1lesmel
I was at book club last night and we discussed something I'd never heard of:
1. during segregation in the US, vanilla ice cream was only a flavor for whites
2. butter pecan was developed so POC could eat vanilla ice cream
It's not like I've done any extensive research but both of these feel apocryphal...as in, there doesn't seem to be primary source evidence of either of these statements; but there's a lot of folk lore and anecdotes. At what point, do folk lore and anecdotes become the evidence?
The butter pecan thing is fascinating because I grew up in a Hispanic community and butter pecan is something I grew up on. It's not my favorite; but it was something we always had in the summer. I listened to a podcast episode hoping for books or articles I could read that would help me delve deeper into the history of ice cream; but that was a dud. They were terrible at "research" and presenting their "findings." Although, they did discuss two 2014 articles from Code Switch:
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/05/11/310708342/recall-that-ice-cre...
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/05/21/314246332/talking-about-race-...
They mentioned Michael Twitty's book Cooking Gene which I've read a few chapters of. I've ordered Chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla from the library hoping to find more references.
1. during segregation in the US, vanilla ice cream was only a flavor for whites
2. butter pecan was developed so POC could eat vanilla ice cream
It's not like I've done any extensive research but both of these feel apocryphal...as in, there doesn't seem to be primary source evidence of either of these statements; but there's a lot of folk lore and anecdotes. At what point, do folk lore and anecdotes become the evidence?
The butter pecan thing is fascinating because I grew up in a Hispanic community and butter pecan is something I grew up on. It's not my favorite; but it was something we always had in the summer. I listened to a podcast episode hoping for books or articles I could read that would help me delve deeper into the history of ice cream; but that was a dud. They were terrible at "research" and presenting their "findings." Although, they did discuss two 2014 articles from Code Switch:
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/05/11/310708342/recall-that-ice-cre...
https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2014/05/21/314246332/talking-about-race-...
They mentioned Michael Twitty's book Cooking Gene which I've read a few chapters of. I've ordered Chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla from the library hoping to find more references.
2lesmel
And now I've added Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine to my hold list.
5MrsLee
>1 lesmel: I've never heard such a story in California. My mom's favorite flavor was butter pecan ice cream. As I've grown older, my fondness for it has increased.
I'm trying to think about the question from a financial point of view. It doesn't seem to make sense. I know pecans are prevalent in the south, but it seems to me that added ingredients or toppings would add cost. Also cream and sugar wouldn't be cheap. Was brown sugar less expensive? I don't know enough about the history to know whether cream would have been hard to come by. We had our own cows, so it was always available.
I would say that it sounds ridiculous, but nothing about segregation has ever seemed reasonable to me.
I'm trying to think about the question from a financial point of view. It doesn't seem to make sense. I know pecans are prevalent in the south, but it seems to me that added ingredients or toppings would add cost. Also cream and sugar wouldn't be cheap. Was brown sugar less expensive? I don't know enough about the history to know whether cream would have been hard to come by. We had our own cows, so it was always available.
I would say that it sounds ridiculous, but nothing about segregation has ever seemed reasonable to me.
6thornton37814
I never heard that about butter pecan, but my dad worked as a civilian at an AFB and went to a base in Texas occasionally for additional training for his job. On one such trip, he went home on a weekend with a man from Oklahoma. They made homemade butter pecan ice cream. Dad loved it so much that he brought the recipe home to us, and it became the favorite flavor of pretty much everyone in the entire neighborhood!
