Cuisine of the Southern United States

The cuisine of the Southern United States is the historical regional culinary form of states generally south of the Mason–Dixon line dividing Pennsylvania and Delaware from Maryland as well as along the Ohio River, and extending west to southern Missouri, Oklahoma and Texas.

The most notable influences come from African, English, Scottish, Irish, French, and Native American cuisines. Tidewater, Appalachian, Creole, Lowcountry, and Floribbean are examples of types of Southern cuisine. In recent history, elements of Southern cuisine have spread north, having an effect on the development of other types of American cuisine.

Many elements of Southern cooking—squash, tomatoes, corn (and its derivatives, including grits), and deep-pit barbecuing—are borrowings from southeast American Indian tribes such as the Caddo, Choctaw, and Seminole. Sugar, flour, milk, and eggs come from Europe; the Southern fondness for fried foods is Scottish, and the old-fashioned Virginian use of ragouts comes from the West Country of England. Black-eyed peas, okra, rice, eggplant, benne (sesame) seed, sorghum, and melons, as well as most spices used in the South, are originally African; a preponderance of slaves imported to Virginia in early years were Igbo from the Bight of Biafra, and down to the present day Southern and Nigerian cuisines have many flavors and elements in common.

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