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Kentucky Foodways: Traditional and Modern by Elizabeth Mosby Adler
Close your eyes and think about smells of good foods: beaten biscuits and
old ham at an elegant party, burgoo simmering in a big pot over a smoky
fire at a political rally, fried chicken at a dinner on the grounds, soupbeans
on the stovetop, and cornbread baking in the oven. These are some of the
foods we associate with Kentucky.
Foodways is the term for the ideas and customs about food that people acquire
without formal written training or practice. How did you first learn to
cook? From your parent, grandparent, or friend? That is the traditional,
or folk, way, and the way most of us begin cooking. In fact, before World
War II, most recipes, called receipts, were not written down. They were,
instead, in the heads of the cooks. When a recipe was recorded, it was often
preserved simply as a list of ingredients.
Foodways are not only what we eat, but how, when, and where we eat. What
are a meal's raw ingredients, and how are they prepared, preserved, and
served? What are the social and psychological functions of food, and their
ramifications for other aspects of our traditional culture, including our
attitudes, taboos, and religion? Why do we think of fried chicken and Sunday
dinner, mint juleps and the Kentucky Derby, turkey and Thanksgiving, cake
and birthdays?
What inspires foodways study? Any situation where food is involved, including
your own family's daily meals and holiday foods; dinner on the grounds and
other social events with friends and acquaintances; and community events
which share your group's foodways traditions with others at bake sales,
barbecue festivals, political rallies, fairs, and other public gatherings.
Kentucky's own particular foodways stem from groups contributing and adapting their own dietary traditions to Kentucky's resources and to each other. English cakes, puddings, pies, preserves, country ham, and fried oysters; Native Americans' knowledge of wild game and domesticated squash, corn, and pumpkin—these are part of our frontier culinary heritage that we think of today as Kentucky's traditional foodways.
Later, with economic growth especially along the rivers, came the development of haute cuisine, such as spreads of butter, Roquefort cheese, and bourbon, or the hot brown. The syrupy bourbon drink, the mint julep, was popularized as a Kentucky Derby concoction. At Pleasant Hill and Auburn, the Shakers refined simple country foods into a spiritual as well as culinary achievement. Burgoo, a pioneer mixed-meat stew, was cooked over wood fires in huge kettles at political rallies, reunions, and other special events.
The tradition of wood fire cooking also gave rise to the barbecue as both a food and a festive or community event. West Kentucky, or Owensboro, barbecue features mutton as well as beef, pork, and chicken. Special sauces and cooking methods are closely guarded secrets. During Owensboro's annual International Barbecue Festival, the city's streets are lined with smoky "pits" and huge vats of burgoo as church, civic and neighborhood teams armed with mops swab sauce on mutton, pork, and chicken in competition for coveted prizes and hungry customers.
Pork is a common Kentucky meat because hogs readily adapted to Kentucky's oak forests. An old saying goes that every bit of the pig was used except the squeal. Ham, a particular Kentucky delicacy, was dried or salt cured. Kentucky country, or old, ham remains a popular favorite served with beaten biscuits. White flecks from the salt curing process indicate quality; a favorite Kentucky story revolves around the fine ham sent to northerners, who, ignorant of its character and believing it spoiled, threw it away.Pork is also used as a flavoring for vegetables; a dish of green beans is not considered good unless it has enough grease in it to "wink back" when you lift the lid and look in; "greasy greens" and "wilted lettuce" are traditional summer favorites; and soup beans cooked with hog jowl and served with corn bread and onions are a filling meal any time of the year.
Dried beans (also known as shuck or shucky beans, leather britches, or hull beans) were cooked with their hulls on. Traditionally, the beans were strung and hung on the porch or in an attic to dry, but modern technology offers solar heating on the front and rear dashes of closed cars. A Frankfort man wrote this bean recipe: "When hungry for shuck beans, put them in water to soak overnight. Then cook with hog jowl until tender and send for me. While I am coming, cook a pone of cornbread and skin a good strong onion." Appalachian author Verna Mae Slone wrote that shucky beans were "so good your tongue will slap your brains out."
Corn, an early Kentucky crop, was versatile, easily raised and stored, and profitable. As food, corn was ground into meal, mixed with eggs and milk, and fried into corn pones, cracklin bread, hush puppies, or hoe cakes; worked into a thick dough and boiled into cush; baked into corn bread; treated with lye and boiled for hominy or dried and ground for grits; eaten fresh on or off the cob or creamed. Corn also could be made into sour mash for bourbon whiskey, said to have been invented by Georgetown pioneer and entrepreneur Reverend Elijah Craig. Numerous commercial distilleries established along the Kentucky River used the river water in the distilling process. Stories relate how a disaster at a Frankfort distillery released barrels of bourbon into the river; the fish went over the locks shouting "Whoopee!"
While many human imbibers favor their bourbon "neat," the mint julep has its place in tradition, especially around Kentucky Derby time. Numerous tongue-in-cheek recipes call for carefully gathering the mint, painstakingly mixing the syrup, elaborately frosting the silver cup, and, lastly, throwing away the other ingredients and drinking the whiskey. Then there's the recipe for a favorite Kentucky breakfast: a steak, a quart of bourbon whiskey, a man and a dog. The man throws the steak to the dog and drinks the whiskey!
Any study of contemporary Kentucky foodways is incomplete without including the foodways traditions of Kentucky's more recent arrivals—the Japanese, Vietnamese, Hispanics, Thais, Latin Americans, Italians, Chinese, East Indians, Greeks, and others. Just as the early English and Scots-Irish pioneers adapted their eating habits, so do these more recent arrivals. Maintaining foodways, one of the most important outward signs of a group's cohesiveness, poses special problems for non-native Kentuckians. Modifying recipes to locally available ingredients, adapting cooking methods to a different lifestyle, and locating or importing crucial ingredients are all issues faced daily by cooks preparing traditional foods not indigenous to Kentucky. Many families shop in larger cities outside the state, raise their own vegetables in gardens, or have friends or relatives send supplies from their homeland.
Holidays are important markers defining foodways traditions. Among ethnic
communities, foodways play an especially significant role. Many Indian celebrations
include ceremonial uses of food followed by lavish feasting. An Eastern
Orthodox saying, "religion begins in the kitchen," highlights
the closely intertwined roles of food and faith. Holidays and celebrations
are a time when we gather together as families and communities, socially
reinforcing our shared cultural heritage. Our foodways activities, whether
Sunday dinner, Chinese New Year, church supper, or Octoberfest, define our
own identity, while reinforcing our cultural uniqueness. Whether we eat
greasy greens or spanokopita, catfish or calamari, in sharing our similarities
we celebrate our diversity as Kentuckians.
