Shunda's Complete Collection of Black Heritage Recipes: 241 Authentic African American Recipes, Forgotten Dishes, and Cooking Secrets Across Nine Chapters

These recipes were never meant to be in a book.They lived in cast iron skillets passed down through three generations. They lived in the hands of women who never measured a thing and never wrote anything down. They lived in the memory of children who grew up and spent the rest of their lives trying to get back to that taste.Shunda's Complete Collection of Black Heritage Recipes is the most comprehensive collection of authentic African American cooking ever assembled in a single volume — 241 recipes and cooking techniques gathered across nine chapters, from the desperate resourcefulness of the Great Depression to the church potluck tables of the 1970s to the breakfast traditions that have nearly vanished from American life entirely.WHAT'S INSIDE:Chapter 1 — Survival Food of the Great Depression: The 31 dishes Black families made from almost nothing — cornmeal mush, cracklin' soup, poke sallet, ash cake, and the meals that kept entire communities alive when there was no margin for waste.Chapter 2 — What Black Mothers Cooked Every Week: 28 everyday 1960s meals that fed large families on small budgets — oxtail stew, smothered pork chops, neck bones and rice, red beans and rice, and the dishes that made Monday through Sunday feel like enough.Chapter 3 — The Dishes Black Children Begged For: 25 cheap meals that made 1960s kids feel rich — candy yams, baked macaroni and cheese, deviled eggs, hot dogs and mac, and the food that made childhood.Chapter 4 — Lost Recipes from the Poor Man's Table: 23 forgotten dishes made from the parts of the animal most people threw away — souse, chitlins, liver pudding, backbone and dumplings, and the meals that turned nothing into something extraordinary.Chapter 5 — Heirloom Desserts Nobody Makes Anymore: 26 African American sweets disappearing from our tables — lane cake, scripture cake, stack cake, vinegar pie, watermelon rind preserves, and the desserts that showed up at every significant moment in Black family life.Chapter 6 — Breakfast Before the World Woke Up: 30 African American morning meals only grandmothers still made — tomato gravy over grits, spoonbread, scrapple, sweet potato pancakes, and breakfasts that sustained families through hard physical work.Chapter 7 — What Disappeared from the Church Table: 18 Black church potluck dishes lost after the 1980s — Sister Hattie's layered Jell-O salad, deviled crab, chicken bog, pig ear souse, First Lady's Seven-Up pound cake, and the dishes that made Sunday fellowship into a feast.Chapter 8 — African American Breakfasts No One Makes Anymore: 30 morning meals from a generation that fed families with almost nothing — fried mush, hog brains and eggs, molasses and butter grits, roasted peanut porridge, ash hoecakes, and breakfasts that have completely vanished from American tables.Bonus Chapter — Banned Cooking Tricks Scientists Now Say Were GENIUS: 30 traditional African American cooking techniques that were condemned by mid-century health authorities and have since been fully vindicated by science — cast iron seasoning, cooking with lard, pot likker, bone broth, vinegar in greens, and the grandmother wisdom that was right all along.Every recipe includes the full story of where it came from, who made it, and why it mattered — not just ingredients and directions, but the history and memory that make these dishes worth preserving. Read more