The diet and drink of slaves in Maryland is partly an extension of habits carried from Africa. Those habits in turn were influenced by what was available in Maryland. Slave foods ultimately influenced the method of cooking and the ingredients in what is called "Southern Cooking."

African Cooking
Newly arrived Africans discovered that some of the foods consumed in Maryland were similar to African foods. Many were from native American plants. Corn products and sweet potatoes had been introduced to West Africa at least two centuries earlier. Chile peppers from South America were a major seasoning ingredient.

The major West African dish was a vegetable stew or soup seasoned with sesame or palm oil, onions, and hot red peppers. Sometimes pieces of meat, fish, or fowl might be added to the pot. Okra was a major thickening ingredient. Accompanying the stew was a stiff porridge made from a root crop such as cassava (manioc), yams or sweet potatoes, various grains, rice, or corn meal. Honey was used for sweetening. Africans seldom ate eggs because they were thought to reduce fertility.

Slave Rations
In the earliest years of Maryland's history, the number of slaves was too small to control the ingredients in their food and drink. They shared the table with whites, eating and drinking what was available. By the end of the seventeenth century, the nature of slavery began to change as slaves became more numerous, and a greater percentage arrived in Maryland direct from Africa. African agricultural products including leafy greens came with them. On the slave ships, Africans were often given a diet of sweet potatoes and hominy, both already familiar foods.

Food Quality
The slave diet in some ways was more nutritious than that of the white population even though it was not as abundant. Slaves received a basic ration of cornmeal, beans, molasses, salted dried fish, and discarded meat parts from the big-house kitchen. Those last included hog jowls, small intestines (chitterlings) or other organ parts called offal, and fatty pieces of salted pork. Fresh beef was often distributed when cattle were slaughtered. Children were given the refuse from butter-making-buttermilk-to mix with their corn meal. Lye-treated corn, much more nutritious than either wheat or rice, became the basis for the porridge to which was added traditional vegetables and beans.

<In contrast, in South Carolina the slaves received no meat ration. There where rice was the basic grain, the bean-vegetable-rice combination had a lower protein content than corn and beans.

The amount of food available to the slave in Maryland, the variety, and nutritional value, varied depending on locale and jobs, and the personality of the master. Generally food quantity and quality was better for the house slave and urban-based person and less so for the field slave on the larger plantations.

On the Eastern Shore in the nineteenth century, Frederick Douglass reported that each person-men, women, and children-received a monthly allowance of eight pounds of pork or fish and one bushel of corn meal. This was consistent with the allotment of the earlier times.

Supplementing the Diet
Maryland slaves added more protein to their diet when they fished the local waters or captured rabbits, opossums, and wild turkeys. Turtles, disliked by whites, were considered slave food. On the larger, more commercial farms, food deprivation was used as a form of punishment, a means of control over the slave. The ability of the slaves to hunt small game and fish offset that tactic.

Subhead Style
Slaves also tended garden plots where they grew some traditional African vegetables such as turnips, collards, kale, hot peppers, okra, cowpeas (black-eyed peas), and sweet potatoes. Any surplus could be sold. The slaves could own chickens and sold the eggs to travelers and the plantation owner. The cash could be used to purchase sugar or other foods to supplement the diet and drink.

Cooking Methods
Slave women cooked the food for the family rather than receiving prepared food from a common kitchen controlled by the whites. Their methods and ingredients closely approximated African practices. They thickened soups and stews with okra (gumbo is an African word for okra). They boiled the leafy tops of collards and turnips with the fatty part of the hog to substitute for palm oil. They did not waste food and even saved the water from the cooked vegetables to serve as "pot likker," thereby ingesting more vitamins.

Cooking implements were few; usually a single pot. To bake corn bread, the cook used the metal part of the hoe-thus hoe cakes.

Drinks
Water was the most common liquid intake of the slaves. Masters provided a small ration of rum for special occasions. The wealthy Charles Carroll of Annapolis distributed cider regularly. At home the slaves could boil water to make a tea from sassafras leave or roasted okra, sweetened with molasses. But out in the fields, unpurified and often disease-carrying water was the staple.

In the cities slaves with cash could supplement their small rum and cider ration to buy coffee or more rum. They took advantage of the so-called "disorderly houses" that catered to both slaves and servants barred from the licensed taverns. Local court records repeatedly refer to such violations. In Annapolis Ann Burman was fined for providing rum to slaves of Daniel Dulany and Robert Swan in 1751. In the nineteenth century, whiskey replaced rum as the drink of choice.

Theft of Food
Increasingly in the nineteenth century, slaves were accused of stealing food. Given that the diet was more nutritious than that of whites and that the high starch content seemed to provide an adequate number of calories, why was this so? Were the slaves hungry most of the time, and if so why? Frederick Douglass and Charles Ball, two literate slaves in Maryland, both reported times when they were hungry.

One historian argues that they were not hungry but stole to resist the slave system and express their frustrations with the restrictions on their choice of food and regimentation of eating hours. Frederick Douglass spoke of the temptation to steal fruit when the gardens were so abundant and in view. Charles Ball did not consider it theft to take food that he himself had produced.

Another scholar suggests that the diet may have been adequate in terms of quantity, but not quality. Because of unique blood characteristics, Africans' nutritional needs are different from Europeans. They also lost much calcium from their bones because of heavy sweating in the fields. It may not have been hunger for calories that drove slaves to steal, but nutritional deficiencies.

Food Traditions
Parts of this slave diet entered into the lore of Maryland cooking. An examination of Frederick Stieff's 1932 collection of recipes from Maryland households, reveals surprising references to these ingredients although he gives no credit to the slave experience. His soups include okra. He has recipes for boiled poke and turnip greens with hog jowl seasoned with red pepper. These dishes survive today as "Soul Food," but they were also part of a now lost old-fashioned Maryland tradition of eating.

Mack-Williams, Kibibi. African-American Life: Food and Our History. Vero Beach, Fla.: Rourke Press, 1995.

Taylor, Joe Gray. Eating, Drinking, and Visiting in the South: An Informal History. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1982.

Wright, Donald R. African-Americans in the Early Republic. Arlington Heights, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, 1993.

Yentsch, Anne Elizabeth. A Chesapeake Family and Their Slaves: A Study in Historical Archaeology. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994..