Bound to the Fire

In Bound to the Fire Kelley Fanto Deetz seeks to rescue the enslaved cooks who worked on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Virginia plantations from romanticized myths about devoted servants. She says if “Aunt Jemima pancakes were served with a side of contempt, or Rastus' Cream of Wheat came with a Sankofa-shaped spoon, or, even better, Uncle Ben's rice contained trace amounts of poison,” the lives of these men and women would be revealed in all of their complexity (p. 129). Deetz, a former cook and a historical archaeologist, thinks enslaved cooks deserve to be remembered for more than the food they prepared, a glaring omission in the literature on American foodways. Deetz contends that advanced skills and literacy gave enslaved cooks a degree of autonomy that let them control the kitchen and make it a unique space they shared with the African American community. From the archaeological and architectural history of Virginia plantations, Deetz shows freestanding kitchens emerged in the late seventeenth century just as planters switched from relying primarily on white servants to African slaves, which she argues was not coincidental. Her analysis of Georgian floor plans reveals that planters sought to compartmentalize space along lines of race, gender, and class. Deetz also establishes that kitchens were manifestations of prestige. In the Virginia Gazette, kitchens were the most common outbuilding listed in real estate advertisements; moreover, kitchens were larger and better equipped than any other outbuilding

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