[ In Pennsylvania Dutch Country, African Americans have created a
distinct, delicious cuisine, combining Southern and Amish cooking from
Coatesville, PA, where the cuisines of Amish and African American
communities have commingled over generations. ]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

THE SWEET AND SOUR ORIGINS OF AMISH SOUL FOOD  
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Sam Lin-Sommer

Atlas Obscura [[link removed]]

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_ In Pennsylvania Dutch Country, African Americans have created a
distinct, delicious cuisine, combining Southern and Amish cooking from
Coatesville, PA, where the cuisines of Amish and African American
communities have commingled over generations. _

Okra chow chow, a Southern relish, served with scrapple, an Amish
staple, might be “the poster child of Amish soul food,” Chris
Scott writes., Brittany Conerly

 

IN GASTRO OBSCURA’S Q & A SERIES A Seat at the Table, we speak with
people of color who are reclaiming their culinary heritage and shaping
today’s food culture.

The delicious meals that chef Chris Scott cooks up in his Harlem
kitchen may seem like new- fangled American fusion: Pennsylvania
Dutch-style chicken and corn soup alongside shrimp grits; lemonade
fried chicken with bread-and-butter pickles. But these are actually
examples of a cuisine that has been stewing along quietly for
generations: Amish soul food.

  

 This combination of Southern and Amish cooking hails from
Coatesville, Pennsylvania, where Scott grew up. “We’ve been eating
this since we were kids,” says Scott. “Our parents, [too.]”
Coatesville is located in Chester County, Pennsylvania, home to
long-standing Amish and African American communities whose cuisines
have commingled over generations. Scott is on a mission to share the
unique food of the area’s Black residents, along with the stories of
resilience and creativity within their sweet, sour, and savory
cuisine.

Scott’s great-grandfather Chester Howard migrated to Amish country
in search of economic opportunity, as did the ancestors of many other
African American families that call the region home. Howard brought
the cooking techniques of Virginia tidewater cuisine to Pennsylvania,
where he and his family adapted it to suit the ingredients, baked
goods, and preserves available at Amish markets. Amish and Southern
African American cuisines are natural bedfellows, Scott says, in that
they share the same spirit of resourcefulness. They even share certain
staples, such as cornmeal and chow chow, a relish made of pickled
vegetables.

Howard’s daughter and Scott’s grandmother, “Nana,” was a
master of Amish soul food, serving the “Seven Sweets and Sours” of
Amish cuisine—a set of condiments ubiquitous at Amish meals —along
with meals such as turkey neck gumbo. Along with scrapple, an Amish
paté of cooked pork parts, she would make okra chow chow, a Southern
relish with West African roots.

Long hours in the kitchen with Nana inspired Scott to become a chef.
Yet for many years of his professional career, Scott kept the story of
Amish soul food to himself. As Scott writes in his new cookbook
Homage: Recipes and Stories from an Amish Soul Food Kitchen, “I came
to believe that working in European restaurants, with a focus on
fine-dining techniques, was the only professional path worthy of
attention and respect.” But following years of introspection and
hard-won sobriety, he decided to look to his heritage for culinary
inspiration.

In 2016 and 2018, respectively, he opened soul food restaurants
Butterfunk Kitchen and Sumner’s Luncheonette in New York, and in
2018 was a semi-finalist on Top Chef, where he coined the term
“Amish soul food” to describe his culinary style. In September
2022, he released his cookbook as both an homage to his grandmother
and a celebration of the Amish soul food she cooked. At his newest
restaurant, Butterfunk Biscuit Co. in Harlem, his interpretations of
Coatesville’s African American cuisine take center stage. “It’s
intoxicating to be able to truly be me in a world where I always
couldn’t,” he says.

Gastro Obscura spoke with Scott about Eurocentrism in the restaurant
industry, the definition of Amish soul food, parallels between Amish
and African American histories, and the future of soul food.

You mention in your book that there was a period where you struggled
to share the story of the food you grew up with. What changed?

 [For many White chefs around me,] Black food to them has always been
a niche thing. They feel like it’s just having its moment, but
there’s no lasting or staying power—although we have been here for
centuries.

[They’ll say,] ‘How hard can it be?’ ‘What kind of technique
is it? It’s not even a technique- driven food.’ They even get into
it being unhealthy. So I’d say at least nine out of ten things
coming out of their mouths about Black food, Black culture, are all
negative. So coming up, of course, it was embarrassing to embrace that
side of me.

Once I started to accept [my food] and who I was, I started actually
cooking some of the best food that I ever did in my life, because it
was mine, because it was from the heart, and because I could be
unapologetically Black.

What do you think makes Amish soul food unique?

Some of the most Southern flavors or dishes that you know—imagine
them with brighter nuances, higher in vinegar, higher in sugar, higher
in citrus, because the Germans really have a lot of sweet and sour
components.

Back in the day, the slaves would have their own gardens. Sometimes
you would have chicken bones to make your broth a little bit more
flavorful, sometimes not. And then that would go over some type of
cornbread. A lot of Amish dishes are very similar: things that are
taken from the garden, preserves. A ton of stews: chicken and
dumplings, or brisket with potatoes and cabbage.

Are these similarities just a coincidence, or is there a shared
history?

Basically, it’s survival. [With the Amish] you have a group of
people that have been ousted because of their religion. They move here
to the States, and they hit the ground with nothing. Just like with
slaves: we were given nothing. You make the best of nothing because
you have to.

How would you describe the relationship between African American and
Amish people in Coatesville?

The Amish were definitely a group of people that were mainly to
themselves, and the only sort of interaction that you had was when you
would frequent their markets or their stores. You would see them out
in the suburbs, and—more on the Lancaster County side—in their
horses and buggies, or [out] farming. But a lot of the interaction was
in their markets.

Are there any specific dishes that stick out in your mind as examples
of Amish soul food, with its sweet-and-sour flavor palate?

When I was on Top Chef, I did a lemonade buttermilk fried chicken.
Down south, everybody and their mama brines chicken with sweet tea. [I
grew] up in a household where sweet tea was in my refrigerator, and so
was Kool-Aid and so was lemonade. It makes [the fried chicken] super
duper bright.

What kind of Amish soul food dishes would your grandmother cook?

She would put vinegar in her sweet potato pie, not necessarily to
where it was tart, but to where it wasn’t so sweet. In her cakes,
rather than eggs and oil, she would put in mayonnaise, so the overall
texture of that cake was now almost pillowy.

There were a lot of techniques that she got just from being in that
area. In Virginia, they weren’t rocking spaetzle and cabbage and egg
noodle stew and all that. But once [my family] made its way up North,
my grandmother was doing [Amish] dishes but adding components like
neck bone. Neck bone with egg noodles, with spaetzle. Okra chow chow
with scrapple.

In your eyes, what does the future look like for Amish soul food, and
Black culinary culture in general?

The whole Amish soul food thing was just a door to showing people that
we are more than what people think we are. We’re so much more than
just fried chicken, watermelon, biscuits and cornbread and anything
that’s red velvet. I want to see more amplification of us that goes
beyond the South.

There’s so many of us now that we’re individually and collectively
blazing the trail for the next generation. I certainly think that
we’re here to stay. And hopefully there’ll come a point when all
these arrogant Michelin chefs make space—or we take space—at the
global table, showing them that our food is here to stay as well.

* African American cuisine
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* Amish cuisine
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* Pennsylvania
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