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The Shared Caribbean Layer

Regional

⚠ A COMPARISON LAYER, NOT A PARENT THAT ABSORBS. What the islands actually share, and why: CASSAVA and its processing, from the Taíno and Kalinago; the PLANTATION, which imposed sugar and imported nearly all food; the AFRICAN DIASPORA, which brought okra, pigeon peas, the one-pot, rice knowledge, ackee and callaloo; SALT COD, which arrived because North Atlantic cod was cheap protein for enslaved people and stayed because it became beloved; BREADFRUIT, brought deliberately from the Pacific as plantation food; INDENTURE from India, China, Java and Madeira; and the GROUND PROVISION — the word itself is a plantation-economy artefact. ⚠ SIMILAR DISHES ACROSS ISLANDS ARE OFTEN PARALLEL SOLUTIONS TO THE SAME IMPOSED CONDITIONS, not evidence of borrowing, and this system does not assume a direction of travel it cannot document.

Atlas — where and when

Communities and languages

Languages: English

What is recorded

  • Similarities between Caribbean national cuisines are recorded as frequently parallel responses to shared imposed conditions — plantation provisioning, the African diaspora, salt cod imports, deliberate breadfruit introduction, and indenture — rather than as evidence of borrowing between islands. No direction of transmission is asserted where it is not documented. documented

Related foodways

This foodway relates to

  • related to African Diaspora Foodways documented

    Okra, pigeon peas, ackee, callaloo, the one-pot and rice knowledge are the documented African inheritance across every island in this file.

  • related to Taíno Foodways documented

    Cassava, the conuco, barbacoa, guava, pineapple and the words canoe, hurricane and barbecue.

Recorded as relating to this foodway

Recipes

No recipes are filed under this cuisine yet.