The History of Appalachian Cooking

Although Mark Sohn began to garden at the age of 5 and his love of food would later blossom in Paris, he's been particularly fond of Appalachian cooking for the last three decades.
"It became big for me because I thought that the food was particularly good," he said.
Sohn, a professor of educational psychology at Pikeville College in Kentucky, is also a foods author, columnist and cooking teacher.
During Sunday's West Virginia Humanities Council Little Lecture at the MacFarland-Hubbard House, Sohn shared some recipes and the history of Appalachian cooking with the audience.
Sohn began talking about prehistoric Appalachian natives who dined on mastodon and giant tortoise. Thousands of years later their successors favored whitetail deer, turkey, acorns, black walnuts and other delicacies as glaciers receded from present day Ohio.
About 1,000 years ago, corn and beans became a dominant food staple in Appalachia, Sohn said shortly before he offered up a recipe for succotash. Read more from The Charleston Gazette.