Braided Heritage

The sweeping origin story of American food and how Indigenous, European, and African traditions intertwined to form an entirely new cuisine, with over 100 recipes for the modern home cook&mdash;from the James Beard Cookbook Hall of Famer and star of the Netflix docuseries <High on the Hog<.

Through essays, interviews, and more than 100 recipes, Dr. Harris presents American cuisine as a complex braid&mdash;an interwoven whole composed of ingredients and dishes from the Indigenous, European, and African people who influenced the food and traditions of the New World. By beginning with a recipe and tracing its origins, we come to understand the heritage of some of America&rsquo;s most treasured dishes.&nbsp;Take coleslaw, that must-have for every Fourth of July barbecue, which was originally served by the Dutch as <koolsla;< jambalaya, which Dr. Harris traces to West Africa and Spain; or the Cherokee treatment of succotash that has become a popular Thanksgiving dish.

Accompanying the recipes are stories from a diverse collection of families that help illuminate our understanding of contemporary American cooking and examine how dishes such as clam chowder (which is connected to Indigenous stews but got its name from the French name for the cooking pot, <chaudi&egrave;re)< and Louisiana gumbo (in which sassafras is used as a condiment thanks to the Choctaw people) became American classics. With recipes ranging from the festive to the everyday,< Braided Heritage< offers a new look at American culinary history.

Auteur

Jessica B. Harris is the author, editor, and translator of seventeen books, including twelve cookbooks documenting the foods and foodways of the African diaspora. Her IACP Award–winning book High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America has been adapted into a Netflix series. Harris is a professor emerita at Queens College/CUNY in New York and has written extensively for scholarly and popular publications. She served as the culinary consultant for the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture and their lauded restaurant, the Sweet Home Café. She holds lifetime achievement awards from the Southern Foodways Alliance, the Soul Summit, and the James Beard Foundation, which also inducted Harris into the Cookbook Hall of Fame.

Résumé
Discover the sweeping story of how Indigenous, European, and African traditions intertwined to form an entirely new cuisine, with over 100 recipes for the modern home cook—from the James Beard Cookbook Hall of Famer and star of the Netflix docuseries High on the Hog.

One of our preeminent culinary historians, Dr. Jessica B. Harris has conducted decades of research throughout the Americas, the Caribbean, and Africa. In this telling of the origins of American food, though, she gets more personal. As heritage is history, she intertwines the larger sweeping past with stories and recipes from friends she’s made over the years—people whose family dishes go back to the crucial era when Native peoples encountered Europeans and the enslaved Africans they brought with them.

Through this mix, we learn that Clear Broth Clam Chowder has both Indigenous and European roots; the same, too, with Enchiladas Suizas, tomatillo-smothered tortillas made “Swiss” with cheese and dairy; and that the hallmarks of African American food through the centuries have been evolution based on region, migration, and innovation, resulting in classics like Red Beans and Rice and Peach Bread Pudding Cupcakes with Bourbon Glaze.

With recipes ranging from everyday meals to festive spreads, Braided Heritage offers a new, in-depth, delicious look at American culinary history.