Research Reveals Enduring Influence of Early African Farmers, Cooks.

Byline: University of Virginia

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., Oct. 15 (AScribe Newswire) -- -- It's well known that much traditional American cooking, epitomized by "soul food," has flavorful African influences. But as the 400th anniversary of the first Africans' arrival at Jamestown approaches, research by a historian at the University of Virginia shows that the continent's role in shaping American food and agriculture was one of the most dynamic and complex results of the so-called "Columbian exchange" of plants, animals, diseases and ideas across the Atlantic.

The research by James D. La Fleur, who received his Ph.D. at U.Va. in May and is currently a visiting lecturer at Leiden University in the Netherlands, describes how skilled West African farmers and …