At a Brazilian restaurant in Astoria, Queens, a steam table simmered with collard greens, stewed okra, cornbread, and a meat-specked stew. “The seats were packed with Brazilians speaking Portuguese,” Francis Lam wrote in the New York Times Magazine, “but I took one look at the food and thought I was in Alabama.” Similarities run deep between Brazilian food and American soul food, from the ingredients to the history that bred each cuisine. Of the American continents, the United States and Brazil were the two largest slave societies of modern times and count the highest proportion of black people among their populations, the Caribbean islands notwithstanding. The African influence in both countries’ cuisine is well documented, but a comparison of two specific dishes, both prominent in popular culture, reveals how African-derived and -produced foods have been used to construct regional, ethnic, and national identities within these two societies of the Americas.

Around the globe, many communities boast a proprietary rice-and-bean combination, what anthropologists Richard Wilk and Livia Barbosa have called “a unique dish in a hundred places.” In Brazil, it’s feijoada. And in the southern United States, it’s Hoppin’ John, a black-eyed pea pilaf rooted in the Carolinas. Both dishes combine legumes with smoked and salted pork, incorporating or often accompanied by collard greens and rice. And both rice-and-bean dishes trace their origins to enslaved populations following forced migration from Africa and remain inextricably linked to the people who cooked and served them.

Brazilians eat feijoada with family and friends on designated days, which vary by region; it is a celebratory meal, like Hoppin’ John, which finds a place on tables every New Year’s Day. The rituals and mythology behind these revered dishes reflect the uncertainty of “melting pot” narratives, which obscure the legacies of the people and places of their origin while revealing other truths about national and ethnic identity.

The Cuisine of Colonization

Brazilian feijoada is a rich bean stew, cooked with varied meats, onions, and garlic. When expanded into feijoada completa (“complete”), rice, sautéed kale or collard greens, oranges, and toasted manioc flour accompany the beans. Brazilians treasure feijoada completa and tout it as the country’s national dish—a unifying claim for a nation with well-defined regional cuisines. Traditional feijoada features dried and smoked meat, sausage, tongue, and pigs’ ears, feet, and tails. Brazilian legend holds, and most Brazilians still claim, that feijoada was invented by enslaved Africans who labored on sugarcane plantations and used scraps of meat discarded by their enslavers. Although this story of feijoada’s origin is the most widespread, some scholars have called it into question, arguing that feijoada is less an African contribution than a European construct expanded in Brazil. Similar clay pot stews appear throughout Europe, such as the Portuguese cozido, Italian bollito, and French cassoulet.