Home Cooking
How Southern cuisine emerged—one family at a time
By Jeff Steen, Illustrations by Mindy McEachran
Biscuits smothered in salty-sweet butter lean against a buttermilk-soaked leg of spicy fried chicken. Glistening from the pot, an ear of corn sweats on the edge of the plate with granules of salt dotting its curves. Waiting, still bubbly in the oven, is a lattice-topped cinnamon apple pie that releases the warm scents of a quintessential Virginia winter.
This is the definition of Southern cuisine to many. It’s hearty, comforting, and rich. And wherever it appears, there is home, a constant buzz of laughter and generations of family. From grandmothers to grandchildren, the vision of Southern cooking is a Rockwellian scene of everything right with America.
And some of that is true. Edna Lewis, dubbed “The Grand Dame of Southern Cooking,” claims a life story that embraces family, culture, and food—the essential trifecta of the South. A granddaughter of slaves, Lewis grew up in Virginia learning how to cook from her aunt. Without basic utensils or cooking equipment, she mastered the art of substitution at an early age. Ingredients were measured on coins. Food was cooked in a wood-fired stove. Perfectly baked cakes were tested by listening and feeling. To Lewis, this was Southern cooking.
At age 16, Lewis took her definition of Southern cooking to New York. Opening Café Nicholson with antiques dealer Johnny Nicholson in 1948, she popularized the many dishes we now know as traditional Southern food. Lewis took care of all of the cooking at the café, much in the way mothers and grandmothers commanded the kitchens of southern households in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Her many creations—pork chops with cranberry sauce and lard-fattened hominy to name a few—drew attention from high-profile personalities like literary icon Tennessee Williams and show-stopper Marelene Dietrich. Lewis’s food became a culinary and cultural icon, exemplifying the flavors of the South. In 1999, however, Café Nicholson ended an era. The restaurant closed its doors, and with it, more than 50 years of undeniably indulgent Southern flavor.
But not before Lewis offered her addition to the grand definition of Southern cuisine—ingredients melded by feel, dishes rich with flavorful fats and delicate sweetness. Lewis’s cookbooks, from "In Pursuit of Flavor" to "The Edna Lewis Cookbook," are tributes to the intimate connections between family, culture, and food—a recurring theme in the South. Her legacy is her simplicity, her tradition, and a strong belief that no one should go away from the table hungry.
Cajun Spice and Everything Nice
Southern cuisine, however we envision it, has never been one-dimensional. Cajun cuisine, while one part of the South’s culinary legacy, is vastly different from the food enjoyed in coastal South Carolina, or in Lewis’s native Virginia. New Orleans is a prime example of another southern tradition, a community of people whose roots inspire them to carry on family and culture through food. As history tells, African-American cooks for white estate owners in New Orleans were the ones who started the Cajun culinary traditions known today. The recipes spread from house to house as servants moved on, and from generation to generation within families.
Paul Prudhomme, New Orleans’ favorite son, has spent his life bringing Cajun and Creole cooking their own notoriety, playing with history’s recipes. And with them, he has added to the flavors of the South.
Prudhomme grew up in a time when food was central to life. “Everything we ate, we farmed,” he says. “If we worked off the farm, we got paid in food.” Growing up among nine brothers and three sisters, Prudhomme soon found himself in the kitchen helping his mom. That’s where his love of cooking began—learning how to make a rainbow of roux and seafood-rich gumbo. In later years, he traveled the southern states working for countless restaurants, gaining an immense knowledge of the flavors of the South.
“When I started traveling, I noticed something was missing—spice. Everything was bland,” he says. Building a reputation for flavorful Cajun-style cuisine inherited from his mother, Prudhomme often cooked for the employees of the restaurants where he worked. More often than not, his creations garnered the chefs’ attention. Thus began the Prudhomme culinary dynasty we now know as the renowned K-Paul’s Louisiana Kitchen.
“Everything comes back to family and the power of food,” he affrims. “Southern cuisine is regional and defined by what’s available—as with any cuisine—but it has its roots in family and tradition.”
Southern Cuisine’s Generation Next
Fast-forward to 2007. Dean Fearing, a native of Kentucky and chef/partner of Fearing’s Restaurant in Dallas, brings fried chicken and creamed corn to the Mexican-influenced culture of Texas. His new concept of Southern cooking adds yet another dimension of flavor to the classics.
Like Prudhomme and Lewis, Fearing’s origins started with family. “When I say ‘fried chicken,’ I mean the type of food that my grandmother made,” he says. Memories of fried chicken-laden Sundays paired with honeyed biscuits and creamed corn are at the core of Fearing’s childhood. “I remember elaborate Thanksgiving spreads that my grandma would make on a tiny stove for 25 people. It was amazing.”
But before these indulgent Southern dishes land on Fearing’s menu, he always reflects on tradition. “We have ‘Grandma’s Paper-Bag Fried Chicken’ on the menu at Fearing’s every Sunday because it’s what I grew up with. That’s where I started, so I brought it to my restaurant.”
Now, Fearing melds Kentucky Southern cooking with flavors of the southwest. It’s his deft combination of familiar Southern flavors and fiery Mexican spice that have shaped his style. “The basics, as I knew them growing up, were corn, fresh vegetables picked straight from the garden, barbecue, fried chicken—it was what was available, what we knew.” Now they pair with dynamic salsas influenced by Mexican tradition and indigenous chilies. Fearing’s latest feature is a fitting example: Maple-Black Peppercorn-Soaked Buffalo Tenderloin on Jalapeño Grits.
A paragon of the simultaneous simplicity and versatility of Southern cuisine, Fearing cooks with family tradition at his back and the uninhibited use of spice as his playground. “There is such a thing as ‘Southern cuisine’,” he says. “It comes down to spice and what people can identify with.” But for Fearing, the definition is flexible. It’s no longer tied to the idyllic family scene, centered on a table laden with biscuits and fried chicken. Though it began there, it now carries the spicy flair of Texas and Mexico, the earthy clambakes and crab hunts of the coastal Carolinas, and the French-influenced gumbos of New Orleans.
So whether you indulge in fried chicken on Sundays—a Fearing fixture—or the complex flavors of a unique Cajun gumbo—Prudhomme’s comfort food—there’s evidently more to a Southern meal than its ingredients. Eating Southern food is not an act of sustenance anymore than eating French food is a tedious necessity. It’s culture. It’s family. It’s style. And it’s the promise of tradition that will continue, however the flavors blend and change.