A Gracious Plenty: Recipes and Recollections from the American South

by John T. Edge, Ellen Rolfes

Hundreds of classic recipes capture the rich culinary traditions of the American South, introducing more than four hundred dishes representing a broad spectrum of geographical, cultural, and social influences. Reprint.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking

384 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

John T. Edge writes and hosts the Emmy Award–winning television show TrueSouth on the SEC Network, ESPN, Disney, and Hulu. Edge also writes a restaurant column for Garden & Gun. His 2017 book, The Potlikker Papers: A Food History of the Modern South, was named one of the best books of the year by NPR and Publishers Weekly. Edge serves the University of Mississippi as a teacher, writer-in-residence, and director of the Mississippi Lab. And he serves the University of Georgia as a mentor in their low-residency MFA program in narrative nonfiction. He lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with his wife, the artist Blair Hobbs.

Reviews

[Minneapolani · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a dense, culinary history text. Sure, there are recipes, but I gleaned a lot more from the stories attached to them than the recipes themselves. It's nice to see someone chronicling real Southern food, which is typically a way of cooking taught orally, not through books. Getting these stories on paper is a way to preserve the true cooking of the South and give people a real look into not-always-pretty history of Southern food.

[Jackie · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent source for the old southern recipes.

[Marty Elrod · Rating 5 out of 5]

My all time favorite cookbook.