Fried chicken, rice and gravy, sweet potatoes, collard greens and spoon bread - all good old fashioned, down-home southern foods, right?  Wrong. The fried chicken and collard greens are African, the rice is from Madagascar, the sweet potatoes came to Virginia from the Peruvian Andes via Spain, and the spoon bread is a marriage of Native American corn with the French soufflé technique thought up by skilled African American cooks. Food historian Rick McDaniel takes 150 of the South's best-loved and most delicious recipes and tells how to make them and the history behind them. From fried chicken to gumbo to Robert E. Lee Cake, it's a history lesson that will make your mouth water. What southerners today consider traditional southern cooking was really one of the world's first international cuisines, a mélange of European, Native American and African foods and influences brought together to form one of the world's most unique and recognizable cuisines. The South has always been celebrated for its food--a delectable blend of ingredients and cooking techniques connected to the region's rich soil and bountiful waters. And oftentimes what makes a recipe Southern is as much a state of mind as it is a matter of geography--Southerners simply decide a particular food is Southern, and that s that. From the earliest days of settlement, when colonists struggled to survive on a diet of dogs, cats, rats and poisonous snakes, to an era defined by sumptuous dining that blended European, Native American and African cuisines, Southern food truly stems from a unique tradition. Respected Southern food historian and chef Rick McDaniel explores the history of over 150 recipes, from Maryland stuffed ham to South Carolina chicken bog to New Orleans shrimp Creole, without forgetting the meal's crowning glory: dessert. Rick McDaniel is a food historian, culinary anthropologist and author who specializes in the food of the American South with a particular interest in the Federal and Antebellum periods. He is the author of  An Irresistible History of Southern Food (History Press, 2011).  The New York Times, MSNBC and newspapers and magazines throughout the South have interviewed McDaniel about Southern food history and traditional recipes. He has been a consultant to the producers of Diners, Drive-ins and Dives on the Food Network and Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations on the Travel Channel, as well as a Southern Regional panelist for the James Beard Foundation's chef and restaurant awards. His website, chefrick.com, has been featured in the New York Times and was selected as one of the best Internet resources on American cookery by the University of Oregon and the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. His first book,  An Irresistible History of Southern Food is in the reference collections of Duke University, UNC-Chapel Hill, The University of Chicago and Harvard University.