From Fighting Old Nep: The Foodways of Enslaved Afro-Marylanders, 1634-1864
The food of slavery was never meant to really satisfy so much as just keep a person going. Much of slave food tradition, therefore, is based on how to feed oneself and their family with pickled pork, herring, corn, and whatever other small crops and scraps could be obtained. An example below is Trough Mush. Trough Mush appears to be a basic staple meal within slave culture on the East Coast.
Trough Mush
Frederick Douglass:
“Our cornmeal mush, which was our only regular if not an all-sufficing diet, when sufficiently cooled from the cooking, was placed in a large tray or trough. This was set down either on the floor of the kitchen, or out of doors on the ground, and the children were called like so many pigs, and like so many pigs would come, some with oyster-shells, some with pieces of shingles, but none with spoons, and literally devour the mush. He who could eat fastest got most, and he that was strongest got the best place, but few left the trough really satisfied ” (Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass)
4 1/2 cups of water
1 cup of buttermilk
1/2 teaspoon of salt
1 ½ cups of white stone ground cornmeal
bits of greens, pot liquor, other like tidbits, optional
Let the water and salt dissolve together. Add the milk and bring to a boil. In small amounts, add the cornmeal until it is completely incorporated into the liquid mixture, turn down the heat and cook for at least a half an hour. When the mush is near its end, add the leftovers. Eat with an oyster shell.
Large and Blended Family 