42 pages • 1 hour read
Michael W. TwittyThe Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South
Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 8-11Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapters 8 Summary: “0.01 Percent”
In this chapter, Twitty chronicles his search for his genetic history, and he identifies several problems with genetic testing. The thousands of ethnic groups in Africa make it difficult to identify specific regions of heritage, and there are few samples for many of these populations. He emphasizes the importance of trying multiple tests and comparing results for a more accurate picture. His first genetic test revealed that he was 70% West African, 28% British Isles, and 2% undetermined. The organization African Ancestry offered him more specific results. His maternal ancestry led to the Mende people of Sierra Leone, and his paternal ancestry traced to Ghana. Nigeria and Senegal also contributed to Twitty’s genetic heritage, while his European lineage came from Scandinavia, Iberia, and Ireland.
Twitty is eager to learn about the food of his ancestors. Before his “Southern Discomfort Tour,” he viewed soul food as the sad outcome of the assimilation of Black people in the United States. Now, understanding the complexity and beauty of food influenced by diverse palates with unique and rich cultures contributes to his understanding of himself.
Chapters 9 Summary: “Sweet Tooth”
Sugar and other crops drove the enslavement and sale of humans in the Americas. Originating in New Guinea, sugarcane was at first a snack plant and then later used in an energizing beverage. As it traveled around the world, its popularity grew, and the demand for more led to the birth of the plantation, first in the Mediterranean and later the Americas. African people were kidnapped and transported to the Caribbean to be tortured and conditioned to a new life of enslavement, a process called “seasoning.” As other crops were added, slavery expanded. Meanwhile, additional crops carried on enslavement ships changed the culinary landscape of the Americas forever.
Many Southern dishes have African roots while also assimilating British and French techniques and Native food knowledge. Slavery soon traveled north where tobacco, rice, and indigo flourished beneath the ecology of forced labor. Sugar continued to reign, but sorghum introduced a West African ingredient to the Southern culinary world.
Chapters 10 Summary: “Mother of Slaves”
In this chapter, Twitty traces his American heritage to the colonial Chesapeake region in the 17th and 18th centuries. Twitty’s ancestors were brought to Yorktown and were sold in Virginia. Uniquely qualified to grow sugarcane, these ancestors were likely stolen under the reign of King Afonso I.
As more of Twitty’s ancestors were brought to the Americas, his genetic pool diversified. It was also further altered by the white slaveholders who exerted violence and power over Black women and thereby introduced English, Welsh, and other European genetics. Enslaved Africans developed a food lexicon that combined their language, Indigenous languages, and the language of the colonists. Food names such as “okra” and “yam” reflect this linguistic mix.
Chapter 11 Summary: “Alma Mater”
Like sugar, corn played a significant role in the expansion of American slavery. Twitty connects the crop to cornbread, his first solid food as a child. One day, while watching his grandmother eat buttermilk and cornbread, he asked her why she ate the two together. She responded, “At least I didn’t have to eat it from a trough” (199). As he later learned, she was referring to the way the children of enslaved Africans were fed cornmeal mush from a pig trough.
While Twitty acknowledges the Indigenous origin of corn, he focuses on the crop’s importance in African culture. He also takes a broader perspective on the way that agriculture drove the slave trade. Shipments of Africans were timed to align with growing and harvesting seasons. Personal accounts of the journey provide Twitty with insight into what his ancestors may have felt as they made their way to a new continent, not knowing what horrors awaited them.
Chapters 8-11 Analysis
Chapters 8-11 blend two important themes: the Impact of Slavery on American Foodways and Identity and Self-Discovery. Genetic testing is linked to the former, and while Twitty learns that his genetic heritage is mostly West African, but with some contribution from Europe, He realizes that these tests offer only numbers; they provide an incomplete and flat picture of one’s heritage. Twitty knows that the only way to round out and materialize his history is through story. For the chef, this story could be found through food. Twitty sees his genetic lineage as a map of influence and cuisine. He places his family’s history and the events that led to their forced migration to the Americas in a broader history in which migrations—either intentional or forced—brought culinary traditions and dishes to distant lands. In what became the United States, African traditions melded with others. Twitty argues that no group contributed more to Southern cuisine than enslaved Black cooks.
For Twitty, the history of slavery itself is interwoven with the history of food. Twitty declares that slavery began with food—namely, sugarcane. A plant that was no more than a snack in New Guinea became a global phenomenon that led to a poorly constructed argument for human entrapment and torture. While food brought Africans to the Americas, Africans carried with them their own food cultures. The dishes that are today described as quintessentially Southern—fried chicken, Hoppin’ John, and many others—are, in many ways, quintessentially African.
