The Gullah Geechee people — descendants of enslaved Africans who worked the rice plantations of the South Carolina and Georgia Low Country — maintained the most direct and least diluted connection to West African culinary tradition of any American community. The geographic isolation of the Sea Islands (the barrier islands off the South Carolina and Georgia coasts) preserved their language (Gullah, a creole of English and multiple West African languages), their cultural practices, and their food traditions in a form that food historians identify as the closest surviving link to the West African source.
The Gullah Geechee culinary tradition — its specific techniques and ingredients.
WEST AFRICAN CULINARY TRADITION — DEEP EXTRACTION