University of South Carolina professor David Shields wasn’t that interested in the initial proposition.
The USC Press had reached out to him and asked him to write what effectively was a best of South Carolina foods collection, something on the 10 most iconic ingredients in the state. It was a pathway to “non-thinking about food,” he thought.
So he countered with something more ambitious and thorough. A book that canvasses the state’s “signature foods” and traced their histories through time. The press was intrigued, but he knew he couldn’t do it alone.
“‘What we need is somebody who is a professional culinarian, a chef,’” he told the press’s director, Richard Brown. “Someone with a strong historical background in African American food, because that was such a fundamental component of the foodways of this state.”
Shields reasoned that there were three or four chefs that could fit the bill, but knew one that he had worked with in the past would be a strong fit — Kevin Mitchell.
Mitchell, a current member of the South Carolina Chef Ambassador program and the first African American Chef Instructor at the Culinary Institute of Charleston, agreed. (Mitchell could not be reached by press deadline for an interview on the book.)
The two got to work, meticulously parsing through newspaper archives and other media to map out and determine what were the most essential South Carolina foods in the state’s history.
The result is the duo’s “Taste The State,” a 232-page text that chronicles the state’s food, recipes and the stories behind it.
The book is a marvel in research — despite its relatively quick writing time of one year and two months, roughly — as it has entries on asparagus, chicken bog, tomato gravy and whiting and plenty more.
No section of the state is left untouched either. Fried catfish’s commercialized roots in Columbia are noted, as is this history of barbecue’s sauces in the regions of the state and red chicken stew’s birthing in Sumter.
Littered throughout the book are recipes, but, in a fitting twist, the authors nod to history as well as present. For instance, an 1876 recipe from The Port Royal Standard and Commercial for stewed macaroni is offered, but so is a recipe for tomato gravy from Mitchell.
“This is the first really good historical ethnography of a state’s food … There is no book that is exactly like this that exists,” Shields said. “The fact that it was the first of this kind of book was the reason I consented to go forward with the project.”
“Taste the State” chronicles much of the Midland’s food history in detail as well.
There's the prominence of chestnuts in the Midlands, beginning with Indigenous peoples and continuing into the early Civil War area before the trees fell to disease. Yet, the authors note, efforts in creating a hybrid may bring back those trees, which they write could happen in 2024. They report out several century-old recipes for when that day comes.
Then there’s pigfoot gravy in the Midlands. They note the differences between the Lowcountry style, with tomatoes, and the flour-based from this area.
It’s a detailed exploration that many will be sure to find novel, if not entirely foreign to them. That aspect was one of the main appeals for the University of South Carolina professor.
“I wouldn’t have done it if it didn’t create knowledge. I think that it's a model for other states to take up,” Shields said.
