Succotash: The Original Farm to Table
Succotash, a top old-school side dish that almost everyone has forgotten about. “Fresh tomatoes, fresh corn, [and] chopped okra fried in a skillet with just a little bit of salt and pepper and a pinch of sugar take it to the next level, simmering on the stove – simple, delicious, poured over rice, and oh-so-southern,” said Johnson. This humble combination doesn’t need Instagram filters to shine.
Originating with the Narragansett of New England, succotash could’ve very well found a place among the first Thanksgiving Day spread, and it was eaten widely throughout the American colonies in the 1600s. The Native American wisdom behind mixing beans and corn created a nutritionally complete meal that sustained entire communities through harsh winters.
It was also popular during the Great Depression, as it’s cheap and easy to make. Modern chefs are rediscovering what our ancestors knew: you don’t need expensive ingredients to create something extraordinary.
Hoecakes: The Original Fast Food
Despite their evocative name, hoecakes look more like flatbreads or pancakes than cakes. While they are typically prepared on a skillet or a hot griddle until golden and crispy, this may not always have been the case in the past. The name supposedly comes from field workers who cooked them on the blade of a hoe over an open fire.
These cornmeal flatbreads were the energy bars of their time. Portable, filling, and made from ingredients that didn’t spoil easily, hoecakes sustained people through long days of manual labor. They could be sweet or savory, thick or thin, depending on what was available.
Modern food trucks charge premium prices for “artisanal flatbreads” that pale in comparison to these humble workhorses. Hoecakes represent the ultimate in functional food design, created by people who understood that good food doesn’t have to be complicated.
Country Captain Chicken: The International Sensation
The country captain chicken recipe underwent a notable revival in 1906 when Alessandro Filippini – who worked as a chef at New York’s famed Delmonico’s restaurant – published a new version of this dish in his “International Cook Book.” Filippini’s take on the dish included green peppers, garlic, thyme, and parsley, as well as a topping of roasted almonds and dried currants.
The dish was further transformed in the 1920s when a doctor’s wife in Columbus, Georgia known as “Miss Mamie” Bullard collaborated with her cook, Arie Mullins, to add preserved tomatoes to the mix. Miss Mamie is said to have even served her version of country captain chicken to Franklin Delano Roosevelt at one of her dinner parties.
This curry-spiced chicken dish proves that Southern cuisine was never isolated from global influences. The combination of Indian-inspired spices with local ingredients created something uniquely American, yet worldly enough to impress presidents.
Chicken Mull: The Original Comfort Stew
It may not be as well-known as Brunswick stew or gumbo, but a buttery bowlful of chicken mull definitely holds its own when it comes to flavor. This yellow-hued dish is made with shredded chicken simmered in a rich, creamy broth, which is thickened with crushed saltines. The crackers add body and a subtle saltiness that transforms simple ingredients into liquid gold.
Chicken mull is often considered as a traditional barbecue stew, because it used to be prepared in huge communal pots and served at large gatherings such as fundraisers and church socials. These weren’t just meals but community events that strengthened social bonds through shared food.
The roots of chicken mull are believed to be tied to 19th-century fish cookouts – called “muddles” – that were held by Atlantic coast fishermen, which typically included a savory mush of bass, potatoes, onions, and spices. As the tradition moved inland through the Southern states, fish was replaced with poultry, and the name evolved from “muddle” to “mull.”
Pear Salad: The Elegant Throwback
From pear salad and tomato pudding to vinegar pie and bacon crackers, we’re more than ready for these old-school classics to make a comeback Food historians are particularly passionate about reviving this simple yet sophisticated dish that graced Southern tables for decades.
Pear salad typically consisted of canned pear halves filled with cream cheese or cottage cheese, often topped with a cherry and served on lettuce leaves. While it might sound outdated to modern palates, this dish represented the height of elegance at mid-century dinner parties and church luncheons.
The combination of sweet fruit, creamy dairy, and fresh greens created a refreshing contrast to heavier Southern fare. It’s the kind of dish that would fit perfectly into today’s obsession with Instagram-worthy presentations, proving that good presentation never goes out of style.
Tomato Pudding: Sweet Meets Savory
Tomato pudding challenges modern assumptions about what constitutes a proper side dish. This baked casserole combines fresh tomatoes with sugar, butter, and bread cubes to create something that hovers deliciously between sweet and savory. It’s comfort food that refuses to be categorized.
The dish emerged from practical necessity. When tomato harvests overwhelmed home cooks, they needed creative ways to preserve and use the surplus. Adding sugar helped balance the acidity while creating a unique flavor profile that complemented both meat and vegetable dishes.
Modern chefs would call this “fusion cuisine” and charge accordingly. Southern cooks just called it supper. The pudding’s custard-like texture and complex flavor deserve recognition beyond historical curiosity.
Vinegar Pie: Depression Era Ingenuity
Other times, foods grow in popularity due to necessity, as was the case with foods like vinegar pie, coming into the mainstream during the Great Depression, when ingredients were scant This dessert emerged when lemons were expensive luxuries that most families couldn’t afford.
Vinegar pie tastes remarkably similar to lemon meringue pie, thanks to the acid’s ability to create that same bright, tart flavor profile. The filling combines vinegar with sugar, eggs, and flour to create a smooth custard that fools the palate into thinking it’s made from expensive citrus.
The pie represents Southern resourcefulness at its finest. When life gives you vinegar instead of lemons, you make pie. It’s a testament to cooks who refused to let limited ingredients limit their creativity or their family’s enjoyment of dessert.
Field Peas: The Nutritional Powerhouse
The term field pea reveals their original role in the South, where for generations they were grown in the rice and corn fields to add valuable nitrogen back into the soil. Field peas were so common and plentiful that there was no need to tend them in a kitchen garden. These weren’t just crops but soil saviors that improved the land for future harvests.
Given their critical role as subsistence food for many poor people and livestock, some culinary historians say that field peas once thrived on poverty. They provided essential protein and nutrients when meat was scarce or expensive.
Enslaved Africans brought field peas from their homeland. Given those fraught origins, it’s hard to imagine how or why eating field peas came to be associated with good luck on New Year’s Day, but they are said to represent coins, just as leafy greens represent folding money.
Angel Biscuits: The Insurance Policy
We’re hoping for a comeback of these vintage Southern foods, including angel biscuits, chess pie, red-eye gravy, poppy seed chicken, and potato candy. Angel biscuits earned their heavenly name from their foolproof nature and impossibly light texture.
These biscuits combine the best of both worlds: they contain both baking powder and yeast, providing double insurance against dense, heavy results. The yeast adds complexity to the flavor while the baking powder ensures immediate lift, creating biscuits that are virtually failure-proof.
The dough can be made ahead and refrigerated for days, making angel biscuits the ultimate convenience food for busy Southern cooks. They represent the practical side of Southern hospitality: delicious food that doesn’t chain the cook to the kitchen.
Chess Pie: The Mystery Sweet
Chess pie remains one of the South’s most debated desserts. No one can agree on the origin of its name, but everyone agrees on its perfection. This custard-based pie requires just a handful of pantry staples: eggs, sugar, butter, and cornmeal or flour for thickening.
The genius lies in the pie’s simplicity and shelf stability. Before refrigeration, chess pie could sit safely on counters for days without spoiling, making it ideal for unexpected company or busy households. The cornmeal adds a subtle texture that distinguishes it from plain custard pie.
Modern bakers overthink desserts with exotic ingredients and complex techniques. Chess pie proves that perfect desserts require nothing more than quality ingredients and proper execution. It’s humble pie at its most elevated.
Red-Eye Gravy: The Morning Miracle
Red-eye gravy transforms humble ham drippings and black coffee into liquid motivation for early morning farm work. This thin, dark gravy gets spooned over biscuits or grits, providing caffeine and fat in one efficient package.
The name supposedly comes from the red “eye” that forms when the gravy settles, created by the ham fat floating to the surface. Some historians argue it references the bloodshot eyes of hungover diners desperate for both caffeine and substance.
This gravy represents frontier practicality at its finest. Nothing got wasted, including the precious drippings from expensive ham. The addition of coffee created a sauce that woke people up while filling them up, perfect for the demands of agricultural life.
Poppy Seed Chicken: The Casserole Champion
Poppy seed chicken casserole dominated church potlucks and dinner parties throughout the mid-twentieth century. This creamy, crunchy dish combined tender chicken with a rich sauce studded with tiny poppy seeds, then topped with crushed Ritz crackers for textural contrast.
The dish represented the height of sophisticated entertaining for home cooks who wanted to serve something special without spending hours in the kitchen. It could be assembled ahead of time and baked when guests arrived, fitting perfectly into the entertaining style of busy hostesses.
The poppy seeds added visual interest and a subtle nutty flavor that elevated simple chicken into something memorable. It’s comfort food with just enough exotic elements to feel special, proving that Southern cooks have always been creative with global ingredients.
Potato Candy: The Unlikely Sweet
Potato candy sounds like an oxymoron, but this Depression-era treat proves that necessity truly is the mother of invention. Made from mashed potatoes, powdered sugar, and peanut butter, these simple confections satisfied sweet cravings when sugar was expensive or rationed.
The potatoes provide moisture and structure while disappearing completely into the background, allowing the sweetness and peanut butter to dominate. The result tastes remarkably like conventional fudge, fooling unsuspecting taste buds completely.
This candy represents the ingenuity of home cooks who refused to let their families go without treats, even during hardship. It’s resourcefulness disguised as indulgence, proving that creativity can triumph over scarcity.
Tomato Aspic: The Savory Suspension
The cool sweet-and-sour brightness of vintage tomato aspic translates into a colorful high-summer pairing of heirloom tomatoes with field pea-nectarine salsa. This molded gelatin salad represented sophistication and careful planning in an era before convenience foods.
Tomato aspic combined fresh tomato juice with gelatin, herbs, and sometimes vegetables to create an elegant side dish that complemented heavy meats. The clear, jewel-like appearance made it a showstopper at formal dinners and special occasions.
The dish required timing and technique, marking the cook as someone who understood proper entertaining. While modern palates might find molded gelatin salads dated, the flavor combinations remain surprisingly sophisticated and refreshing.
Caramel Cake: The Ultimate Layer Challenge
Within a week, as it happened, a customer asked me if I could revive a cake beloved among the townsfolk of The Plains, a little burg up the road. “Mrs. Beavers, now gone, was famous for her caramel layer cake that still haunts us all,” he told me, providing a skimpy list of ingredients from family members uncertain about the preparation. I began searching through vintage cookbooks for caramel cakes, but the recipes glossed over the cake part – usually stating only to “make a simple yellow batter” – and focused on the mishaps of working with caramel, which tends to burn or harden quickly.
But I was smitten with the richness of home-cooked caramel and yearned to upgrade this disappearing jewel. Caramel cake represents the pinnacle of Southern baking skills, requiring patience, timing, and nerves of steel to execute properly.
The cake’s multiple layers are held together with genuine caramel frosting, not the artificially flavored substitutes common today. Making real caramel demands constant attention and split-second timing, marking accomplished bakers as masters of their craft.
Bacon Crackers: The Portable Pleasure
Bacon crackers combined the South’s love of pork with portable convenience. These weren’t crackers made with bacon but rather strips of bacon cooked until crispy enough to snap like crackers. They provided protein and fat in an easily transportable form, perfect for long workdays or travel.
The cooking method required careful attention to achieve the right balance between crispy and burnt. Too little cooking left them chewy and perishable. Too much turned them bitter and inedible. Proper bacon crackers could last for days without refrigeration.
This technique represents the practical side of Southern food preservation. Before refrigeration and modern packaging, cooks had to find creative ways to make foods travel-friendly and shelf-stable while remaining delicious.
Peach Melba: The Celebrity Dessert
Barnhill said peach melba was one of her family’s favorites while growing up in Alabama. “While there, I had the opportunity to enjoy peach melba as Escoffier intended – tender poached peaches, cool and creamy vanilla ice cream, with a vibrant and tart raspberry coulis.
To sit in that courtyard, eating a dish Escoffier first created in 1893 to honor the Australian soprano Dame Nellie Melba, was very nostalgic for me. It felt almost full circle – like my childhood memories and Escoffier’s legacy all connected by this simple, yet timeless dessert.”
The dish’s simplicity renders it ageless. It doesn’t require any extravagant cooking techniques. This elegant dessert proves that Southern cuisine has always been connected to international culinary trends.
Okra Soup: The African Legacy
Today, the garden is absolutely bursting with okra – the essential African vegetable that became prized in the American South – so we’re making okra soup, red rice and slow-simmered green beans in a rich, meaty broth. This soup represents one of the clearest connections between African and Southern American foodways.
Okra soup typically combines the vegetables with tomatoes, onions, and meat or seafood to create a thick, satisfying meal. The okra’s natural thickening properties eliminate the need for additional starches, while its unique texture adds character to every spoonful.
The dish tells a story of cultural adaptation and survival. Enslaved Africans brought their knowledge of okra cultivation and preparation to the Americas, where it became integral to Southern cuisine. The vegetable’s ability to thrive in hot, humid conditions made it perfect for the Southern climate.
Spoon Bread: The Hybrid Wonder
Spoon bread occupies a unique space between bread and pudding, creating confusion and delight in equal measure. This cornmeal-based dish is baked in a casserole dish and served with a spoon, hence the name. The texture falls somewhere between soft polenta and bread pudding.
The dish likely evolved from Native American corn preparations, adapted by European settlers and refined by African cooks. The combination of cornmeal, milk, eggs, and butter creates a custard-like consistency that pairs beautifully with both sweet and savory accompaniments.
Spoon bread challenges modern categories of what constitutes bread versus side dish. It’s comfort food that refuses simple classification, representing the innovative spirit of Southern cooking that creates new categories when existing ones prove inadequate.
Syllabub: The Frothy Fantasy
Syllabub sounds like nonsense but tastes like heaven. This whipped drink-dessert combined wine or sherry with cream, sugar, and sometimes fruit juice to create a light, frothy treat. The mixture was traditionally whipped by hand until it formed soft peaks.
The drink occupied the space between beverage and dessert, served in glasses but eaten with spoons. Different regions developed their own variations, with some preferring wine while others favored brandy or even ale as the base.
Syllabub represented leisure and celebration, requiring both expensive ingredients and time to prepare properly. It was party food that announced special occasions and demonstrated the host’s ability to provide luxuries for their guests.
Stack Cake: The Community Builder
Stack cake tells the story of Appalachian ingenuity and community cooperation. This towering dessert consisted of multiple thin layers made from simple ingredients, with dried apple filling between each layer. The cake improved with age, becoming more flavorful and moist over several days.
Traditionally, different community members would contribute individual layers to create towering cakes for weddings and special celebrations. The number of layers indicated the bride’s popularity and the community’s affection, with some cakes reaching impressive heights.
The cake’s construction required patience and planning. The layers were often made days in advance and stored carefully before assembly. The dried apple filling provided sweetness and moisture while connecting the cake to local apple orchards and preservation traditions.
Leather Britches: The Preserved Bounty
Leather britches beans earned their peculiar name from their appearance after being strung and dried for winter storage. These green beans were threaded on strings and hung to dry, creating leathery strips that could be reconstituted months later with water and cooking.
The preservation method allowed families to enjoy green beans year-round, long before freezing or canning became common. The dried beans developed concentrated flavors that fresh beans couldn’t match, adding depth to winter stews and side dishes.
This technique represents the resourcefulness that defined Southern food culture. Nothing went to waste, and seasonal abundance was carefully preserved for leaner times. The beans connected summer’s harvest to winter’s meals, ensuring nutritional variety throughout the year.
Crackling Cornbread: The Crispy Revolution
Before cornbread became the fluffy, slightly sweet side dish we know today, Southern cooks transformed it into something far more decadent by stirring in cracklings – those crispy, rendered bits of pork fat left over from making lard. This wasn’t just about adding flavor; it was about extracting maximum value from every part of the hog during butchering season. The cracklings added an irresistible crunch and savory richness that plain cornbread could never achieve, turning a simple staple into something people actually craved. Each bite delivered contrasting textures – tender cornbread punctuated by pockets of crispy, porky goodness that melted on your tongue. Hog-killing time in late fall meant fresh cracklings, and families would bake batch after batch of this enhanced cornbread while the cracklings were at their peak. Modern health concerns pushed this version into obscurity, but food historians argue we’ve lost something irreplaceable in our quest for lighter fare. The dish represented peak Southern resourcefulness, where nothing was wasted and everything was made delicious.
Key Takeaway
Forgotten Southern dishes aren’t just old recipes – they’re living records of Black, Indigenous, and immigrant food traditions that shaped the region, and food historians say reviving them in home kitchens and restaurants is key to preserving Southern culture, fighting culinary amnesia, and celebrating a richer, more authentic food history.
Why These Dishes Disappeared (And Why That’s Changing)
So why did these incredible dishes vanish from our tables in the first place? Food historians point to a perfect storm of culinary amnesia that hit after World War II. The rise of convenience foods, fast-food chains, and processed ingredients made traditional cooking seem old-fashioned and time-consuming. Younger generations moved away from farms and family kitchens, breaking the chain of oral recipe traditions that kept these dishes alive. But here’s the thing – what we lost wasn’t just recipes, it was connection. These dishes required community, patience, and skills passed down through generations. Now there’s a massive shift happening. Chefs like Sean Brock and Mashama Bailey are putting forgotten Southern dishes back on upscale menus, while home cooks are scouring their grandmothers’ recipe boxes and sharing discoveries on social media. The pandemic especially sparked this revival, as people stuck at home craved comfort, authenticity, and a taste of their roots. We’re finally realizing that convenience came at a cost, and these old dishes offer something no drive-through ever could – a direct line to our history and the people who came before us.
The Secret Ingredients That Made These Dishes Work
Here’s what modern cooks don’t realize – these forgotten dishes weren’t just about recipes, they were about ingredients we’ve completely lost touch with. Take field peas, for instance. Your grocery store’s frozen black-eyed peas are nothing like the heirloom varieties Southerners grew for centuries – crowder peas, lady peas, zipper peas – each with distinct flavors and textures that made dishes sing. The same goes for lard, which got demonized during the low-fat craze but was actually the secret to flaky biscuits and crispy crackling cornbread that butter just can’t replicate. Food historians like Michael Twitty emphasize that enslaved Africans and their descendants knew exactly which parts of the pig, which leafy greens, and which preservation techniques would transform humble ingredients into something transcendent. We replaced real buttermilk with grocery store versions, stone-ground cornmeal with degerminated meal that lasts forever but tastes like cardboard, and slow-simmered pot liquor with canned vegetables. The dishes didn’t just disappear because we got lazy – they disappeared because we literally can’t find the same ingredients anymore unless we seek out farmers’ markets, heritage seed companies, and old-school butchers who still understand what made Southern cooking so damn good in the first place.
How Modern Chefs Are Bringing These Flavors Back
Something wild is happening in Southern kitchens right now, and it’s not just nostalgia driving it. Chefs like Mashama Bailey in Savannah and Rodney Scott in Charleston are hunting down those heritage ingredients and proving these old dishes can absolutely hold their own against modern cuisine. They’re sourcing Sea Island red peas from third-generation farmers, grinding cornmeal fresh every morning, and rendering their own lard because they know the difference is night and day. What’s surprising is how younger diners – people who never grew up eating this stuff – are going crazy for properly made hoecakes and real field pea succotash when they taste them for the first time. The farm-to-table movement accidentally created the perfect conditions for these dishes to return, since farmers’ markets now stock the exact heirloom varieties and heritage breeds these recipes demand. Even home cooks are getting in on it, joining seed-swap groups and learning to cure their own pork belly, because once you taste the real thing, there’s no going back to the bland, industrialized versions. It’s not about recreating grandma’s kitchen exactly – it’s about understanding why her food tasted so incredible and having the respect to source ingredients that do justice to these time-tested recipes.
Where To Actually Find These Dishes Today
Tracking down authentic versions of these forgotten Southern dishes takes some detective work, but they’re out there if you know where to look. Your best bet is hitting up church suppers and small-town meat-and-threes that haven’t changed their menu since 1972 – places where the server still calls you ‘honey’ and the daily special is written on a chalkboard. The Southern Foodways Alliance maintains a list of restaurants keeping these traditions alive, from Mrs. Wilkes’ Dining Room in Savannah still serving chicken mull family-style to tiny spots in the Mississippi Delta where you can find real tomato pudding on the steam table. Farmers’ markets have become unexpected goldmines too, with vendors selling stack cakes and leather britches alongside their produce, often using recipes passed down through four or five generations. What’s really exciting is that some cities now have pop-up dinners specifically focused on heritage Southern cooking – you just need to follow the right Instagram accounts and food blogs to catch them. Don’t overlook community cookbooks from rural churches either, because those spiral-bound treasures contain the actual working recipes locals have been making for decades, not the watered-down versions you’ll find online.
The Grandmother Test: How To Know If You’ve Found The Real Deal
Here’s the thing about authentic Southern cooking – you can spot a faker from across the room. Real tomato pudding should make you do a double-take because it looks nothing like dessert, and if someone’s chicken mull doesn’t have that deep, soul-warming broth that took hours to develop, they’re just serving you fancy chicken soup. Food historians say the ‘grandmother test’ is your best tool: if the dish would make a Southern grandmother nod approvingly (or better yet, ask for the recipe), you’ve hit the jackpot. Watch out for restaurants that claim ‘authentic’ but use shortcuts like canned vegetables in their succotash or pre-made pie crusts for their chess pie – these dishes earned their reputation through time and technique, not convenience. The texture tells you everything too: stack cake should be dense and almost leather-like between those apple layers, angel biscuits need that distinctive yeasty tang, and proper crackling cornbread should shatter into crispy bits that’ll cut your mouth if you’re not careful. Trust your instincts, because if it tastes like something you could whip up in twenty minutes on a Tuesday night, it’s probably not the real heritage version worth tracking down.
Why You Should Cook These Dishes At Home (Even If You’re Scared)
Look, nobody’s expecting you to become a master Southern cook overnight, but here’s the beautiful secret about these forgotten dishes – most of them were designed by people who didn’t have fancy culinary training or Instagram-worthy kitchens. Your great-great-grandmother made hoecakes on a literal hoe over an open fire, so you can definitely handle them on your stovetop. Start with something forgiving like vinegar pie, which literally exists because someone needed to make dessert with almost nothing in the pantry. Food historians point out that these recipes survived precisely because they were practical and adaptable, not because they required professional skills or exotic ingredients you’d need to special-order from three states away. The real magic happens when you mess up – because that’s exactly how these dishes evolved in the first place, with cooks adjusting and improvising based on what they had available. Plus, cooking these recipes connects you to food history in a way that watching cooking shows or reading articles never will, and honestly, there’s something deeply satisfying about pulling a crackling cornbread out of your oven that would make any Southern grandmother proud.
The Surprising Health Benefits Hiding In These Old-School Recipes
Here’s something that’ll blow your mind – these supposedly outdated Southern dishes are actually way healthier than half the trendy stuff people are buying at Whole Foods right now. Field peas pack more protein and fiber than most modern health foods, and they’ve been doing it for centuries without needing a marketing team or fancy packaging. Food historians and nutritionists are increasingly pointing out that dishes like okra soup and leather britches beans represent traditional fermentation and preservation methods that support gut health in ways our processed-food culture has completely forgotten. The real kicker? Most of these recipes were naturally gluten-free, dairy-free, or plant-based long before those became diet buzzwords, simply because Southern cooks were working with what grew locally and what their bodies could actually digest. Even the seemingly indulgent dishes like crackling cornbread used every part of the animal and incorporated whole grains in ways that kept people genuinely nourished through backbreaking farm work. Modern research keeps validating what grandmothers knew instinctively – that eating seasonally, using the whole ingredient, and cooking from scratch isn’t just romantic nostalgia, it’s actually the foundation of sustainable nutrition that our bodies desperately need.
