Every region of the country has dishes that it’s known for. When Charles Morrow Wilson grew up in Fayetteville in the early 1900s, typical Ozark dishes included dried fruit pies, Johnny cakes, home-cured pork, Injun spareribs (a stew made with salt pork, sweet potatoes, green peppers, and corn), sweet potato puddings, hog jowls with cowpeas, and turnip greens with “pot likker,” the thick juice left behind after the greens and salt pork were cooked in water.

During Wayman Hogue’s childhood in the Ozarks, “old man Adams” was the community barbeque expert. Families contributed sheep and a few goats, hogs, and yearling calves to the annual Fourth of July celebration. Ditches were dug in the barbeque grounds about 20 feet long and filled with oak and hickory. The evening before the big day Adams and his crew hung the carcasses from long poles and began cooking the meat.

Cooking techniques and recipes were often passed from mother to daughter. In the 1910s county Extension offices formed to bring “practical demonstrations” in agriculture and home economics to rural communities. Home Demonstration clubs hosted university specialists who taught scientific canning techniques, nutrition, and other homemaking skills. Canned goods not only provided food for the family, it was a good way to earn extra income.

Food was used for charitable purposes such as raising money for schools and community buildings. At box suppers and pie suppers men vied with one another to bid on the food prepared by the prettiest girl or the best cook. Bringing gifts of food to a new or struggling family was common. In Alpena a “pounding” was held for the preacher and his family. Church members brought eggs, fruit, coffee, canned goods, garden produce, sugar—whatever they wished—often in one-pound amounts.

Food can identify people in many ways. In Tontitown, the community’s early Italian roots are proudly expressed in the spaghetti served at the annual Grape Festival. But food is offensively used by some to stereotype people, such as linking traditional Ozarkers to possum or African Americans to watermelon.