History in the Recipe: Appetizers

Published on October 31, 2018

https://www.samford.edu/departments/oral-history/projects/samwav/Appetizers.mp3

" . . .once you have the food of a different culture, you can start asking questions in a way that might have been uncomfortable in another setting, and how, say, eating Ethiopian at the Pizitz food hall, um, allows you to start to think about, you know, the agriculture of that region, the history of that region, um, why are there Ethiopians in Birmingham, that sort of thing. Um, and you can start to connect to larger issues while also enjoying a meal."

Chapters

Introduction: Tracing Class in the South through Bread

Michelle Little introduces the History in the Recipe series and interviews Dr. Erin Mauldin about the study of foodways.

Play Segment

The Objectives of Dr. Mauldin’s Food and History Class

Dr. Mauldin explains the benefits of oral history and of studying foodways and discusses what she hopes students in her class gained from the experience.

Play Segment

Elizabeth Poulos: Greek Cooking and Community

Elizabeth Poulos describes her experience as a second-generation Greek American and the importance of food in Greek culture.

Play Segment

Scott Peacock: Southern Cooking and Memory

Dr. Mauldin and Michelle Little outline the upcoming interviews in the History in the Recipe series, and Scott Peacock recalls an interview that showed him the strong link between food and memory.

Play Segment

Transcript

[HARWELL GOODWIN DAVIS: He stated that he had been appointed to suggest a
president for Howard College.

EUNICE ROGERS: And so there was a lot of industry in Bessemer when I grew up, a
lot of progressiveness. However, it was still a typical, small, Southern town.

OLIVER BARREAU: To be perfectly honest with you, um, I didn't know what Alabama
was until I set foot in Alabama.

ELIZABETH SLOAN RAGLAND: I was not greeted by hecklers. I was greeted by Martha
Ann Cox.]

MICHELLE LITTLE: Welcome back to Sam.wav: History Uncompressed. I'm your host,
Michelle Little. Loyal listeners to the show will notice I'm missing my co-host
today, Claire Davis. Claire is off travelling around Greece with Samford
University's Classics Department. I miss her, and I'm having to figure out this
whole podcasting thing on my own. But I'm not bitter. As you'll hear in the
first half of the episode, I can get excellent Greek food right here in Birmingham.

JULIA PHILLIPS: The importance of food at home. And, like, how, like, does the
preparation, like, show -- 'cause you talk a lot about community, so how does
the preparation of food, like, manifest itself within the community aspect?

ELIZABETH POULOS: Well, food is love. (laughs). That's how I was raised, like if
someone wants to show you they love you, they feed you. And they show you they
love you a lot by feeding you a lot. So number one, portion size is not a thing.

BOTH: (laugh)

MICHELLE LITTLE: We are doing something a little different on the podcast this
semester. We're introducing a mini-series that will comprise of five total
episodes, including this introductory piece. This series is a product of STORI's
collaboration with Samford's history department and Dr. Erin Mauldin's Food and
History class this past fall. To start us off and give you a little context
information on the class, I interviewed Dr. Mauldin.

MICHELLE LITTLE: So did some of your previous research lead you to this Food and
History class, or was it a new spark of interest?

ERIN MAULDIN: So I am a Samford alum, and I had Dr. Jonathan Bass for Alabama
History my sophomore year of college, I think? Um, it was one of the first
upper-division courses I took in the department. And, uh, he asked us to do a
food paper. And we had to do it on an Alabama food. So I picked Sister
Schubert's frozen rolls, right, that you buy in the grocery store in the freezer
section, and you put them in the oven and they come out fluffy and yeasty and
smell great. Uh, so I actually interviewed Sister Schubert for this paper, and
it ended up being sort of a history of class in the South through bread. Um, as
shorthand, the Bread Paper. But I actually used it at a couple of undergraduate
conferences, um, and I published a piece of it, and it was really the first sort
of research paper I had ever done that I was truly excited about not only doing
it but how exciting it was to use food to see new things about Southern history
in this way. With this sort of class, and how people ate and how related to the
types of bread that were available and how you could use bread to sort-of
explain these large-scale economic shifts in Southern history, particularly
since slavery. Right, so I talked about angel biscuits, um which were only
available for (chuckle) for the wealthiest of Southerners because before they
invented commercial baking powder, 1870s and 1880s, to get a rise out of bread
you would have to beat it. And so only those who could afford to dedicate one
kitchen slave to beating the biscuit dough all day could you get those fluffy
layers to laminate the dough. Um, and then you can talk about, sort of, the
invention of commercial, um, baking powder and baking soda, and talk about, sort
of, the rise of industry after the Civil War, and then you get to the Great
Depression, and how you knew that you were really poor, like, it was rock bottom
for your family when you had to have cornbread at breakfast and not biscuits.
And then, talking about, sort-of, the frozen food revolution in the
mid-twentieth century and the "Americanization of Dixie," as scholars called it,
um, and that's where Sister Schubert came in. So how traditional Southern foods
became something to be sold, um, as a pre-packaged, ready-made thing. So it was
a really exciting project. I still have it, even though it's a twelve, fifteen
year old paper, and, um, I suppose when I was thinking about classes I could
offer here as a faculty member at Samford, this sort of stuck out to me. Um,
that food and history would not only be fun for me to teach, but could be
applied to almost any scholar in our department. You know, if Dr. Aleman wanted
to do food and history in Latin America, he could. Or if Dr. Devries wanted to
do food and history in the Middle East, you know, she could. And so I wanted
something broad enough but also something that spoke to something that I really
love doing, albeit on the side.

MICHELLE LITTLE: So did you do an oral history with Sister Schubert?

ERIN MAULDIN: I did. I did, well. Oral history sounds grander than what
happened, uh, which was a phone interview, very brief phone interview. And she
mostly, uh, gave me her sort of publicity speech, I guess, about the origins of
the company and why she started it, and how much baking means to her and her
family. Um, it was not lengthy, it was not ground-breaking, um, but it was a
primary source. I also ended up interviewing, um, several older Southerners. I
don't remember their names. And then I also interviewed an older lady who said
that when she used to make biscuits, it was on, you know, a wood-burning stove
in the middle of the house. Uh, I guess you could call it more of a cabin I
guess um. And this would be the mid-twentieth century. So they used a
wood-burning stove. And she said that she would make the biscuits, and the
wood-burning stove has this shelf up above where the actual stove is, and she
would have to put the biscuits up on that warming shelf out of the way of the "chil'ren."

MICHELLE LITTLE: (laughs)

ERIN MAULDIN: That's what I remember her saying, "out of the way of the chil'ren."

MICHELLE LITTLE: So when you conceptualized the class, and you were putting it
together, how did you decide that you wanted to use oral history as an
experiential learning opportunity?

ERIN MAULDIN: I think that oral history is a really valuable way to get students
involved in the creation of knowledge and the creation of history. And I find
that classes that have students take responsibility for their own learning
really stand out to them over time, um, like the Bread Paper did for me. And so,
um, I wanted to use oral history as a way to help students realize how history
gets made, how we create primary sources, and it's a really great way not just
to connect with history and with people's stories, but also, when you get down
to it, ways to uncover bias in the types of sources that we use to create
history. Students read textbooks and don't realize how flawed the information is
that we use to create these, um, I guess, collections of truth. Um, and so I
find that oral history allows you to have those discussions while also having
some fun.

MICHELLE LITTLE: Is there anything that you felt was particularly timely, as far
as this course now, or having students look at these types of issues now. . . I
mean, I know we talked some in the class about "Can food break down barriers,"
but do you think -- was there anything in your mind when you were thinking about
the class, "Why do this now?"

ERIN MAULDIN: No, but I suppose in retrospect, you could say that, yes. I think,
particularly at a school like Samford, where, um, most students come from very
similar, uh, economic backgrounds, even if there is quite a bit of geographic
diversity in the types of students we attract. Um, I find that breaking down
barriers of difference is really important. Getting students to begin to
empathize with peoples whose historical experiences have not been like theirs,
right, um, and food is a very safe way to do that. We talked about this in class
a lot, about once you have the food of a different culture, you can start asking
questions in a way that might have been uncomfortable in another setting, and
how, say, eating Ethiopian at the Pizitz food hall, um, allows you to start to
think about, you know, the agriculture of that region, the history of that
region, um, why are there Ethiopians in Birmingham, that sort of thing. Um, and
you can start to connect to larger issues while also enjoying a meal.

MICHELLE LITTLE: So as you were listening to the entire class's oral history
interviews, what are some of the themes that stood out to you across all of them?

ERIN MAULDIN: I would say the one that immediately comes to mind would be
family. Almost all of our students started their oral histories asking about the
interviewee's family, um, background, and how food fit in there. Who did the
cooking in the house? Um, would you sit down to family dinners? What were some
of your earliest food memories? So this connection that we have to food as a way
that family comes together, uh, usually at a gathering, and -- or even how food
can create a family outside of your relatives, like at a church. You know, going
to church dinners every week. Um, the, I would say that family is definitely one
of the big things.

MICHELLE LITTLE: Julia Phillips and Jeff Seitz's interview with Elizabeth Poulos
is an interview that definitely brings to mind the theme of food and family.
Elizabeth is a second generation Greek-American. She is a Samford University
alum and is now studying medicine at the University of Alabama in Birmingham.
The Poulos family is one of the many Greek families that carved out the food
scene here in Birmingham. Her grandfather owned the smokehouse restaurant on
Fendley Avenue, and her great uncle owns Nikki's West. Here is Elizabeth's story.

ELIZABETH POULOS: You know, that's still how our family runs and that's still
how most Greek families run -- Greek families run is the community. It's the
communal living, so this whole, like, individual life purpose, or your
individual passion, or your dreams that like is not a thing, and that's not
something we would talk about or think about. Who you are and what you do, it's
never separated from the people you love, and so for my grandfather, his purpose
was centered around what was best for the family, and that was going to America.
And so he left everything he knew and loved and just went, and at least he had
his brother here. His older brother didn't have anyone when he came, I think
maybe cousins, but they went and worked at the restaurant and ended up finally
coming to Birmingham working for a relative here for a while. Um, and so, he was
in his twenties when he came.

ELIZABETH POULOS: They went to dinner and then at dinner he was like "so when
are we going to get married?" (laughs)

JULLIA PHILLIPS: (laughs) No, he didn't!

ELIZABETH POULOS: He did! So, he didn't propose, he didn't ask. It was just
assumed. Like, her father had given the blessing, she said she kinda liked him,
and so they got married. And I've never met people who are more in love than my grandparents.

JULIA PHILLIPS: What did that look like being raised Greek in America?

ELIZABETH POULOS: Oh, that's a good question. And I think every, every Greek
person is going to tell you a different story. So, my mom is part of that first
generation. And I think it's not just exclusively Greek people, people from any
culture have a rough time trying to balance parents who have one foot in their
home country and while also recognizing that the kids were born here. So,
America is their country. And so, for my mom, there was just navigating a lot of
tension of trying to assimilate and that being a priority for her and for most
of her friends, first American Greeks, first generation Greek Americans. Um, but
still, like, wanting to be Greek, and growing up in the church and wanting to
marry a Greek person and maintain that central part of the identity, um. So, for
my mom, you know, she spoke Greek at home and my grandmother made Greek recipes
for dinner all the time, but she had friends in the neighborhood, um, who were
about her age growing up. So, their moms would always kind of help my Yiayia say
okay like now it's time to sign Maria up for school, or now's it's time to sign
Maria up for this activity or this, kind of just helping my grandmother get the
hang of what it meant to raise an American child. But my mom Greek danced, and
went to Greek school, and never did like Girl Scouts or anything like that. It's
like my Big Fat Greek Wedding. Um, but, growing up just trying to navigate that
balance of trying to help your parents become Americans, also being Greek enough
for your parents to be happy. And also feeling the drive of being a child of an
immigrant and knowing what your parents went through to get you where you are,
so for my mom education always came first. And they weren't able to help her
that much, with her schooling. But they always made that the priority. So, my
mom ended up going to Samford and going to dental school because that's what you
did, your parents came to into this country to make a better life. And so, you
go to the most, I don't, not extreme, but the greatest lengths I think to push
yourself to take every opportunity, because that's what the people before you
did and that's what you want to provide for your kids after.

ELIZABETH POULOS: So one thing is the big lunches with my grandparents on
Sunday, that's just something that happens in Greece and happens here to this
day, is that after you go to church everyone goes to Yiayia's house and eats all
together. Umm so I will be doing that and that, what comes with that is a lot of
her recipes, so like I said like the salad, spanakopita, the gyros, she doesn't
make gyros as much probably because I'm a vegetarian so I kinda ruined it for
everyone (laughs), moussaka, pastitsio, her special bread, things like that, I,
I just, I refuse to let them get lost over time because I want my kids to be
able to taste that. Again, another tangible link, umm, but also the traditions
that are centered around the family and church, especially during Easter and
during Christmas. So during Easter, we have, ah, or the whole Holy Week and
every day is important. We walk through the life of Christ the week before the
crucifixion and then with the resurrection and so every day is important and
they're, the family goes, you go to church, you eat certain things, you're
fasting, for the most part fasting from meat and dairy that's something that the
family does together and the whole church family altogether, and then you break
the fast altogether and there are certain things you eat along the way. Umm, so,
like, when you break the fast, there's always, like, this lamb stew that people
eat at 2:00 AM, because you have, like, a midnight resurrectional service. Then
you have a whole divine liturgy. It's, like, 2:30 in the morning, these people
are, like, breaking the fast, eating meat again--

JULIA PHILLIPS: (laughs)

ELIZABETH POULOS: Eating dairy

ERIN MAUDLIN: Elizabeth's interview was definitely one of my favorites that I
heard out of the class. What about you?

MICHELLE LITTLE: I loved Elizabeth's story and her Greek heritage. Another
favorite of mine is Scott Peacock's.

ERIN MAULDIN: Oh yeah

MICHELLE LITTLE: And just the sentiment of the journey that food took him on.
How he sort of went away from his Southern roots, but then came back in full force.

ERIN MAULDIN: Yeah. We were really lucky to get an interview with Scott Peacock.
He is Southern Living's, or Southern Living's Sixty Southerners to Watch this
year, um, so it was fun to see him in the magazine and think, "Oh! I know him."

ERIN MAULDIN: Scott's journey is I think a common one for a lot of Southerners.
I know personally, I hated growing up in the South, and yet, here I am, thirty
years later, devoting my life to studying the history of that region I hated
growing up. But there were lots of other journeys that we heard about throughout
all of the interviews. You know, when, um, Jonathan and Spencer interviewed a
Nigerian student who's studying here, he talked about the journey of his
country, right, from precolonial days to the slave trade and plantation
agriculture, introduction of European foods, and now how, you know, Nigeria is
trying to package agricultural products from Nigeria for a global audience. I
mean, that's a journey writ large. And then you have other personal journeys,
like, um, our Chinese exchange student that Jessica and Lily interviewed who was
born in Huanan province and studies here in Birmingham. And, you know, when he
cooks, he doesn't always cook, but when he cooks, he tries, he tries to use the
Asian markets we have around Birmingham to recreate a little bit of home. And,
we just, we just have so many examples of journeys through food, and I think
that's another reason why oral history, particularly, to capture foodways works
really well.

MICHELLE LITTLE: In the coming four episodes, we will hear more about all these
journeys. We will hear Jonathan Lawson and Spencer Bissell interview a Nigerian
student here at Samford. We'll hear Jessica Brewer and Lillie Marmoud interview
a Chinese exchange student, and Meri Cashion and Anna Drake Stevens will
interview a German family living here in Alabama. Once Dr. Mauldin's students
interviewed their chosen narrators, they also recorded a cooking demonstration,
their final assignment being a podcast episodes combining highlights from the
oral history interview, the cooking demonstration, and research they did for
their ingredient paper. Now, you just heard Dr. Mauldin and I mention the theme
of journeys in an interview with Scott Peacock. One pair of students from the
class, Ann Potter and Keely Smith, chose to interview renowned chef Scott
Peacock. Peacock is a James Beard award-winning chef and celebrated cookbook
author. On a brisk fall day in October, Ann, Keely, and I, along with Dr. Pat
Terry from Samford's Nutrition and Dietetics department, took a drive down to
Marion, Alabama to spend the day with Peacock. We met up with him at the Reverie
House, where he regaled us with stories and biscuits. Don't miss out on the
upcoming episode about his journey to and from Southern food. Another thing that
was so exciting about meeting Scott and hearing his story is that he is also
passionate about oral history. Later in his career, he started interviewing the
oldest people he could find in the state of Alabama. This oral history project
is what brought him back to live in his home state. During his first interview,
he realized the strong connection between food and memory.

SCOTT PEACOCK: I had a great grandmother in Hartford who, during the Depression,
ran a tea room. And with her black cook woman, Elizabeth, whose last, I never
knew Elizabeth. She was spoken of in very legendary terms for her cooking, um,
but I don't know her last name, which, I did know it, I need to work on that
because it's important to know those things. Anyway, I knew of this tea room,
but it was way before my time, it was before my mother's time, and of course, my
great grandmother was dead, uh, when I began to think about it again. But I was
trying to find someone who might still remember it, and my mother suggested that
I go talk to a woman named Elouise Halls. And I thought Elouise Halls was dead,
like, had been dead for quite some time. I grew up when I was very young down
the street from her. And my mother said, "No, she's a hundred and four years
old. She lives in a home," and my sister was on the phone call, because I didn't
believe it, she said, "No, it's true. Went and saw her last summer when I was
home visiting." And so they gave me Elouise's phone number. I called her, and
she answered the telephone. She had a caregiver who was staying with her. Um,
and she remembered who I was, and I asked her if I could come and talk to her,
what I wanted to come and talk to her about, and she said yes. So I called some
friends in radio to outfit me with a digital recorder, try to teach me how to
use it, um, and I basically went, like, straight to Hartford, which was not
somewhere I had been in a while, really. Um, and I went to see Elouise, and we
had a very enjoyable, uh, time together, but it, she didn't really remember the
tea room. I mean, she remembered it had been there, but she had not been there,
and she didn't really have anything to offer about it beyond that she had been
there. She remembered my grandparents and me, all of that, um. And, and but we
weren't getting anywhere. I would ask her about her mother's cooking, because I
knew she'd grown up there in Hartford, and she'd say, "Oh, my mother was a great
cook." I would say, "Well, what would she cook?" "She cooked whatever we grew.
We grew everything." You know, it was very basic. Interesting, but still, we
weren't really getting anywhere. So I left that day, and I came back, and she
was like, "Come by the next." I saw her three days in a row. And the second day
I came back, and I went through the same line of questions, thinking we might
get somewhere, but we were, we go no further along at all. And finally, I said,
um, after she'd told me two or three times what a great cook her mother was, I
said, "Well, if I could -- if I had the ability to give you one thing that your
mother made, what would you ask for?" And she was very quiet and got very
serious and looked away, and then she looked up at me, and she said, "My
mother's chicken pie." And I said, "Really?" I said, "Can you tell me about your
mother's chicken pie?" And I was not prepared. She said, "Sure," and she
started, she said, "Well, first you cut the chicken up in eight pieces, and you
can leave the skin on. Some people don't, but I like it." And she went through
this perfect cook's detail of how to make chicken pie. And that the dough needed
to have enough grease in it because if it wasn't, it would be soggy, and about
chopping up onions, and d-hardboiled eggs, and pepper, how much pepper. She
liked a lot of pepper, and some people don't. And she went through it, and then
she looked at me and she said, "Isn't that how you make yours?" (laughs) and it,
it was, it was life-changing. And we, from that moment -- there were several
things that happened. First of all, I realized later, that I -- I was aware of
it a little bit at the time, but I was so, um, I was just so astonished by what
was happening in front of me. I, I can't really, I'm still taking it in twelve
or so years later. But I said, um, what, what was really extraordinary was how
that description of that chicken pie, that I realized that she had
time-travelled, like quite literally. Elouise Halls had gone back a hundred
years in her life to her mother's table as a child.

MICHELLE LITTLE: On a personal note, this oral history project with Dr.
Mauldin's class was really fun. I attended as many of the lectures and completed
as much of the class reading as possible. My favorite assigned reading was the
book 97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families by Jane Ziegelman.
I never had thought deeply about culinary anthropology, which is the study of
human culture through this lens of food. And so much of this class was
deconstructing popular misconceptions about food and culture and sort of filling
in those blanks of historiography of food. One thing that really excited me was
anytime in class we came across something we just couldn't quite explain because
we didn't have enough primary source material was to think about all the
interviews this group of students would be capturing during this class, and all
those new primary sources we would have. You know, the more people we can engage
in oral history work, the more primary sources we have. So, for instance, a
hundred years from now, if someone is looking back at this moment in food
history in America, specifically Alabama, there will be more sources.

[Song about food] When I guy lives by himself, he's always out a-lookin' / for
some gal that looks real sweet and really knows her cookin' / every morning she
will fix a plate of sliced tomaters / biscuits, eggs, country ham, and a heap of
fried potaters. / The other night I met a gal, she set my heart a-twitter / when
she told me she knew how to make a great corn fritter / I told her I can't eat
no more because I'm getting fatter / minutes later, I forgot with bacon on the platter.

MICHELLE LITTLE: Thank you for listening to this episode of Sam.wav. Stay tuned
for the next four installments of this Food and History series, which will
feature our best student-produced podcasts from the class. I would like to thank
Erin Mauldin, Pat Terry, Elizabeth Poulos, Scott Peacock, Keely Smith, Ann
Potter, Julia Phillips, and Jeff Seitz. Until next time, make waves!

MICHELLE LITTLE: Music for this episode is by Kerry Joiner, Podington Bear,
E.C., Jason Shaw, and the Sawtooth Mountain Boys. Cover art by the Samford
Marketing and Communications department. This is a Samford Traditions and Oral
History Recordings Initiative production. For more information on Samford
University or our program, visit our website at oralhistory.samford.edu or
follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Samford_Stori and on Twitter at SU_Stori.

Audio Information
Attribute	Value
Repository	Samford University Oral History Collection
Accession	SUHist/STORI/004