20 Lost Soul Food Dishes Only Older Generations Still Remember

In thirty years I have not been able to walk into a restaurant anywhere in this country and order a tea cake. Not one. And there was a time when every grandmother I knew had a tin of them sitting on top of the refrigerator. I grew up outside Greenwood, Mississippi, one of seven children, and I cooked in other people's kitchens for thirty four years. Every dish on this list was on a table I sat at or cooked for. I am not reading these out of a book. In this one I give you all twenty lost soul food dishes and old southern recipes, and what actually happened to each one. The tea cake and the exact reason it vanished. The cornbread that was cooked on top of the stove long before anybody put it in an oven. The relish every family made differently and nobody makes now. The dish that is grated raw, not mashed, and tastes nothing like the casserole that replaced it. The real ambrosia, which is not the bowl of marshmallows that stole its name. And the trick with the back of a knife that turns plain corn into the best thing on an August table. I am also honest at the end about the ones that probably should have gone, because not everything old was better and I am not going to pretend it was. Nobody paid me for this. There is nothing in the description to buy. I do not have a cookbook and I am not going to have one. Tell me where you are watching from, and tell me which of these twenty your family made. And more than that, tell me the one I left off. There is a dish in your family that belongs on this list and I have never heard of it, and those are the comments I read twice. If you take up home canning for the chow chow or the watermelon rind preserves, follow a tested modern canning recipe and do not guess at it. 00:00 The one I cannot find anywhere 01:09 Tea cakes, and what happened to them 02:15 Hoecake and cracklin bread 04:15 Neck bones, croquettes, chow chow 06:00 Fried corn and sweet potato pone 07:45 Poor food is not the same as food made by poor people 09:20 The pies nobody bakes now 14:37 Why the chain broke in one generation