Baked macaroni and cheese, recipes below
What’s southern about baked macaroni and cheese (mac and cheese) and how did it get on the must have side dishes list for African American/southerner Thanksgiving menus? In research for my book Hog and Hominy http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-14638-8/hog-and-hominy/excerpt, I found the earliest reference to macaroni and cheese in a 1928 Dorothy Dickins authored federal government report about farm families in the Mississippi Delta. Dickins found that most African-American women had never tasted macaroni and cheese and only a few cooked it for their families because they complained that it was too “starchy and gummy.” Dickins goes on to say, “The majority feels that they have too little cash to spend on something which they perhaps cannot properly prepare or which, if they can, the family probably will not like.” What is interesting about this quote is that today no African-American or southern Thanksgiving day would be considered complete without at least one large pan of labor-intensive homemade baked macaroni and cheese. Historian Peter Freedman maintains that macaroni and cheese had become quite popular in nineteenth century Europe and it appeared on menus under a variety of names including Macaroni with cheese, Macaroni au Parmesan, Macaroni a la creme, Macaroni au gratin, Macaroni in a form, Macaroni a la Napolitaine, Macaronia l’Italienne, and Baked macaroni. In turn of the century North America, nutrition experts pushed as a healthy food for the poor. My theory is that that Italian immigrants living in poor multiethnic neighborhoods introduced pasta culture to African American neighbors around the time of the Great Depression who then added cheese distributed free as part of FDR’s National Release Agency food subsidies and reliefs programs. Here’s a classic southern mac and cheese recipe below. One of my students suggested using Gold Fish crackers instead of bread crumbs which he says, “it's awesome” and inviting to children who are picky eaters.
Southern Mac and Cheese recipe: http://www.macaronicheeserecipes.com/Southern-Macaroni-and-Cheese.htm
The Best Gluten free Vegan Baked Mac & Cheese Recipe: http://glutenfreegoddess.blogspot.com/2008/02/best-vegan-baked-mac-cheese.html
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