African-Americans have never received the credit they deserve for their influence on American cuisine. A new exhibition at the Africa Centre in Harlem is a valuable corrective
Save time by listening to our audio articles as you multitaskBut the most revealing artefacts may be the most prosaic: an ice-cream scoop and a photograph of a man standing in front of a truck. Alfred Cralle invented the scoop with a built-in scraper, turning what had been a laborious task usually requiring two hands and at least two implements into a simple one. And Frederick McKinley Jones invented the first portable refrigerated unit, allowing perishable food to be shipped more widely.
They embody the exhibition’s stated premise. In the words of Jessica Harris, an author, culinary historian and the show’s lead curator: “African-American foodAmerican food.” Americans, along with the rest of the world, can eat strawberries in February and Cape Cod oysters far from Massachusetts because of Jones’s invention. Ice-cream enthusiasts everywhere can enjoy their dessert with ease, and less risk of covering themselves in frozen goo, thanks to Cralle’s.
Cralle’s invention also signifies the exhibition’s tacit idea: that African-Americans have never received the credit they deserve for their influence on American cuisine. Cralle patented his invention but never profited from it. Nearest Green, an enslaved distiller born around 1820, is not nearly as well known as the white man he taught to make and filter whisky—a fellow named Jack Daniel.
This is a valuable corrective. The feeling visitors are left with at the end is admiration at the ingenuity of the brewers, chefs, distillers, farmers, restaurateurs, writers and others who persevered through unimaginable hardship and who showed far more faith in their country than their country showed in them. And the taste they’re left with is sweet: everyone who comes gets a cellophane-wrapped pair of benne cookies as they leave .
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