>>21401547
They were making them for a longer period of time. Slaves did all the fine cooking in the South and after the end of slavery most of the old money people just employed their former slaves as sharecroppers or help at wages that functionally kept them in the same position they were. (It's also why the Great Migration didn't really start until about 50 years after the end of slavery as it took about two generations before people were like "bitch I can take a train to Chicago or New York and make twice what I make in a week in a day slamming metal together")
As for the north, while there are places in New England that are ethnically Anglo-Irish they're much more cultural melting pots where food fused together compared to the South which largely clung to "Anglo-Saxon Tradition" into the mid-20th century.
Of course now Texan and Floridan Latin Culture started infiltrating and now the South is known for hot sauce, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and the Bushes created the perception of a diverse south whose conservatism is more a leeriness towards change as opposed to Foghorn Leghorn/Elmer Fudd misguided/idiotic bigotry.
So ultimately that's why Soul Food is the best interpretation of traditional English (and French) cuisine in America. Today's south is known for hot sauce and the great migration happened at the beginning of the 20th century as opposed to the 1880s
