Short Summary: My Mammy By Tildy Collins

Most enslaved cooks received their training as an apprentice under other cooks. Plantation papers reveal that while most enslaved cooks were randomly chosen over the entire plantation community, some cooks were raised in the kitchen and were taught the craft across generational lines under the shadows of elder cooks. Young children gathered wood, milked cows, filled water baskets and carried them to and from the water well to the kitchen, gathered eggs, shelled peas, stirred ingredients, among other assigned tasks. Tildy Collins, a former slave, explained that children were expected to obey the cook and pull their weight in the kitchen:

My Granmammy, her de head cook 'oman at de big house, an' us had to mine her lak us did Mammy. I ho'p

Mandy Marrow, a former slave recalled: Mammy and my grandma am cooks and powerful good and dey's larnt me and dat hew I come to be a cook. Like everybody dem times, us raise everything and makes preserves and cure de meats. De hams and bacons am smoked. Dere am no-hickory wood 'round but we uses de corncobs and dey makes de fine flavor in de meat. Many's de day I watches de fire in dat smokehouse and keeps it low, to git de smoke flavor. I fellows de cookin' when I gits big and goes for myself and I never wants for de job. Skill

Those gifted in the kitchen relied on her instincts and her senses as they listened to the hum of oil heating in a frying pan to determine when the temperature was just right to add meat. Enslaved cooks did not have thermometers yet they had an innate ability to put cake batter in covered Dutch ovens that were surrounded by hot coals; and knew when cakes were done just by the color, texture, and smell. Enslaved cooks also perfected the culinary art of using their taste palate to adjust spices and seasoning. In West African traditions, spicing consisted of adding herbs and spices as food boiled or fried. In French cuisine the saucier is a position of great respect and takes great skill to master. With sauces and stocks you can simply broil or boil a meat—and use the natural flavor as a basis upon which to apply a range of others. Some cooks were well known for their saucing abilities. They also managed to prepare elaborate meals on tight schedules every day of the week, in addition to producing and presenting extravagant banquet spreads for the many dinner parties that their slave owner’s held. David Hunter Strother, a writer, eloquently summed up the talent of the slave cook after stopping for a meal at a house in Amherst County, Central