Leni Sorensen

Last updated
Leni Sorensen
Born1942
San Diego, California
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater College of William and Mary
Occupation(s)Historian, chef
TelevisionHigh on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America

Leni Ashmore Sorensen is an American chef and culinary historian. She focuses on the lives of Black cooks, with a particular emphasis on the early 1800s and the Colonial period. She is featured on the Netflix television series, High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America .

Contents

Early life

Sorensen was born in Los Angeles in 1942. [1] Her mother Lisa, a Communist who later joined the Unitarian Church, was white. Her father, Billy, was black; his grandfather was enslaved. [2] [3] Her stepfather, a Black man from New Orleans, sparked her interest in cuisine, and taught her how to cook Southern Creole staples. [3] She was the first of three generations of interracial children. [2]

Sorensen completed a BA in history in 1992 through the Mary Baldwin College Adult Degree Program, after having left high school at 16 play guitar and sing with folk group, The Womenfolk. [1] [3] [4] She went on to earn her master's in 1997 and her Ph.D. in American Studies in 2005 from the College of William and Mary. [4] [1]

Career

The Womenfolk recorded five albums and appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show three times; their cover of "Little Boxes" was on the Billboard Top 100 for three weeks. Her first child was born when she was 18. [3] She began to host dinner parties and teach cooking classes in the early 1970s. [3]

In 1974 Sorensen described herself in a personal ad in Mother Earth News as "31, Black, tall (5’9”) and sorta freaky for around here. I'm a hell of a good cook and am skilled at gardening, canning, raising rabbits, sewing and minor carpentry (have also begun to handspin wool) so favor a man with a country lifestyle over a city-minded dude.” [3] That ad led to her marriage to Kip Sorensen, a carpenter and farmer from South Dakota, which lasted until his death in 2017. [3]

Her career before retirement included time as a food historian specializing in African-American foods at Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home, and working as a costumed interpreter at Colonial Williamsburg, where she "demonstrated how to dye cloth with indigo, spin wool and cook over a hearth". She operates Indigo House, a five-acre farmstead in the Blue Ridge Mountains where she teaches classes in canning and presents group dinners prepared from historic recipes. Her research focuses on the lives of Black cooks, with a particular emphasis on the early 1800s and the Colonial period. [3] She is a co-presenter on the Netflix television series, High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America . [5]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Soul food</span> American style of cooking

Soul food is the ethnic cuisine of African Americans. It originated in the American South from the cuisines of enslaved Africans trafficked to the North American colonies through the Atlantic slave trade during the Antebellum period and is closely associated the cuisine of the American South. The expression "soul food" originated in the mid-1960s when "soul" was a common word used to describe African-American culture. Soul food uses cooking techniques and ingredients from West African, Central African, Western European, and Indigenous cuisine of the Americas.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cuisine of the Southern United States</span> Regional cuisine of the United States

The cuisine of the Southern United States encompasses diverse food traditions of several subregions, including cuisine of Southeastern Native American tribes, Tidewater, Appalachian, Ozarks, Lowcountry, Cajun, Creole, African American cuisine and Floribbean, Spanish, French, British, and German cuisine. In recent history, elements of Southern cuisine have spread to other parts of the United States, influencing other types of American cuisine.

Sara Moulton is an American cookbook author and television personality. In an article for The New York Times, Kim Severson described Moulton as "one of the nation’s most enduring recipe writers and cooking teachers...and a dean of food television and magazines".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kim Severson</span>

Kim Marie Severson is a reporter for The New York Times. She won a Pulitzer Prize for public service in 2018 as part of The New York Times coverage of sexual harassment and abuse and is a four-time James Beard award–winner for food writing. Severson has published multiple cookbooks and a cooking themed memoir.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jessica B. Harris</span> American culinary historian (born 1948)

Jessica B. Harris is an American culinary historian, college professor, cookbook author and journalist. She is professor emerita at Queens College, City University of New York, where she taught for 50 years, and is also the author of 15 books, including cookbooks, non-fiction food writing and memoir. She has twice won James Beard Foundation Awards, including for Lifetime Achievement in 2020, and her book High on the Hog was adapted in 2021 as a four-part Netflix series by the same name.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pati Jinich</span> Mexican chef and author (born 1972)

Patricia Jinich is a Mexican chef, TV personality, cookbook author, educator, and food writer. She is best known for her James Beard Award-winning and Emmy-nominated public television series Pati's Mexican Table. Her first cookbook, also titled Pati's Mexican Table, was published in March 2013, her second cookbook, Mexican Today, was published in April 2016, and her third cookbook, Treasures of the Mexican Table, was published in November 2021.

Malinda Russell was a free African-American woman from Tennessee who earned her living as a cook and published the first known cookbook by an African-American woman. The book is historically significant, as it shows that African-American Southern cooking was not solely the domain of poverty cooking, but provides evidence of a sophisticated cosmopolitan skill with complex dishes.

Samin Nosrat is an Iranian-American chef, TV host, food writer and podcaster.

Melissa Clark is an American food writer, cookbook author and New York Times columnist. She is the author of over 40 cookbooks and has received multiple awards from the James Beard Foundation and IACP for her work. Clark is a regular guest on television series such as Today show, Rachael Ray and Iron Chef America and on radio programmes such as The Splendid Table on NPR and The Leonard Lopate Show on WNYC.

Salt Fat Acid Heat is an American cooking documentary television series starring Samin Nosrat. Based on her 2017 book of the same name, the four-part series premiered on Netflix on October 11, 2018.

Karelle Vignon-Vullierme is a food blogger living in Dakar, the capital of Senegal since 2012. Of Beninese origin, she was born on March 21, 1987, and had a childhood and adolescence in Paris, France. She has won a number of awards, including « Best African Blogger » and the Orange prize for women's digital entrepreneurship.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lena Richard</span> American chef

Lena Richard was a chef, cookbook author, restaurateur, frozen food entrepreneur, and television host from New Orleans, Louisiana. In 1949, Richard became the first Black woman to host her own television cooking show. Her show aired from October 1949 - November 1950 on local television station WDSU.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sarah Lohman</span> American historian

Sarah Lohman is an American historian, specializing in the history of food. She is the author of Eight Flavors: The Untold Story of American Cuisine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Toni Tipton-Martin</span> Food and Nutrition Journalist and Cookbook Author

Toni Tipton-Martin is an African-American food and nutrition journalist and author of several cookbooks, including Jubilee. She serves as the editor-in-chief for Cook's Country. She received the Julia Child Award in 2021, and two James Beard awards.

Stephen A. Satterfield is an African-American food writer, producer, and media entrepreneur. He is the television host of 2021 Netflix docu-series High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America.

High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America is a television docuseries released on Netflix on May 26, 2021, starring Stephen Satterfield, Gabrielle E.W. Carter and Jessica B. Harris. In August 2021, the series was renewed for a second season.

Gabrielle E. W. Carter is a cultural preservationist, artist, co-founder of Tall Grass Food Box, and creator of Revival Taste Collective. She is one of the main characters on the Netflix documentary series High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America that debuted on May 26, 2021. She was also the subject of a short film documentary The Seeds We Keep by the Oxford American.

<i>High on the Hog</i> (book) 2011 book by Jessica B. Harris

High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America is a non-fiction book by Jessica B. Harris, published in 2011 by Bloomsbury. The book chronicles the development of African-American cuisine from its origins in African cuisines.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emily Meggett</span> American storyteller and chef (1932–2023)

Emily Meggett was an American Geechee-Gullah community leader, chef, and author who co-wrote Gullah Geechee Home Cooking: Recipes from the Matriarch of Edisto Island in 2022. She lived on Edisto Island, near Charleston, South Carolina.

Benjamin "BJ" Dennis IV is an American Gullah Geechee chef and caterer from Charleston, South Carolina who is known for preserving Gullah Geechee cooking and culture. Additionally, he is also notable for his discovery of hill rice in December 2016 in Trinidad, which was thought to have been extinct.

References

  1. 1 2 3 Hamilton, Kendra (July 20, 2010). "Living by Hand: Leni Sorensen's career path has been anything but conventional". Virginia Living . Retrieved September 23, 2021.
  2. 1 2 Patterson, Thom (April 18, 2011). "Neither black nor white: Three multiracial generations, one family". CNN . Retrieved September 24, 2021.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Severson, Kim (2021-09-21). "Food Scholar, Folk Singer, Blunt Speaker: The Many Lives of Leni Sorensen". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2021-09-23.
  4. 1 2 "ABOUT ME: Getting to now . . . . ". The View From Indigo House. 2014-01-25. Retrieved 2022-02-01.
  5. Severson, Kim (2021-05-17). "The Making of 'High on the Hog,' Bringing Black Food History to TV". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2021-09-23.