Gullah Geechee Home Cooking by Emily Meggett

A major Gullah Geechee cookbook from “the matriarch of Edisto Island” which has astonishingly delicious recipes and tells a bit of the history of an overlooked American community.

Gullah Geechee Home Cooking, written by Emily  Meggett, is the preeminent Gullah cookbook. The first edition made the New York Times Best Seller List, for it is that special.

 Emily Meggett was a respected elder in the Gullah community of South Carolina, sadly passing away in 2023.

She  lived on Edisto Island all her life, and left a wonderful legacy to her children, and her more than 50 grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Meggett’s Gullah food is rich and flavorful, though it is also often lighter and more seasonal than other types of Southern cooking. Heirloom rice, fresh-caught seafood, local game, and vegetables are key to her recipes for regional delicacies like fried oysters, collard greens, and stone-ground grits.

This cookbook includes not only delicious and accessible recipes, but also snippets of the Meggett family history on Edisto Island, which stretches back into the 19th century. Rich in both flavor and history, Meggett’s Gullah Geechee Home Cooking is a testament to the syncretism of West African and American cultures that makes her home of Edisto Island so unique.

The history of the Gullah and Geechee people stretches back centuries, when enslaved members of this community were historically isolated from the rest of the South because of their location on the Sea Islands of coastal South Carolina and Georgia. Today, this Lowcountry community represents the most direct living link to the traditional culture, language, and foodways of their West African ancestors.