Toni Tipton-martin taps into a 200-year legacy of African American cooking in Jubilee
Sautéed in lamb drippings and simmered in chicken stock, Toni Tipton- Martin’s braised celery exemplifies the culinary deftness of her African American ancestors. A nod to S. Thomas Bivins, she calls for the sauce to be thickened at the last minute with beurre manié — just as he did in a recipe for stewed celery published in his 1912 tome, The Southern Cookbook. It also takes inspiration from legendary chef and writer Edna Lewis, who once served a butter- and broth-bathed version, garnished with fresh parsley.
In drawing upon the rich legacy of African American cooking — which, before her James Beard Award-winning 2015 bibliography The Jemima Code, had gone largely uncharted — Tipton-martin demonstrates the skill and knowledge necessary to transform a foundational ingredient into something exquisite. The recipe, which she developed on an Easter Sunday after roasting a leg of lamb for her family, is one of more than 100 in her follow-up cookbook, Jubilee (Clarkson Potter, 2019).
Both books, which represent the beginnings of a story she intends to tell in multiple parts, share the same source material: Tipton-martin’s library of nearly 400 black cookbooks — written primarily by self- published experts — dating as far back as 1827. The result of at least 30 years of collecting, and “a near fortune” spent at rare and antique booksellers, she illuminates the diversity of African-american cuisine. Pushing past a reliance on labels such as “Southern” and “soul,” she illustrates its influence on American cooking as a whole.
“Until now, African Americans have been narrowly defined by the food that is prepared at home. My effort is not to marginalize or degrade that work, that cooking. It certainly is an important, visible part of who we are — all that we’ve accomplished in terms of our ability to create something nutritious and delicious out of meagre supplies. But what has been neglected is the larger story,” says Tipton-martin.
“African Americans have fulfilled many roles in the culinary world, and we haven’t spoken at all about the food that they prepare on the job. We honour celebrity cooks for the food that they prepare in their restaurants and in their cookbooks, but we know little about what they do at home. And yet African Americans have been largely defined exclusively by the home realm and not by what they’re offering at a professional level.”
In Jubilee, Tipton-martin focuses on dishes created by the likes of bakery shop owners, butlers, caterers, chefs, plantation cooks, and rice and nut cake vendors. Guided by Afro- Puerto Rican historian Arturo Schomburg’s recipe list — which he wrote in the 1920s as part of an untitled African-american cookbook proposal — she studied her collection, noting the recipes that appeared most frequently. In doing so, she paid special attention to examples that reflected West African techniques or botany — such as the use of African plants like benne, okra and wild coffee — and those that would have required classic training.
Two parts of the same story, The Jemima Code and Jubilee highlight “the elusive history of talented, professional black cooks whose legacies have been overshadowed throughout history by the famous caricatures.” In adapting historical recipes for modern kitchens, sharing reference points and tracing their evolution, Tipton- Martin says she hopes to inspire the current generation to take them in new directions. In appreciating the originators, and attributing recipes to them, she aims to free up the cooks of the future to explore, unfettered by labels.
“As I continued to articulate the real vision behind the work, it was a project of racial reconciliation and tolerance. The recipes are there as frosting on the cake, but the ultimate goal was to tear down stereotypes so that we can move in less siloed ways,” says Tipton- Martin. “Jubilee and The Jemima Code are the beginnings of my small effort to tear down walls that have been intentionally erected between us. I just happen to be using food as the tool to do that.”
Reprinted with permission from Jubilee: Recipes from Two Centuries of African American Cooking by Toni Tipton- Martin, Copyright © 2019. Photographs by Jerrelle Guy. Published by Clarkson Potter, a division of Penguin Random House, Inc.