soul food staples

In my opinion, there is really no difference between "Soul Food" and "Southern Food". The only difference is the way it is prepared. Southern cuisine has been reportedly developed from soul food. African Americans have played a pivotal role in the development in southern cuisine. Many famous southern cuisine chefs have been African Americans.
Here's a quick history lesson...
The first group of Africans landed in America in Jamestown, Virginia. They brought food over to America including seeds of native crops. African American slaves were farmers, cattle raisers, and fishermen and introduced several plants such as black-eyed peas, okra, sweet sorghum, and watermelons as part of American’s crops and foods.
African American slaves were indentured servants and had to pay their due by giving up several years of their life. This made up the slave population in Southern America and was the beginning of soul food history
A traditional Southern meal is deep fried chicken, field peas, mashed potatoes, cornbread, sweet tea and a dessert that could be a pie (sweet potato, pecan and peach are traditional southern pies), or a cobbler (peach, blackberry or mixed berry are traditional cobblers).
The slaves had to create their own dishes from the leftovers that their masters did not eat. They often exchanged recipes verbally with each other which led to the development of African American cuisine. This was how many of their foods were gathered for their meals.
Cooking was mostly done on open pits or fireplaces with large swing black pots and big iron cast skillets and was prepared by black cooks. Using open pits or fireplaces are now used as grills for cooking. At most of our family gatherings we still cook with the large swing black pots.
In the 1960‘s , Southern-style cooking of Black Americans, now labeled as “Soul Food” was due to its roots in American slavery. It was also a reminder that African American slaves paved the way in the development of African American style cooking.
Many years ago, black cooks verbally exchanged recipes as they remembered them and today many Southerners still cook without a recipe, just by simply remembering main ingredients and adding seasonings to their taste. This way of cooking has produced many great cooks. This is what soul food cooking is all about