Food Evidence from a Nineteenth-Century Kitchen House in Charleston, South Carolina

Abstract A two-story kitchen house located at 51 Meeting Street, downtown Charleston, was a place of food preparation and cooking during the 19th century. From 1808 to 1865, enslaved cooks worked long hours creating meals for the many people who resided on this urban lot. A useful approach to understanding the complexities of enslaved people’s daily lives is through the study of organic materials preserved inside the walls of standing historical structures. Evidence for culinary ingredients is preserved in the accumulations of 19th-century rodents, who pilfered food items and deposited them inside the walls of the kitchen house. The identification of thousands of botanical remains provides a great deal of information about the dishes that enslaved cooks prepared for the people that held them in bondage. Most significantly, the botanical evidence from the second-floor living quarters indicates that enslaved Black and multiracial people cooked West African–influenced meals of cowpeas, sesame, and okra for themselves as part of a fusion cuisine that also included Indigenous and European crops. In contrast to rural plantations, many enslaved people living in Charleston did not have access to their own garden spaces. Despite this hurdle, at least some enslaved household servants were able to circumvent the control of enslavers and practice culinary agency through their food choices.