Missing Ingredients

Abstract

This chapter examines how an African American woman born in 1899 to a black mother and white father, taken by the father's family from her mother, and brought up in a white household, negotiated her place in the racially complex society of the Eastern Shore of Virginia. The chapter begins with her recipe collection and moves to her most remembered speciality – yeast rolls. The chapter then explores the place of this bread in contexts of identity, reputation, remembrance, and race.