Bill’s first cookery book on the foods of the South was published in 1989. It was the first Southern cookery book that also informed us about the foodways of the South. Bill’s recipes & commentaries ranged throughout Dixie.
It was from Bill Neal that I first learned how to make Virginia peanut soup for a dinner party at Cleanth Brooks’ house. I borrowed my boss’s blender. I made a mess in the kitchen (the blender was also defective, to be honest), but the Virginia peanut soup turned out right well and my guests were pleased with the results of a fine Southern feast.
Later, Bill Neal also wrote a book about Southern baking, which included a recipe for spoonbread, one of my specialities. Besides Bill Neal, I credit the Kentucky food writer Camilla Glenn as my greatest inspiration for making spoonbread. My spoonbread baker was ordered directly from Sarah Culbreth, a then young Kentucky potter. Now, she is white-haired & has a husband & adult son who are involved with her in making beautiful pottery that can be used in Southern kitchens. And she still makes spoonbread bakers. I cherish mine as it was made when she was just a young, relatively unknown potter, slender and with a head of thick curly brown hair. At the bottom of my spoonbread baker is her carved signature. Each baker she made is unique. Sarah is an artist, as much as Picasso.
Bill Neal just blew my mind. I love Southern cookery, but it was he who introduced me to the cultural richness of Southern foods. Now, y’all see this in the many subsequent books written on the foods of the South. Before Bill Neal, we had Southern cookery books, often known as old-fashioned Receipts (I own the Charleston Receipts & the Atlanta Receipts, & in digital fashion, various 19th Century Southern Receipt books).
Indeed, I also own a copy of Mrs Wilkes’ Boarding House recipes & that of the Sanford House cookery book. They are modern Receipt books. Great recipes, but you never learn anything about how those recipes came to be, nor how Southerners used them & ate the food.
The Southern Foodways association based in Oxford, Mississippi, is the most important organised end result of what Bill Neal began, as the chef/owner of Crooks Corner in Chapel Hill, which specialised in Southern cookery with a twist. It was Bill Neal who popularised “shrimp and grits”, a local New Orleans dish. Now, this dish is everywhere in the United States, on the menus of restaurants that aren’t even the least Southern. The Southern Foodways is committed to documenting, publishing, & producing documentaries on Southern culinary culture. Bill Neal came first.
As a young man, I had a thick group of friends in Chapel Hill. I’d drive down from New Haven every year to visit them. We’d always go to Crooks Corner for Southern haute cuisine. And oh yes, shrimp and grits!
Bill Neal was a genius. He was also very difficult man. High-strung, profane, & unbearably perfectionist in the kitchen. Bill Neal expected the staff to be 100% at their very best always. He could be unreasonable, as geniuses sometimes are. It could be difficult to work for him. But despite this, Bill Neal was loved, including by his ex-wife and former co-owner of their former French restaurant before Crooks Corner came into being, and the mother of their children. He died too young at the age of 41.
The culinary tradition of the South owes Bill Neal a great deal as a pioneer of Southern cookery as a grand cuisine to be enjoyed & appreciated throughout the world. Moreover, Bill Neal was a storyteller who told us WHY we should appreciate one of Southern culture’s greatest contributions to the world–its magnificent food heritage!
