacuna in the New Encyclopedia series, it should not be mistaken for a stand-alone reference on Southern food. It is a perfectly accessible reference tool both for microwave users and gourmands, and, in the Slow Food tradition serves as re-introduction to dishes we only remember with nostalgia. It is both broad and necessarily shallow: an aperitif of food writing that will only entice its readers to investigate further the Southern larder.
  
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  Trudy

  A great little book with entries on all aspects of Southern food history. Not a recipe book! It is definitely fascinating and engaging. I would have enjoyed a bit more illustrations, though.
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  Anthony

  a text for my Louisiana Food and Culture class Spring 2008