Americans eat black peas on New Years to bring good luck in the coming year.
But that's the short answer. Long involves a shared family tradition that celebrates the rich heritage of beans in Africa and the Americas.
But first, a practical advice: now is the time to start soaking the beans.
Why do we eat black peas on New Year?
Chef Christopher “Luck” Bell said, “My mother was a person who never bought canned black-eyed peas.” “You have to soak them overnight first.”
sandra rocha evanoff
Bell can close his eyes and remember his mother's traditional dish.
“They'll be delicious,” he said. “They're going to – definitely – go to white rice.”
The chef of Atlanta's popular global soul food restaurant “Oritha's at the Point” said beans were a part of his family's New Year's celebration when he was growing up in Chicago.
“As far as I understand, black-eyed peas look like coins. It's considered good luck,” Bell said. “Our tradition is to celebrate the New Year in a very grand manner and hopefully we will carry the same in the New Year.”
Soul food historian and James Beard Award-winning author Adrian Miller has been eating black-eyed peas during New Year's Eve since his childhood.
“The black-eyed peas represent coins, while the green ones represent twisted pennies,” Miller said.
“My mother is from Chattanooga, Tennessee. My father is from Helena, Arkansas. So despite growing up in the suburbs of Denver, we still follow this tradition,” Miller said.
“After doing this for more than 50 years, the results in terms of prosperity are very mixed,” Miller said.
Where did the New Year tradition begin?
“Many cultures will have special meals on auspicious days. New Year's Day for us, Lunar New Year for many cultures in Asia,” Miller said. “You're carrying on this culinary tradition that goes back at least a century or more, so you feel connected.”
Some argue that the tradition is more about honoring the past than invoking future wealth, and in the case of black-eyed peas, the link is to dark times.
“At times, slave ships were provisioned with black-eyed peas and other foods from West Africa,” Miller said, adding that enslaved Africans forced to endure the Middle Passage were fed cowpeas and yams.
“We now know that slaves were commonly fed black-eyed pea-based dishes during the voyage, including black-eyed peas and rice, commonly known as Hoppin' John,” Miller said.
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“I think people really feel a strong connection with the past, especially with their ancestors, and looking at the experience of African Americans in this country, there's a time-honored tradition that people love — it's positive. Is – I think it's something that leads people to embrace it.”
According to The National Museum of African American History and Culture, the December 31, 1862 celebrations may contain more clues about the tradition.
In what became known as Watch Night, or “Eve of Freedom”, African Americans anxiously waited for midnight for the Emancipation Proclamation to take effect.
Religious services honoring Watch Night still occur today, and according to the museum, the occasion is usually followed by a meal that includes collard greens and Hoppin' John.
Chef Sherry L. of Waco, Texas Raleigh, while researching her cookbook, “Gifts from the Ancestors, Volume One, Okra and Tomatoes,” discovered that black-eyed peas brought in income during the Civil War. She calls beans a liberating food.
Raleigh makes another argument for the dish's enduring powers in soul, saying, “Those foods helped many enslaved Africans and sharecroppers make their way north with the Great Migration.”
“In the New Year tradition, of course, we are paying tribute to our ancestors for all that they endured,” he said.
“Even people in the North, like in Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia — people who have roots from Louisiana, Mississippi, Georgia — they'll cook it.”
In his research, Raley also traced the evolution of the dish as it spread across America.
“They had to adapt,” Raleigh said of African Americans settling in different parts of the Americas, “they had to modify based on the indigenous ingredients found there.”
“You know, cooking just tells that beautiful story,” Raleigh said. “If you follow a recipe, it will give you that legacy. Ultimately, you will be able to tie it together and we are more alike than we are different.”
How many people eat black peas on New Year?
Although it is unclear how many people engage in the New Year tradition, consumption of black-eyed peas is widespread. Raleigh found that black-eyed peas also brought prosperity to women in northern Brazil, where millions of enslaved West Africans were forced to cross the Atlantic Ocean to another port.
“It's our cultural history, and I think these things come together so that you can identify with people.”
Raleigh trades recipes and stories with Sandra Rocha Ivanoff, who lives near Seattle, Washington, but was born in the state of Bahia in northeastern Brazil. The Ivanoffs choose lentils for good luck on New Years, as do many South Americans, but consider black-eyed peas part of their cultural heritage.
Afro-Brazilian women prepare acaraje, a dumpling made from black-eyed peas of Yoruba origin associated with Nigeria, to sell in Salvador, the capital of Bahia. According to research from the University of Chicago, research shows that street vendors pass on profits to their owners, but retain some portion for their social mobility.
sandra rocha evanoff
“Acaraje was a food that enslaved women in Brazil sold on the streets in Bahia to buy their freedom,” Ivanoff said.
Evanoff also ate black-eyed peas at her wedding – which her now-husband George, a white man from Tennessee who grew up in Shreveport, Louisiana, questioned at first, since their wedding was in the middle of the year. , which was a deviation from their marriage. Family New Year's tradition.
Ivanoff said, “I told him, why not? I love black-eyed peas.”
Do you eat black peas on New Year's Eve or New Year's Day?
Soul food scholar Adrian Miller, who eats black-eyed peas on New Year's Day, says that since the origins of the tradition are not set in stone, neither is the day when it is celebrated.
“We usually do it on New Year's Eve,” said chef Christian Bale. “We have a big kind of seafood fiesta with black-eyed peas and rice.”
Chef Sherry L. Raleigh is even less concerned with results and time.
“I don't know why I felt so superstitious about it, but I'll tell you this, it's ingrained in me, because guess what's in my freezer,” Raleigh said.