Culinary Evolution: Tradition, Class, and Cultural Crossroads
Introduction
Food is far more than sustenance – it carries culture, history, and identity on every plate. Yet the story of “fine dining” often privileges certain cuisines and chefs while overlooking the informal innovators – home cooks, indigenous peoples, and marginalized communities – who created many core techniques and dishes. This report explores the evolution of the culinary world through the lenses of cultural appropriation, classism, and the undervaluation of traditional food knowledge. We will see how early human experimentation with cooking laid the groundwork for all cuisine, how French and Italian foods became enshrined as global haute cuisine, and why other traditions (like Southern soul food or Caribbean cooking) have not been granted the same prestige or price. We’ll compare the perception of elite foods (such as foie gras or French macarons) with humble staples (like chitlins or pineapple upside-down cake), and examine fusion cuisine as both creative innovation and cultural borrowing. Finally, we highlight modern chefs who are reclaiming and elevating traditional dishes in high-end settings, blurring the line between “home food” and “fine dining.”
“Cultural Appropriation Foods Around the World”
This short video explores the tension between borrowing and erasure in global food culture — the exact issues we’re about to unpack in this deep dive.
Why Kareem’s TropiKool Slice is Fusion With a Story
This cake is more than a dessert—it’s a remix of memory and mastery. Strawberry coconut upside-down cake. Kool-Aid gelée. Pineapple glaze. Brûléed sugar crunch. Topped with a cherry… because why not? This slice is summer, childhood, and flex-worthy technique in one.
But let’s really break it down. This isn’t just about layers of flavor—it’s a proof of concept. TropiKool Slice exists to remind you: fancy isn’t about who you are or where you trained—it’s about how you deliver. What if a pineapple upside-down cake could hold its own on fine china? What if a layer of Kool-Aid-infused coconut gelée made you rethink what belongs in a gelée—and why it doesn’t need to be called “jello” to matter?
The brûléed sugar crunch isn’t just a texture play—it’s a statement. That fancy is crafted from life, not legacy.
Just like how I use Oishii Omakase strawberries—some of the world’s most exquisite berries—and cook them down with Swedish Fish to make the filling for my strawberry shortcake. That’s not fusion for trend’s sake—that’s memory, nostalgia, and high-end technique rolled into one.FreshDirect
This slice, like so many of my creations, is where Kool-Aid meets gelée, corner store meets pastry case, and experience meets elegance.
Early Food Discovery: From Fire to Fermentation
Humanity’s culinary journey began long before restaurants and recipe books. In fact, prehistoric humans were the original experimental chefs. Anthropologists believe our ancestors started cooking with fire nearly 2 million years ago – perhaps by tossing raw meat into flames and finding it sizzled into something newnationalgeographic.com. Mastering fire for cooking was a revolutionary step that made food more digestible and nutritious, fueling the development of the human brainnationalgeographic.com. By the Paleolithic era, people were building simple hearths, and for most of human history “over an open fire was the one and only way to cook a meal”nationalgeographic.com.
As humans settled and societies advanced, they discovered or invented a host of techniques still fundamental today – often by necessity or accident. Fermentation likely began with prehistoric people leaving fruit or grain to naturally ferment into alcohol or leavened bread. Archaeologists have found evidence of cooking fish with controlled fire from 780,000 years ago, dramatically pushing back the timeline of humanity’s first “recipe”sciencedaily.comsciencedaily.com. Early farmers learned to preserve excess harvests by drying, smoking, and pickling, giving birth to staples like dried fish, jerky, and pickled vegetables. None of these innovations came from a formal school or a famous chef – they were the cumulative work of generations of anonymous experimenters across different cultures.
However, formal culinary history often ignores these foundations. Textbooks may start with the first known written recipes or the lavish banquets of kings, implicitly crediting elites for culinary progress. In truth, the essential building blocks of cooking – from boiling bones for broth to fermenting milk into cheese – were developed by ordinary people (frequently women in home kitchens) long before any chef codified them. Pre-modern cooks, whether roasting tubers in the ashes or fermenting wild honey into mead, laid the groundwork for the cuisines we celebrate today. Their contributions, lacking individual names or Michelin stars, are easy to overlook. Yet without that slow collective innovation, there would be no haute cuisine at all.
From Hearth to Haute Cuisine: Informal Knowledge Behind Classical Techniques
Many core cooking techniques taught in culinary schools originated as folk knowledge or survival skills in marginalized or rural communities. The difference lies in who gets credit and prestige. For example, braising – the slow cooking of tough cuts of meat in liquid – is a classic technique in French gastronomy, essential for dishes like coq au vin or boeuf bourguignon. But braising wasn’t invented in a royal kitchen; it evolved in farms and villages as a way to make old roosters or sinewy beef edible. Peasant cooks found that a long, slow simmer with wine or vegetables could transform scraps into a tender, flavorful stew. Generations later, those same methods were refined and taught as pillars of French “grand cuisine.” The mother sauces of French cooking (espagnole, velouté, etc.) also have humble roots – making sauce was originally a way to stretch and enrich whatever ingredients were on hand. A simple roux of flour and fat, a technique known to home cooks for thickening gravies, became the basis of high-class sauces. In short, elite cuisine often codified and elevated existing home cooking practices rather than creating them from scratch.
Consider barbecue, a technique now so universal that chefs worldwide learn the art of smoking and slow-cooking meat. The origins of barbecue underscore how informal and indigenous knowledge fed into mainstream culinary tradition. The term “barbecue” itself comes from barbacoa, a word and cooking method from the Taíno people of the Caribbean, referring to slow-cooking meat over a wood frameeater.com. Enslaved Africans and Native Americans in the Americas adopted and further developed barbecue techniques – from jerk cooking in Jamaica to pit barbecues in the American South – long before these methods appeared in any cookbookeater.com. Today’s culinary students might learn the science of smoking meats, but often without acknowledgment that African and indigenous cooks “shaped the culture of New World barbecuing traditions” that modern barbecue rests oneater.com. As food historian Michael Twitty notes, the Black contributions to barbecue in America “are often stripped out” by others when recounting its historyeater.com – a clear case of erasure of informal innovators.
Many other techniques tell a similar story. Confit (slow-cooking meat in its own fat) was a French farm method of preserving meat before refrigeration; today duck confit is a gourmet item. Curing and smoking fish or pork allowed sailors and peasants to preserve protein for winter – now those charcuterie and smoked delicacies appear on fine dining menus. Fermented foods like sauerkraut, kimchi, and yogurt were born from necessity in various poor communities around the world, yet now chefs prize fermentation for its complex flavors. Even the cast-iron skillet baking behind a simple upside-down cake (more on that soon) harkens back to 19th-century hearth cookingdolesunshine.com. In short, the knowledge of grandmothers and street vendors underpins much of what is taught by master chefs. The difference is that culinary institutions historically did not value that knowledge until it was reframed in a European fine dining context. This disconnect between informal origin and formal credit is a running theme in culinary evolution.
Haute Cuisine and the Hierarchy of Cuisines
By the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, French cuisine had positioned itself at the top of a global hierarchy of taste. French aristocracy and chefs like Carême and Escoffier codified “haute cuisine” (high cuisine) with elaborate techniques, rich sauces, and meticulous presentationsbritannica.combritannica.com. This cuisine was explicitly contrasted with the “peasant or bourgeois cuisine” of France – rustic dishes with bold, earthy flavors were deemed less refined, something to be polished or left behindbritannica.com. As Britannica notes, classic grande cuisine strove for a harmonious, artful character, distancing itself from the “allowable” robust flavors of peasant cookingbritannica.com. In essence, the French culinary establishment created an aesthetic of sophistication that implicitly set elite, urban, European food apart from “coarse” country cooking. With France’s global influence (and later the prestige of Michelin stars and culinary schools), this notion spread widely.
Italian cuisine likewise gained renown, though often Italian food abroad split into two images: the homey red-sauce dishes of immigrants (initially seen as cheap and low-class) versus the rarified truffle-laden fare of Northern Italian restaurants. Still, by the late 20th century, French and Italian were firmly entrenched as the epitome of fine dining in the Western imagination. Upscale restaurants in New York, London, or Tokyo were likely to feature French techniques or Italian ingredients, and these cuisines commanded high prices. This dynamic was self-reinforcing: awards and media focused on European cuisine, so aspiring chefs trained in those traditions, opening more French/Italian-style restaurants. As one food writer observed, for decades “the signal that European food was the defining food of our culture became a self-fulfilling prophecy”, with diners, media, and chefs all orbiting around that standardeater.com. French gastronomy was even enshrined by UNESCO as an intangible cultural heritage, reflecting its global status.
Meanwhile, other cuisines were systemically undervalued in fine dining. Complex, flavorful food traditions from Asia, Africa, and the Americas were often pigeonholed as cheap eats, street food, or simply “ethnic” food – delicious but not deserving of luxury pricing or formal accolades. This has as much to do with class and race as with taste. In the United States, for example, Southern soul food (rooted in African American cooking) and Caribbean cuisine have rarely been featured in Michelin-starred restaurants or charging $100 tasting menus. It’s certainly not for lack of flavor or technique – these cuisines are rich with history and skill – but because they emerged from oppressed communities (enslaved people, poor rural families, colonized islands) and thus carried a stigma in the eyes of fine dining’s gatekeepers. Soul food was associated with poverty and servitude, and Caribbean food with casual beach shacks or takeout, rather than white-tablecloth service. The result is a kind of culinary classism: dishes traditionally made by European gentry or bourgeoisie are deemed worthy of high prices, while dishes of the global working classes are expected to be inexpensive.
This disparity is evident in restaurant pricing and prestige. Studies of ethnic restaurant menus in America have noted that French or Japanese restaurants often command significantly higher average prices than, say, Mexican or Indian restaurants serving dishes of equal complexity. In the hierarchy of cuisines, French cuisine long sat at the top in terms of prestige (and cost), followed by other Western European cuisines, while foods from the Global South were relegated to a lower tier. One outcome is that a French chef making an Asian-inspired dish might get more acclaim than an Asian cook making the same dish. This dynamic shades into cultural appropriation: when the same food is treated as cheap or low-class in the hands of its originators, but chic (and pricey) when repackaged by someone from a more dominant culture.
Prestige on a Plate: Foie Gras vs. Chitlins, Macarons vs. Pineapple Cake
Nothing illustrates the perception gap between “fine dining” cuisine and traditional home cuisine better than comparing specific foods. Consider the following examples of high-status European delicacies versus beloved dishes from American home cooking:
High-End DelicacyOrigins & PrestigeHumble DishOrigins & PerceptionFoie Gras (fatty duck/goose liver) 🌟A luxury delicacy in French cuisine, celebrated for its rich, buttery flavoren.wikipedia.org. Traditionally served in haute cuisine settings; often costs $40–80 per pound and is protected as part of France’s gastronomic heritageen.wikipedia.org.Chitlins (chitterlings) 🐖Pig intestines simmered until tender. A classic of Southern African-American soul food, born from slavery-era resourcefulness – enslaved people were left with the hog’s intestines and other off-cutssouthernliving.com. Chitlins are considered a “Southern delicacy” in their communitysouthernliving.com, but are often stigmatized elsewhere as a smelly, low-status food.French Macarons (almond meringue cookies) 🥮Dainty, brightly colored sandwich cookies with ganache or cream filling. Originating in European high society, macarons are now a symbol of elegant French pâtisserie. They are difficult to perfect and sold at premium prices in boutique pastry shops (often $2–3 per cookie).Pineapple Upside-Down Cake 🍍A retro American dessert of canned pineapple rings and cherries baked under a sweet cake, then flipped to serve. Popularized in the 1920s when Dole held a nationwide pineapple recipe contest (the cake “stole the show” in 1925)dolesunshine.com. It became a beloved home-baking classic across the U.S., but carries a homespun image – you’re more likely to see it at church potlucks or family dinners than on fine dining menus.
These comparisons reveal how cultural context dictates a food’s valuation. Foie gras – created by force-feeding geese, a practice dating to ancient Egypt – has always been a food of the aristocracy and today is served as a gourmet appetizer in upscale restaurants. Its prestige remains so high that France legally enshrined foie gras as part of its cultural heritageen.wikipedia.org. In contrast, chitlins emerged from a context of oppression and survival. Enslaved African Americans, given the unwanted parts of the animal, turned intestinal offal into a savory dish through careful cleaning, seasoning, and slow cookingsouthernliving.com. Within Black communities, chitlins became a treasured holiday food (a testament to “using everything you’ve got,” as Southern cooks say) and a point of cultural pride. Yet outside those communities, chitlins never escaped the perception of being “poverty food.” They were literally associated with the trash (intestines that would otherwise be discarded) and carry a lingering stereotype of uncleanliness and odor. A French pâté of goose liver might be served on fine china for $30 an ounce, while a bowl of stewed pig intestines is expected to cost only a few dollars – if one can even find it at a restaurant. The gap is clearly not about the inherent worth of the ingredients (both are animal organs, after all) but about whose history and technique is respected. As one Southern writer wryly noted, “livin’ high on the hog” referred to slave-owners taking the choice cuts (higher up on the animal) and leaving the rest – yet those leftovers, like chitlins, were transformed into lasting cuisinesouthernliving.com.
A similar story plays out with sweets. French macarons are a triumph of finesse – airy almond meringue shells, sandwiching delicate fillings in pastel hues. They originated in European courts (the concept brought from Italy to France by Catherine de Médicis) and today they epitomize luxury dessert. Macarons are frequently given as gifts in elegant packaging; their price and fragility signal exclusivity. By contrast, pineapple upside-down cake was engineered for mass appeal and convenience. It took off when canned pineapple became widely available; in fact, the Hawaiian Pineapple Company (Dole) received 2,500 submissions for pineapple upside-down cake in their 1925 recipe contest, a testament to its immediate popularitydolesunshine.com. The cake’s appeal was its simplicity – using a cast-iron skillet, some pantry staples, and the novelty of tropical fruit to create a dessert that looked impressive yet was easy for home cooks. It became an “all-American” dessert that has endured for a centurydolesunshine.com, but one firmly planted in the realm of comfort food. While a macaron might be featured in a Michelin-starred chef’s petit fours, a pineapple upside-down cake would more likely be deemed nostalgic Americana. Only recently have a few chefs tried reimagining such homey desserts for upscale venues (for example, crafting individual pineapple cake tarte Tatin or playful interpretations), but by and large, these items remain separated by a cultural dividing line of fanciness. The macaron is chic; the upside-down cake is quaint.
Ultimately, the prestige disparity between these foods stems from historical power dynamics. Foods favored by wealthy or European communities gained an aura of sophistication (and higher monetary value), whereas equally delicious foods from poorer or non-European communities were marginalized as unsophisticated. It’s a stark illustration of how classism and cultural bias can influence our palate’s value system. Foie gras and macarons enjoy a price premium and admiration that has little to do with nutrition or complexity and much to do with social narratives. Meanwhile, humble creations like chitlins or a skillet cake carry the weight of being seen as “low-class,” despite the skill and love poured into them for generations.
Fusion Cuisine: Innovation or Cultural Borrowing?
In our globalized era, fusion cuisine has become a buzzword – chefs combine elements from different culinary traditions to create something novel. At its best, fusion cuisine is a celebration of creativity and cross-cultural pollination. New flavors emerge when chefs think outside the rigid boundaries of “authentic” cuisine: imagine Japanese sushi techniques applied to Peruvian ingredients (the now-famous Nikkei cuisine), or Indian spices enlivening British pub classics. Many of our favorite “traditional” foods were essentially fusion in their origin – Italian pasta was influenced by Chinese noodles and New World tomatoes, and Middle Eastern shawarma gave rise to Mexican tacos al pastor through Lebanese immigrants. In other words, culinary innovation has always involved cultural exchange. Modern fusion simply makes this exchange explicit and often deliberate.
However, fusion cuisine also sits on a delicate fault line: it can easily tip into cultural appropriation if not handled with respect. There’s a fine line between inspiration and exploitation. For example, a chef might “discover” a street food from a foreign culture and decide to serve a tweaked version in an upscale restaurant. If they give credit to the original and engage with its cultural context, this can be a wonderful homage. But if they present it as a novel creation of their own, or significantly profit while the source community remains unseen, it can spark backlash. Food carries emotional and cultural weight, and there’s a history of dominant cultures discrediting a minority’s cuisine until it becomes trendy in different hands (sometimes called “Columbusing” a food).
We’ve seen real-world controversies: when a Western chef claims to reinvent an Asian or Latin dish without acknowledging those who perfected it over ages. In one notable case, a celebrity American chef opened a “fusion Chinese” restaurant and implied he was elevating the local Chinese food scene – leading to accusations that he belittled generations of Chinese-American cooks. Dishes like pho soup, tacos, sushi burritos, or jerk seasoning have all been subject to fusion riffs that sometimes raised the question: is this genuine appreciation or just exoticizing for profit? The key issues tend to be credit and context. Innovation thrives when cultures learn from each other, but it should be a two-way conversation, not a one-sided taking.
Despite these pitfalls, fusion cuisine has also been a force for positive innovation and breaking down Eurocentric biases. Young chefs from multicultural backgrounds often are fusion cuisine – cooking that blends their heritage with their training. In these cases, fusion can actually reclaim space in fine dining for ingredients and techniques that were previously overlooked. For instance, Chef Nina Compton, originally from St. Lucia, runs a celebrated restaurant in New Orleans where she “blends Caribbean and Southern food with French technique”eater.com. Her fusion isn’t erasing culture – it’s bringing her own culture into a high-end arena and showcasing its compatibility with classical methods. Similarly, Korean-American chefs in Los Angeles famously created the Korean taco, mixing Korean BBQ flavors with the Mexican taco format; this wasn’t done to appropriate Mexican cuisine, but as an organic expression of the city’s Latino-Asian heritage. Such examples show fusion as a reflection of our interconnected world: both innovative and deeply rooted in the joining of traditions.
In summary, fusion cuisine highlights the tension between borrowing and joining. It reminds us that all cuisines have evolved by borrowing – often without due credit – but also that mindful fusion can give back visibility to the cuisines it draws from. A menu that offers, say, Thai-spiced Italian pasta, could either be a careless gimmick or a thoughtful tribute. The difference lies in the chef’s approach and the story told to diners. As fusion trends continue, the hope is for a more equitable exchange – one that treats the sources of culinary inspiration with honor. After all, innovation and respect are not mutually exclusive in the kitchen.
Reclaiming Home Food in High-End Kitchens
A heartening development in recent years is that chefs from historically marginalized backgrounds are reclaiming and elevating traditional “home foods” at the highest levels of cuisine. They are deliberately blurring the line between what is considered “fine dining” and what is considered “comfort food,” proving that the difference was only ever one of perception and access. The late Edna Lewis, an African-American chef, was a pioneer of this movement in the mid-20th century – treating rural Southern dishes with fine dining finesse in her cookbooks and dinners – but now a new generation is making waves on the restaurant scene.
At the 2018 James Beard Awards (often dubbed the Oscars of the food world), a striking number of top honors went to Black chefs celebrating traditional foodways. These included Rodney Scott, a pitmaster carrying on the African-American whole-hog barbecue tradition, Nina Compton with her Caribbean-Southern fusion, and Edouardo Jordan, whose Seattle restaurant JuneBaby is an ode to the Southern food he grew up eatingeater.comeater.com. Food writer Korsha Wilson noted the significance: “Their complicated and beautiful act of reclaiming Black foodways and serving it to the public is too powerful to understate. They’re chefs who are making food that represents them — people who are connected to and inspired by the African diaspora.”eater.com In other words, these chefs are finally telling their own stories on the plate, at a level that commands national respect.
Chef Rodney Scott’s win was particularly symbolic. Barbecue has long been a communal, down-home cooking style, and Black pitmasters in the South preserved techniques going back to slavery (and even to Africa). Yet barbecue was seldom part of fine dining establishments – until now. Scott, who learned to roast whole pigs from his family in a small town, opened an acclaimed restaurant and won Beard’s Best Chef Southeast. His victory, as Twitty observed, helps reclaim barbecue’s Black roots in American culinary historyeater.com. It challenges the notion that an open-fire pit and casual setting cannot produce “award-worthy” cuisine. In the same awards, Nina Compton spoke about coming from a “small island of St. Lucia” to win as an immigrant chefeater.com, and her cooking at Compère Lapin proudly features ingredients like plantains, cassava, and curry goat – foods of her home – presented with fine dining polish. The French name of her restaurant (meaning “Brother Rabbit,” a folktale character) nods to the very fusion of cultures in her foodeater.com.
Edouardo Jordan’s restaurant JuneBaby, which won Best New Restaurant in America, outright educates diners on the history behind the Southern dishes it serves. The menu is accompanied by an “encyclopedia” that defines terms like African, African-American, and Afro-Caribbean, reminding guests of the deeper story behind fried chicken or collard greenseater.com. Jordan has written, “Southern food reflects hard times and resourcefulness and is nothing short of beautiful.”eater.com This powerful statement reframes what others once dismissed as “food of struggle” as indeed beautiful, worthy of celebration. By placing such food in a celebrated restaurant, chefs like Jordan are asserting that beauty and value were always there – it was the gaze of the culinary establishment that needed to change.
Similar examples abound around the world. In London, Michelin-starred restaurant Ikoyi foregrounds West African spices and products in an avant-garde fine dining format. In Mexico City, chefs like Enrique Olvera have taken Mexican street snacks and home recipes to haute cuisine heights (e.g. serving a heriloom corn tostada with caviar). In India, regional comfort foods are being reinvented by upscale restaurants that win international accolades. And in New York, a new wave of Chinese-American and Indian-American chefs are opening stylish restaurants that refuse to dilute their heritage for the sake of Western palates – instead, they invite diners to appreciate these cuisines’ sophistication on their own terms.
What’s crucial is that these efforts are often led by insiders to the culture, or in close collaboration with them, rather than outsiders imposing an upscale veneer. This ensures that elevating a dish doesn’t come at the cost of erasing its soul. A great illustration is the story of Southern desserts: For years, classic Southern sweets like sweet potato pie, banana pudding, or pound cake were rarely seen in fine dining – perhaps deemed too plain. But in 2018, pastry chef Dolester Miles won a James Beard Award for her decades of work making elegant versions of such desserts in Birmingham, Alabamaeater.com. Her victory was a reminder that a perfect pie can be as sublime as a fancy soufflé, and it gave overdue recognition to a style of dessert long undervalued. As the author of the Eater article on that year’s awards noted, “This food and these stories have always been here, have always been interesting — think Edna Lewis, Sylvia Woods, and Jessica Harris — and the Beard judges are finally catching up.”eater.com In other words, formal culinary institutions are belatedly acknowledging what many people knew: that the talents and traditions of Black and other ethnic cooks “should’ve been part of the conversation all along.”eater.com
The line between “home food” and “fine dining” is indeed dissolving. We now see white-tablecloth restaurants serving upscale takes on dishes like Nigerian jollof rice, Jamaican oxtail stew, or Appalachian pickled beans – and critics finally taking note of the artistry involved. This reclaiming is not just about charging more money for the same food; it’s about shifting the narrative. It says: our heritage dishes are worthy of technique, investment, and accolades, and we as chefs can honor where they come from while presenting them in new ways. By doing so, these modern chefs also combat the legacy of cultural appropriation and classism. They ensure that when Southern or Caribbean or other “home” cuisines hit the mainstream spotlight, the originators are the ones at center stage, receiving the praise (and financial benefits) for their own culinary heritage.
Conclusion
The evolution of cooking – from ancient humans taming fire to contemporary chefs reimagining soul food – has always been a story of creativity transcending boundaries. Yet whose creativity is celebrated has often been determined by cultural power structures. Techniques born in mud huts and slave quarters traveled, via necessity and conquest, into palace kitchens and culinary textbooks, usually without credit. Certain cuisines rode the waves of empire and economics to be deemed “fine dining,” while others were unfairly relegated to the sidelines, their sophistication overlooked. Issues of cultural appropriation and classism in food are deeply intertwined, manifesting in everything from the price on a dish to the language used to describe it.
Today, however, we are in the midst of a more inclusive telling of culinary history. Scholars and chefs are acknowledging how much of classical cuisine’s DNA comes from informal and marginalized sources – the fermentation knowledge of indigenous tribes, the spice techniques of colonized peoples, the ingenuity of poor home cooks making magic out of scraps. There is also a growing appreciation that “authentic” fine dining can come from any culture. A French chef in a three-star restaurant and a Mexican grandmother in a village may have more in common than was once thought: both carry forward traditions and innovations worthy of respect. As diners, the more we learn the real stories behind our favorite foods, the more we can appreciate a bowl of gumbo or a plate of pasta not only for its taste but for the heritage it represents.
The culinary world is slowly correcting its course, giving credit where it’s due and breaking down the old hierarchy of cuisines. Fusion and innovation will always propel cuisine forward, but there’s a conscious effort now to do so with homage rather than hubris. And as traditional “home foods” find their way onto fine china, they bring a piece of their culture’s soul into spaces that once excluded them. In a sense, the tables are turning – sometimes literally upside-down, like that pineapple cake – to allow everyone a seat. By valuing both foie gras and chitlins, both macarons and pound cake, we enrich the tapestry of global gastronomy. The evolution of cooking is a human story, and it belongs to all of us, across continents and classes. It’s often said that food is the great equalizer, bringing people together. In honoring the full breadth of culinary knowledge – from prehistory’s fire pits to grandma’s secret recipes – we come closer to truly embracing that ideal, one delicious bite at a time.
Sources
Rebecca Rupp, “A Brief History of Cooking With Fire.” National Geographic (2015) – on early human cooking with firenationalgeographic.com.
Tel-Aviv University research (via ScienceDaily, 2022) – on new evidence of controlled cooking 780,000 years agosciencedaily.comsciencedaily.com.
Korsha Wilson, “On Black Excellence at This Year’s James Beard Awards.” Eater (2018) – discusses chefs like Edouardo Jordan, Nina Compton, Rodney Scott reclaiming Black foodwayseater.comeater.com and the history of European cuisine dominanceeater.com.
Korsha Wilson (via Eater) quoting Michael Twitty – on African contributions to barbecue and their erasureeater.com.
Korsha Wilson (via Eater) – on Nina Compton blending Caribbean with French techniques at Compère Lapineater.com.
Southern Living Editors, “What Are Chitlins?… Classic Southern Dish” (2023) – history of chitlins as leftover parts for enslaved people, now a cultural staplesouthernliving.comsouthernliving.com.
Dole Sunshine recipe site – history of Pineapple Upside-Down Cake, popularized by a 1925 Dole contestdolesunshine.com.
Max Falkowitz, “When Did Lobster Become Food for Rich People?” TASTE (2017) – notes lobster’s shift from peasant food to delicacy by late 1800stastecooking.com.
Wikipedia – “Foie gras” (accessed 2025), notes that foie gras is a prized delicacy of French cuisineen.wikipedia.org. Also general knowledge on macarons and other foods.
Britannica – “Grande cuisine” – contrasts French haute cuisine with peasant cuisinebritannica.com.
Rebecca Flint Marx, “Dolester Miles Finally Gets Her Due,” Food & Wine (2018) – background on Southern desserts in fine dining (implied by Eater piece)eater.com.
Michael Twitty, The Cooking Gene (2017) – broader context on African-American culinary history (background reference).
Various other articles and historical sources on food culture, fusion cuisine, and culinary anthropologyeater.comeater.com. (All inline citations above.)
