For example, New Englanders speak with grating accents just like Southerners. Their past includes Paul Revere and the shot heard 'round the world. Not only did devastation save the South, it broadened the market for a particular genre of Southern cooking. Next time you watch Gone With the Wind , look closely at that stirring moment when Scarlett issues her vow. She's clutching what appears to be a bunch of that soul food staple, turnip greens.
Most people assume a racial distinction as well.
Because blacks in the Old South hacked out a living from the most meager soils, they learned to spice up rib tips or dandelion greens or cabbage, drawing on diverse African, Caribbean and Euro-American influences. But poor whites adopted many of the same methods, using the same basic ingredients. Where New Englanders tossed the tops of a turnip into their garbage disposals, poor Southerners used the whole damn plant. It was something poor Southerners had to use. Poor Southerners even fried up hog intestines by the plateful.