Mac and Cheese

 When you eat your Mac and cheese today enjoy this bit of history. We sooo DOPE! Click the link to learn more about Mr. James Hemings!

While Thomas Jefferson is credited with bringing macaroni and cheese to the Americas, it was the work of his enslaved chef, James Hemings, that put the dish on the proverbial map and made it the truly celebrated dish of Americans to this day. For Black people, macaroni and cheese is more than a savory delight. So when Jefferson visited Europe in the 1780s, he first encountered and fell in love with the dish. It was during his time in France with Jefferson that Hemings learned the French dish of pasta and cheese. He prepared a dish called "macaroni pie". 

This dish evolved to what Americans call macaroni and cheese today. According to Damon Lee Fowler, Dining at Monticello: In Good Taste and Abundance, enslaved Black people were talented culinary artists!  Hemings was trained by a French chef while spending time in Europe with Jefferson; however, his own twist on macaroni and cheese is what Jefferson preferred. In Paris,Jefferson became concerned that Hemings might learn that he could be free when France had abolished slavery in 1789. He wrote about this issue to another American slaveholder in a similar situation. 

According to the 1873 memoir of Madison Hemings, his uncle James and (future) mother Sally actively considered staying in France for freedom while they were in Paris. (Sally Hemings had accompanied one of Jefferson's daughters to France and worked for the family until they returned to the United States.) While fearful of their seeking freedom, Jefferson, who was in debt for most of his life, was also concerned about having paid for training James.

Hemings was actually able to achieve freedom once teaching another slave, his brother Peter, how to create Jefferson’s favored cheesy dish.  Peter Hemings made a “pie called macaroni,” at an early 1800s state dinner hosted by Jefferson, further introducing the dish to America’s upper echelon. Macaroni and cheese was featured in cookbooks and became a culinary delight among the wealthy, but it also was a dish for the poor.  After slavery, Blacks often relied on relief organizations and food from the government, which often included macaroni and processed cheese, making a quick, easy and affordable meal.  

Once Black Americans grew in wealth and access to more products from stores and markets, macaroni and cheese included a roux and other tricks of the trade passed down from generations to this day. Macaroni and cheese is part of Black American’s journey.  It’s not just a beloved American dish, but truly a staple for Black people as, in James Hemings case, it presented an opportunity for freedom, was a way to express culinary creativity, at times it served as a means of survival and to this day is a way to unite people at a dinner table and beyond. 

By Micha Green

https://museumofuncutfunk.com/2015/10/17/chef-james-hemmings/