We need food historians. They are the ones that connect us to our culinary past. They show us where our recipes, likes and dislikes come from.Leni Sorenson is one of those who brings history to life through eating.
Regular contributor Kim severson wrote about this amazing woman in today's section of New York Rimes Food. Ms. Sorenson is a seventy-nine year old firecracker with a salty mouth and sweet foods of the past. she is also the star of Netflix's show High On The Hog based on the book of the same name by culinary historian Jessica B. Harris. she was the one who recommended Dr. Sorenson for the program. The good doctor has had an interesting life. she dropped out of san Diego High when she was sixteen to become a folk singer. she did return, earning a PhD at age sixty in american studies from The College Of William and Mary. she learned about cooking from her step dad who was from Louisiana and took her to barbecue stands and taught her southern Creole recipes. she also jumped into the hippie California cooking scene , along with hosting dinner parties and teaching informal classes on vegetarian cooking and sprouted grain bread. she moved to Canada met her second husband through a personal ad in Mother Earth News. she move to his south dakota home where she learned canning and how tot urn milk into cheese and yogurt.
It was her time at a historic site where she got into the history of black cooking. she could also spin wool , butcher hogs and can venison. Her house , Indigo House is a now a place for those to eat historic dishes and discuss them for eight-nine dollars. she also teaches canning. The historical dinner Ms. severson recently attended had the theme of three centuries of female chefs. The first course was a simple cold tomato soup adapted from the 1770 book Receipt Book of Harriott PInckney Horry, a South Carolina cook. The second course was fish fricasseed in stock cream and butter. It was a recipe from Malinda Russell's 1866 cookbook A Domestic Cookbook COntaining A Careful Collection of Useful Receipts for the Kitchen. This is the oldest known cookbook by an African American woman. Dr. sorenson served it with a salad and one of Tom Jefferson's favorite tarragon dressings. dessert was Edna Lewis' custardy bread pudding taken from her 1977 book The Taste of Country Cooking.Ms. Lewis was the only black woman who wrote cookbooks back forty years ago.
Dr. Sorenson is a gem, full of good history and good recipes. She will not let the past die. Thanks to her , the history of African American history will go on
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