Food and Slavery
by Jordan P Smith
Food is an essential aspect to mankind. Without food, humans die. But with food, not only do humans live; they express values. For as long as man has been a civilized being, food has “been regarded as a useful and important ethnic marker, particularly in terms of identity issues” (Padolsky 2005). Food is an integral part of any culture, even those cultures in which people belong to one another as property. The foods that slaves, or serfs, ate were a visible aspect of slave culture and had lasting effects centuries or decades later. A brief look at slave diets from Egypt, Rome, the early United States, and the Holocaust gives insight into the worth of slaves in a given society and allows modern scholars to make observations about the cultural significance of specific foods.
Recent archaeological discoveries are backing the biblical assertion that ancient Egyptians enslaved the Israelites some 3,400 years ago. In 2010, a group of scientists “found evidence of real natural disasters on which the ten plagues of Egypt … were based” corroborating the book of Exodus (Asian News 1). Having established the presence of a slave culture, the identification of a typical diet takes on more significance than mere speculation. According to Egyptologist Guillemette Andreu, “… everyone had something to eat in Egypt. There were certainly differences in quality according to social class, but on the whole, the land was sufficiently fertile and prosperous for everyone to have enough food” (Andreu 94). He goes on to explain that Egyptians typically ate three meals a day, but what about the slaves? While there is no exact record of the diet the Hebrew slaves endured 3,500 years ago, evidence that does exist allows for some reasonable deduction as to what these slaves may have eaten.
If the Pharaoh wanted efficient slaves for manual labor, he would have wanted them to have protein in their diets. Excavation of tombs near the great pyramids, built centuries before the Israelites came west into Egypt, give proof that the Egyptians understood the connection between strength and a diet rich in protein. The pyramid builders “probably had better diets than [people] did in the village. They definitely had more meat” (Vloet 2013). The Israelites were building temples, digging ditches, quarrying stone, and performing other labor-intensive tasks, so a diet with meat would have been imperative. What is noteworthy is the fact that “abstention from pork … came to be of enormous significance in the post-exilic period” (Mann 2013). Perhaps the Egyptians did feed the Israelites an abundance of meat in the form of pork, which the Israelites came to detest and/or resent. Pork is traditionally considered a lesser meat, and to this day Jews do not eat pork.
Passover is one of the monumental events in the history of Judaism, and it took place during the Egyptian enslavement of the Israelites. Regardless of the accuracy or truth of the event, Passover observance traditions are still practiced today and some involve food. According to the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, not only are certain meals still a part of Passover observance, each dish has symbolic meaning. A dish called Karpas is made from parsley dipped in saltwater. The saltwater symbolizes “tears shed during slavery and the dipping action is said to represent a Hebrew act of dipping an herb in blood to mark doorposts” (Adamson 2002). Maror is a mixture of herbs and horseradish – a bitter dish to reflect the bitterness of slavery endured in Egypt. Other dishes include ingredients like roasted eggs, bitter vegetables (roots and tubers), apples, and nuts, suggesting that these foods, too, were a part of the slave diet in ancient Egypt. Archaeology may never present a definitive answer as to the origins of these very specific dishes, but what is undeniable is the role of the slave culture in their creation. Additionally, because the slaves served a purpose and held some value, it is reasonable to assume they were treated and nourished relatively well. Thus, this particular slave culture provides a basis from which to examine and compare other slave cultures.
Roman slavery was much different from Egyptian slavery in practice. There was far more diversity in the tasks Roman slaves performed; they were not just used for manual labor. What is clear is that Roman slaves ate particularly well. Dr. Marijke van der Veen of Leicester University “found [Roman slaves] ate an extremely well-balanced diet. They had dined on artichoke, hazelnuts, walnuts, pine nuts, pomegranate, almonds, figs, and pepper imported from India. They also ate lentils dates, onions, garlic, olives, donkey meat, fish from the Red Sea, and Nile Valley wine” (Smith 2002). Such a lush diet is perhaps a bit inconsistent with today’s connotations of slavery, but in Rome slavery was not just about a cheap labor force. In fact, a large number of Roman slaves were “domestic slaves (that) served to display their owners’ wealth and social importance” (George 111). A slaveholder demonstrated his wealth not only through the number of slaves he owned, but by the health of those slaves, so a balanced diet was just as important to the owner as the slave. This is a blatant display of human ownership, however the slaves were treated relatively well as illustrated above, because the slaves were essentially a reflection of the slaveholder. Cato the Elder (c. 200 BCE) supplemented his servants’ allotment of daily bread with “oil, salt, and vinegar along with other foods that varied with the season, the place, and the nature of the work to be done” (Sonnenfeld 131). In other words, he catered the menu to meet the needs of his slaves.
Eventually, Roman slaves’ diets expanded even further. Two hundred years after Cato, Seneca gave a ration of five bushels of wheat a month to his slaves, equaling the ration given to the citizens of Rome. The rise of Christianity also helped shape a more inclusive diet as meat became more abundant. The ritual of the Last Supper gave a great deal of weight specifically to bread and turned away from animal sacrifice. Thus, meat consumption increased in general and why “meat appeared in slaves’ rations, whereas in Cato’s time slaves were given only cereals and vegetables” (Sonnenfeld 77). Today, the Christian practice of breaking bread in honor of Jesus’ self-sacrifice continues in the form of Holy Communion.
While the Roman slavery system has since vanished, it did shape the ensuing form of slave culture: manorialism. Under the manor system, a lord held economic power over his serfs, much as a Roman slaveholder owned his slaves. The serfs “not only added their contribution in produce or money to the revenues of the fields directly exploited by the master; they were in addition a source of manpower” (Bloch 241). The basic premise was that serfs were bound, by law, to the lord’s land as tenement farmers. But here, as opposed to Rome, the lord also exacted payments or taxes from the indentured. The diet of such serfs was largely dependent on the weather. Prosperous years meant as many as two meals a day, both before dark. Peasants ate as though they may not have another meal for weeks. Good harvests translated to a menu of pork sausage, black bread, soup (cabbage, watercress, cheese, and fish), and wine or beer.
The manorial system was not glamorous, but during famine the life of a serf could be especially cruel. Enterprising slaves ate foliage and even clay, just to feel full even though such “food” had no nutritional value. In the direst of circumstances, travelers might disappear, “waylaid and killed to be eaten … by men frantic to eat the warm raw flesh” (Manchester 54). Just as unsettling is the notion of a relatively high frequency of cannibalism during such famine.
As might be expected, lean periods affected different levels of society in different ways. While the peasantry literally ate each other to stay alive, the lords of the manner went on feasting as though gluttony was their birthright, because it was; divine rite dictated a person’s lot in life and thus, his or her right to food and the peasantry had no right. This is a far different picture than the slave culture discussed above in ancient Egypt and Rome, but why? The answer is really quite simple: expendability. Medieval Europe presented fewer occasions to flaunt the number of slaves a lord owned than Rome, so keeping serfs alive was of little concern. Furthermore, the surplus population and inheritance system provided plenty of warm bodies to step in and keep the system fluid. There was also little incentive for a lord to keep his subjects well nourished because Medieval masters were not occupied with large public works requiring a labor force of brute strength like those in Egypt. Plowing fields was a mundane, repetitive chore, but it was not the physically taxing job of quarrying and transporting stones. With this information in mind, it should come as no surprise that very little of the slave culture of serfdom has survived into the twenty-first century, but these Christian peasants did continue to observe Holy Communion and Lent, which is where the fish soup was particularly suitable.
The Dark Ages began to dim as the age of exploration dawned. The revival of classic arts and humanities was truly a renaissance, but the expeditions of pioneers like Cartier, Columbus, and Vespucci brought about genuine discovery. Locating two new habitable continents had implications for food production and consumption. Exploration
“touched off the greatest and most rapid spread of new crops the world had seen.
The Americas contributed maize (corn), potatoes, tomatoes, and peppers to Europe,
while the Europeans brought wheat and other staple crops, and
sugarcane” (Lobb 2003).
The advantageous transition out of the Middle Ages in Europe set the stage for commercial expansion. This new era “was to be one of large-scale imports and exports, not just of food but also, for reasons connected with food, of human flesh … on foot, with strong arms for manual labor” (Toussaint-Samat 4). The institution of slavery and its cultural aspects came to America in large part because of food.
Slave culture existed in many different places in the New World, but the typical characterization is that of the Southern plantation. Slave life on a plantation fit into the ownership concept of Rome while the working conditions more closely resembled ancient Egypt with labor-intensive jobs and long hours. Because of the increased energy expenditure “slaveholders … insisted that their slaves ate well and that … they ate more meat than laborers elsewhere could dream of” (Genovese 62). The nutritional value of newly discovered food manifested in quite visible ways. Colonial slaves “were taller than European peasants and laborers” and “much taller than the slaves of African descent in the Caribbean and South America” (Sonnenfeld 517). The American slave diet consisted of okra, ham hocks, mush, dumplings, and “weekly food rations – usually corn meal, lard, some meat, molasses, peas, greens, and flour” (Boston 2004). Clearly, the slave diet had variety, but generally they were confined to “what was available or left from the slavemaster’s table” (Bryant 1992). Variety does not always equate to desirability – these slaves may have had an assortment of foods in their diet, but they still had few options beyond their masters’ leftovers.
Slavery in the north tells a similar story in terms of slaves being treated to the food cast off by elite whites. These edibles came to be known as “poverty food” because only the poor would eat it. One specific animal categorized as poverty food was the lobster. Colonists in the North “only valued the plentiful lobster as a protein, using it as fertilizer, food for pigs, servants and slave, and a desperate and unpleasant measure against starvation” (Wood 2011). Lobster was so overly present in slave diets that they eventually successfully negotiated being served lobster a maximum of three days a week.
The recipes these slaves created out of necessity over three hundred years ago were passed down orally from generation to generation. They survived the test of time and today these dishes are called “soul food,” a far more positive moniker than their origins would suggest. Soul foods include blackfish, greens, fried chicken, cod, rice pudding, chitterlings, okra, and macaroni and cheese, among other foods. Chefs today may add nuances like swapping out turkey for ham hock in collard greens, but the basic procedures remain the same. Thomas Dorsey, chief executive of Soul of America, believes, “the biggest reason (soul food popularity) is happening is the growth of the Black middle class” (Spencer 2004). Soul food may be the best example of how a distant slave culture has influenced the diet of some present-day individuals.
Finally, a discussion of food and slave culture would be incomplete without an examination of the modern slavery construct: concentration camps. This form of slavery is perhaps the most difficult to endure for reasons such as abuse, overcrowding, psychology, and hunger or starvation. More commonly, the terms “prison camp” and “forced labor” are used to describe the Holocaust, but even if the term “slavery” is not directly used, the atmosphere was still certainly one of a slave culture. During the Holocaust prisoners in these camps were forced to work long hours at construction sites, often in the beating sun or frigid winter months. Previous examples of slave labor indicate a real desire to keep the workers adequately if not superbly nourished. The Nazis, however, had no intentions of keeping their prisoners healthy. Inmates’ diets fluctuated during Nazi reign, but the food that was provided came in the form of small amounts of watery vegetables, dry bread, soup, potatoes, calf brains, and horse meat. One Holocaust survivor, Jean-Pierre Renouard, recalls how some inmates were so hungry they took to cannibalism (88). The meager rations began as a result of a weak German economy, but over time as “efforts to profit from prison labor intensified, rations were slashed” (Wachsman 238). This helps explain the Nazi treatment of their captives: economics. The complete exploitation of forced laborers built infrastructure and performed other tasks with almost no overhead cost attached. As these prison workers died, the Nazis simply shrugged the casualties off as one less mouth to feed.
Today, Holocaust survivors and descendants use food and recipes to memorialize the horrors of the Holocaust. The initiative to preserve certain recipes has been taken up by people such as Joanne Caras. She compiled and in 2007 published the “Holocaust Survivors Cookbook” (Solomon 2012) The book contains dishes that survivors ate during the Holocaust, but also includes the stories of those who contributed the recipes. The book includes foods like challahs, matzo ball soup, brisket, and cheesecakes – foods survivors continue to eat to this day. Caras also included dishes that serve the purpose of illustrating just how desperate and hungry people in Europe – especially those in the Jewish faith – were. For instance, the book includes recipes for stuffed chicken necks, calf brains, and cooked tongue. Much of the food ingested during the Holocaust was less about nutrition and more about providing the eater with the illusion of being full.
Slave cultures have existed in various forms for various purposes throughout history. Those discussed here are but a few prominent examples. The importance of food here should not be understated as it has driven political, economic, and social decisions since humans began to create recipes. In each case, food was a very real element of the sort of slave culture that arose. By examining diets in various slave cultures, it is possible to obtain information about the slaves and their masters. Some cultures have chosen to hold on and in a sense reclaim a certain heritage as with the African American and Jewish community today. There are no foods specific to slave culture, but each slave culture has defined and shaped a specific menu within its respective sphere.
Recent archaeological discoveries are backing the biblical assertion that ancient Egyptians enslaved the Israelites some 3,400 years ago. In 2010, a group of scientists “found evidence of real natural disasters on which the ten plagues of Egypt … were based” corroborating the book of Exodus (Asian News 1). Having established the presence of a slave culture, the identification of a typical diet takes on more significance than mere speculation. According to Egyptologist Guillemette Andreu, “… everyone had something to eat in Egypt. There were certainly differences in quality according to social class, but on the whole, the land was sufficiently fertile and prosperous for everyone to have enough food” (Andreu 94). He goes on to explain that Egyptians typically ate three meals a day, but what about the slaves? While there is no exact record of the diet the Hebrew slaves endured 3,500 years ago, evidence that does exist allows for some reasonable deduction as to what these slaves may have eaten.
If the Pharaoh wanted efficient slaves for manual labor, he would have wanted them to have protein in their diets. Excavation of tombs near the great pyramids, built centuries before the Israelites came west into Egypt, give proof that the Egyptians understood the connection between strength and a diet rich in protein. The pyramid builders “probably had better diets than [people] did in the village. They definitely had more meat” (Vloet 2013). The Israelites were building temples, digging ditches, quarrying stone, and performing other labor-intensive tasks, so a diet with meat would have been imperative. What is noteworthy is the fact that “abstention from pork … came to be of enormous significance in the post-exilic period” (Mann 2013). Perhaps the Egyptians did feed the Israelites an abundance of meat in the form of pork, which the Israelites came to detest and/or resent. Pork is traditionally considered a lesser meat, and to this day Jews do not eat pork.
Passover is one of the monumental events in the history of Judaism, and it took place during the Egyptian enslavement of the Israelites. Regardless of the accuracy or truth of the event, Passover observance traditions are still practiced today and some involve food. According to the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, not only are certain meals still a part of Passover observance, each dish has symbolic meaning. A dish called Karpas is made from parsley dipped in saltwater. The saltwater symbolizes “tears shed during slavery and the dipping action is said to represent a Hebrew act of dipping an herb in blood to mark doorposts” (Adamson 2002). Maror is a mixture of herbs and horseradish – a bitter dish to reflect the bitterness of slavery endured in Egypt. Other dishes include ingredients like roasted eggs, bitter vegetables (roots and tubers), apples, and nuts, suggesting that these foods, too, were a part of the slave diet in ancient Egypt. Archaeology may never present a definitive answer as to the origins of these very specific dishes, but what is undeniable is the role of the slave culture in their creation. Additionally, because the slaves served a purpose and held some value, it is reasonable to assume they were treated and nourished relatively well. Thus, this particular slave culture provides a basis from which to examine and compare other slave cultures.
Roman slavery was much different from Egyptian slavery in practice. There was far more diversity in the tasks Roman slaves performed; they were not just used for manual labor. What is clear is that Roman slaves ate particularly well. Dr. Marijke van der Veen of Leicester University “found [Roman slaves] ate an extremely well-balanced diet. They had dined on artichoke, hazelnuts, walnuts, pine nuts, pomegranate, almonds, figs, and pepper imported from India. They also ate lentils dates, onions, garlic, olives, donkey meat, fish from the Red Sea, and Nile Valley wine” (Smith 2002). Such a lush diet is perhaps a bit inconsistent with today’s connotations of slavery, but in Rome slavery was not just about a cheap labor force. In fact, a large number of Roman slaves were “domestic slaves (that) served to display their owners’ wealth and social importance” (George 111). A slaveholder demonstrated his wealth not only through the number of slaves he owned, but by the health of those slaves, so a balanced diet was just as important to the owner as the slave. This is a blatant display of human ownership, however the slaves were treated relatively well as illustrated above, because the slaves were essentially a reflection of the slaveholder. Cato the Elder (c. 200 BCE) supplemented his servants’ allotment of daily bread with “oil, salt, and vinegar along with other foods that varied with the season, the place, and the nature of the work to be done” (Sonnenfeld 131). In other words, he catered the menu to meet the needs of his slaves.
Eventually, Roman slaves’ diets expanded even further. Two hundred years after Cato, Seneca gave a ration of five bushels of wheat a month to his slaves, equaling the ration given to the citizens of Rome. The rise of Christianity also helped shape a more inclusive diet as meat became more abundant. The ritual of the Last Supper gave a great deal of weight specifically to bread and turned away from animal sacrifice. Thus, meat consumption increased in general and why “meat appeared in slaves’ rations, whereas in Cato’s time slaves were given only cereals and vegetables” (Sonnenfeld 77). Today, the Christian practice of breaking bread in honor of Jesus’ self-sacrifice continues in the form of Holy Communion.
While the Roman slavery system has since vanished, it did shape the ensuing form of slave culture: manorialism. Under the manor system, a lord held economic power over his serfs, much as a Roman slaveholder owned his slaves. The serfs “not only added their contribution in produce or money to the revenues of the fields directly exploited by the master; they were in addition a source of manpower” (Bloch 241). The basic premise was that serfs were bound, by law, to the lord’s land as tenement farmers. But here, as opposed to Rome, the lord also exacted payments or taxes from the indentured. The diet of such serfs was largely dependent on the weather. Prosperous years meant as many as two meals a day, both before dark. Peasants ate as though they may not have another meal for weeks. Good harvests translated to a menu of pork sausage, black bread, soup (cabbage, watercress, cheese, and fish), and wine or beer.
The manorial system was not glamorous, but during famine the life of a serf could be especially cruel. Enterprising slaves ate foliage and even clay, just to feel full even though such “food” had no nutritional value. In the direst of circumstances, travelers might disappear, “waylaid and killed to be eaten … by men frantic to eat the warm raw flesh” (Manchester 54). Just as unsettling is the notion of a relatively high frequency of cannibalism during such famine.
As might be expected, lean periods affected different levels of society in different ways. While the peasantry literally ate each other to stay alive, the lords of the manner went on feasting as though gluttony was their birthright, because it was; divine rite dictated a person’s lot in life and thus, his or her right to food and the peasantry had no right. This is a far different picture than the slave culture discussed above in ancient Egypt and Rome, but why? The answer is really quite simple: expendability. Medieval Europe presented fewer occasions to flaunt the number of slaves a lord owned than Rome, so keeping serfs alive was of little concern. Furthermore, the surplus population and inheritance system provided plenty of warm bodies to step in and keep the system fluid. There was also little incentive for a lord to keep his subjects well nourished because Medieval masters were not occupied with large public works requiring a labor force of brute strength like those in Egypt. Plowing fields was a mundane, repetitive chore, but it was not the physically taxing job of quarrying and transporting stones. With this information in mind, it should come as no surprise that very little of the slave culture of serfdom has survived into the twenty-first century, but these Christian peasants did continue to observe Holy Communion and Lent, which is where the fish soup was particularly suitable.
The Dark Ages began to dim as the age of exploration dawned. The revival of classic arts and humanities was truly a renaissance, but the expeditions of pioneers like Cartier, Columbus, and Vespucci brought about genuine discovery. Locating two new habitable continents had implications for food production and consumption. Exploration
“touched off the greatest and most rapid spread of new crops the world had seen.
The Americas contributed maize (corn), potatoes, tomatoes, and peppers to Europe,
while the Europeans brought wheat and other staple crops, and
sugarcane” (Lobb 2003).
The advantageous transition out of the Middle Ages in Europe set the stage for commercial expansion. This new era “was to be one of large-scale imports and exports, not just of food but also, for reasons connected with food, of human flesh … on foot, with strong arms for manual labor” (Toussaint-Samat 4). The institution of slavery and its cultural aspects came to America in large part because of food.
Slave culture existed in many different places in the New World, but the typical characterization is that of the Southern plantation. Slave life on a plantation fit into the ownership concept of Rome while the working conditions more closely resembled ancient Egypt with labor-intensive jobs and long hours. Because of the increased energy expenditure “slaveholders … insisted that their slaves ate well and that … they ate more meat than laborers elsewhere could dream of” (Genovese 62). The nutritional value of newly discovered food manifested in quite visible ways. Colonial slaves “were taller than European peasants and laborers” and “much taller than the slaves of African descent in the Caribbean and South America” (Sonnenfeld 517). The American slave diet consisted of okra, ham hocks, mush, dumplings, and “weekly food rations – usually corn meal, lard, some meat, molasses, peas, greens, and flour” (Boston 2004). Clearly, the slave diet had variety, but generally they were confined to “what was available or left from the slavemaster’s table” (Bryant 1992). Variety does not always equate to desirability – these slaves may have had an assortment of foods in their diet, but they still had few options beyond their masters’ leftovers.
Slavery in the north tells a similar story in terms of slaves being treated to the food cast off by elite whites. These edibles came to be known as “poverty food” because only the poor would eat it. One specific animal categorized as poverty food was the lobster. Colonists in the North “only valued the plentiful lobster as a protein, using it as fertilizer, food for pigs, servants and slave, and a desperate and unpleasant measure against starvation” (Wood 2011). Lobster was so overly present in slave diets that they eventually successfully negotiated being served lobster a maximum of three days a week.
The recipes these slaves created out of necessity over three hundred years ago were passed down orally from generation to generation. They survived the test of time and today these dishes are called “soul food,” a far more positive moniker than their origins would suggest. Soul foods include blackfish, greens, fried chicken, cod, rice pudding, chitterlings, okra, and macaroni and cheese, among other foods. Chefs today may add nuances like swapping out turkey for ham hock in collard greens, but the basic procedures remain the same. Thomas Dorsey, chief executive of Soul of America, believes, “the biggest reason (soul food popularity) is happening is the growth of the Black middle class” (Spencer 2004). Soul food may be the best example of how a distant slave culture has influenced the diet of some present-day individuals.
Finally, a discussion of food and slave culture would be incomplete without an examination of the modern slavery construct: concentration camps. This form of slavery is perhaps the most difficult to endure for reasons such as abuse, overcrowding, psychology, and hunger or starvation. More commonly, the terms “prison camp” and “forced labor” are used to describe the Holocaust, but even if the term “slavery” is not directly used, the atmosphere was still certainly one of a slave culture. During the Holocaust prisoners in these camps were forced to work long hours at construction sites, often in the beating sun or frigid winter months. Previous examples of slave labor indicate a real desire to keep the workers adequately if not superbly nourished. The Nazis, however, had no intentions of keeping their prisoners healthy. Inmates’ diets fluctuated during Nazi reign, but the food that was provided came in the form of small amounts of watery vegetables, dry bread, soup, potatoes, calf brains, and horse meat. One Holocaust survivor, Jean-Pierre Renouard, recalls how some inmates were so hungry they took to cannibalism (88). The meager rations began as a result of a weak German economy, but over time as “efforts to profit from prison labor intensified, rations were slashed” (Wachsman 238). This helps explain the Nazi treatment of their captives: economics. The complete exploitation of forced laborers built infrastructure and performed other tasks with almost no overhead cost attached. As these prison workers died, the Nazis simply shrugged the casualties off as one less mouth to feed.
Today, Holocaust survivors and descendants use food and recipes to memorialize the horrors of the Holocaust. The initiative to preserve certain recipes has been taken up by people such as Joanne Caras. She compiled and in 2007 published the “Holocaust Survivors Cookbook” (Solomon 2012) The book contains dishes that survivors ate during the Holocaust, but also includes the stories of those who contributed the recipes. The book includes foods like challahs, matzo ball soup, brisket, and cheesecakes – foods survivors continue to eat to this day. Caras also included dishes that serve the purpose of illustrating just how desperate and hungry people in Europe – especially those in the Jewish faith – were. For instance, the book includes recipes for stuffed chicken necks, calf brains, and cooked tongue. Much of the food ingested during the Holocaust was less about nutrition and more about providing the eater with the illusion of being full.
Slave cultures have existed in various forms for various purposes throughout history. Those discussed here are but a few prominent examples. The importance of food here should not be understated as it has driven political, economic, and social decisions since humans began to create recipes. In each case, food was a very real element of the sort of slave culture that arose. By examining diets in various slave cultures, it is possible to obtain information about the slaves and their masters. Some cultures have chosen to hold on and in a sense reclaim a certain heritage as with the African American and Jewish community today. There are no foods specific to slave culture, but each slave culture has defined and shaped a specific menu within its respective sphere.
Works Cited
Adamson, April. "Traditional Passover Foods Are Full of Meaning." Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service. N.p., 21 Mar. 2002.
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Andreu, Guillemette. "A Busy Day." Egypt in the Age of the Pyramids. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1997. 94. Print.
Asian News International. "Biblical Plagues Happened in Reality, Say Scientists." Asian News International [Dehli] 31 Mar.
2010: n. pag. LexisNexis. Web. 22 June 2014.
Bloch, Marc. "The Manor." Feudal Society Vol 1. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul., n.d. 241. Print.
Boston, Nicholas. "Living Conditions." PBS. PBS, 2004. Web. 21 June 2014.
Bryant, Reginald. "Food: Menus Derived from Slave Cuisine." The Philadelphia Tribune (1992): 22. ProQuest. Web. 20 June
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Genovese, Eugene D. Roll, Jordan, Roll; the World the Slaves Made. New York: Pantheon, 1974. Print.
George, Michele. "Geographies of Slave Containment and Movement." Roman Slavery and Roman Material Culture. Vol. 52.
Toronto: U of Toronto, 2013. 111. Phoenix Supplementary Volumes. Johnson County Community College. Web. 21 June
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Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2003. 1-3. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 21 June 2014.
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19-31. Ethnic NewsWatch. Web. 21 June 2014.
Renouard, Jean-Pierre. "Lunch." My Stripes Were Earned in Hell: A French Resistance Fighter's Memoir of Survival in a Nazi
Prison Camp. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012. 88. Print.
Smith, Geraint. "Good Taste of Roman Slaves." The Evening Standard [London] 9 Sept. 2002: 15. LexisNexis Academic. Web.
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Apr. 2012: n. pag. ABI/INFORM Complete. Web. 20 June 2014.
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Toussaint-Samat, Maguelonne. "Introduction." Introduction. A History of Food. 1st ed. Chichester, West Sussex, U.K.: Wiley
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Wood, Melissa. "Lobster: Prices, Value-adds Make It More of an Everyday Meal." Seafood Business (2011): 34. Academic
OneFile. Web. 21 June 2014.
Web. 22 June 2014.
Andreu, Guillemette. "A Busy Day." Egypt in the Age of the Pyramids. Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1997. 94. Print.
Asian News International. "Biblical Plagues Happened in Reality, Say Scientists." Asian News International [Dehli] 31 Mar.
2010: n. pag. LexisNexis. Web. 22 June 2014.
Bloch, Marc. "The Manor." Feudal Society Vol 1. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul., n.d. 241. Print.
Boston, Nicholas. "Living Conditions." PBS. PBS, 2004. Web. 21 June 2014.
Bryant, Reginald. "Food: Menus Derived from Slave Cuisine." The Philadelphia Tribune (1992): 22. ProQuest. Web. 20 June
2014.
Genovese, Eugene D. Roll, Jordan, Roll; the World the Slaves Made. New York: Pantheon, 1974. Print.
George, Michele. "Geographies of Slave Containment and Movement." Roman Slavery and Roman Material Culture. Vol. 52.
Toronto: U of Toronto, 2013. 111. Phoenix Supplementary Volumes. Johnson County Community College. Web. 21 June
2014.
Lobb, Richard L. “History of Food Production.” Encyclopedia of Food and Culture. Ed. Solomon H. Katz. Vol. 2. New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 2003. 1-3. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 21 June 2014.
Manchester, William. "The Shattering." A World Lit Only by Fire: The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance. 1st ed. London:
Papermac, 1994. 54. Print.
Padolsky, Enoch. "You Are What You Eat: Ethnicity, Food and Cross-cultural Spaces." Canadian Ethnic Studies 37.2 (2005):
19-31. Ethnic NewsWatch. Web. 21 June 2014.
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