Smokelore: A Short History of Barbecue in America

• Published in: Alabama Review 2021-04, Vol.74 (2), p.196-199
• Main Author: O'Sullivan, Robin
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Advertisements; African Americans; Book publishing; Cities; Cookbooks; Cooking; Race relations; Radio; Recipes
• ISSN: 0002-4341; 2166-9961

Some of the primary sources Auchmutey features are a 1585 barbacoa drawing by a mapmaker who accompanied the Roanoke colony settlers; The Country Housewife's first barbecue recipe from 1732; an account of George Washington's 1793 barbecue; Vanity Fairs 1860 Walt Whitman parody, "The Song of the Barbecue"; an 1874 report on "barbecue groves" by Frederick Law Olmsted; the Washington Post's coverage of an 1889 barbecue; slave narratives about barbecuing collected by the Federal Writers' Project in the 1930s; a 1935 radio address by Huey Long; Sunset magazine's Barbecue Book editions from 1938 and 1945; a 1942 Tennessee Williams letter about working at the Pig 'n Whistle in Macon, Georgia; a 1954 Canada Dry advertisement for a cowgirl barbecue; a 1957 Popular Mechanics article on building a do-it-yourself oil barrel barbecue rig; and a personal interview with Ollie Gates, patriarch of the Gates BBQ chain in Kansas City. Some of the secondary sources Auchmutey draws on are Lolis Eric Elie's Smokestack Lightning: Adventures in the Heart of Barbecue Country (New York, NY, 1996), Doug Worgul's The Grand Barbecue: A Celebration of the History, Places, Personalities and Techniques of Kansas City Barbecue (Kansas City, MO, 2001), Jessamyn Neuhaus's Manly Meals and Moms Home Cooking (Baltimore, MD, 2003), Robert Moss's Barbecue: The History of an American Institution (Tuscaloosa, AL, 2010), Elizabeth Engelhardt's Republic of Barbecue: Stories beyond the Brisket (Austin, TX, 2009), Myron Mixon's Smokin' with Myron Mixon (New York, NY, 2011), Daniel Vaughn's The Prophets of Smoked Meat (New York, NY, 2013), Susan Puckett's Eat Drink Delta,: A Hungry Traveler's Journey through the Soul of the South (Athens, GA, 2013), Craig David Meek's Memphis Barbecue: A Succulent History of Smoke, Sauce & Soul (Chicago, IL, 2014), Craig Goldwyn's Meathead: The Science of Great Barbecue and Grilling (Boston, MA, 2016), Michael Twitty's The Cooking Gene: A Journey through African American Culinary History in the Old South (New York, NY, 2017), and, more broadly, oral histories conducted by the Southern Foodways Alliance. Smokelore pays no particular attention to Alabama and does not spotlight any of the state's barbecue establishments. Since North Carolina, Texas, and Kansas City are each granted their own chapters-and Memphis is also given considerable space-Alabama food historians might take offense.