The JSON Kitchen: Akasan - A Recipe of Memory | The African Gourmet
The JSON Kitchen #4: Akasan – A Recipe of Memory
How a simple cornmeal drink contains oceans of history. The first in our “Edible Archives” sub-series.
After three weeks of mapping systems of power, we turn to their antidote: the recipes that outlived them.
Some dishes are merely food. Others are edible archives — containers of memory, resistance, and adaptation.
Akasan is one such recipe. A Haitian cornmeal drink shaped by West African technique, Indigenous American grain, and the violence of the Atlantic world. Its ingredients tell a story of displacement, adaptation, and the persistence of memory under conditions designed to erase it.
{
"recipe": {
"name": "Akasan: Cornmeal Memory Drink",
"origin": "West African porridge traditions → Haitian adaptation",
"yield": "4 servings of memory and nourishment",
"ingredients": [
"1 cup cornmeal (the memory grain)",
"4 cups water (the journey)",
"1 cinnamon stick (the connection)",
"3 whole cloves (the pain remembered)",
"1 pinch salt (the tears)",
"1 can coconut milk (the coastal trade winds)",
"½ cup sweetened condensed milk (the sweetness extracted)",
"1 tsp vanilla extract (the essence that survived)",
"1 star anise (the guiding star)"
],
"instructions": [
{ "step": 1, "action": "Toast the cornmeal until fragrant. Corn was born in the Americas, carried to West Africa, then met enslaved Africans again in the Caribbean." },
{ "step": 2, "action": "Slowly add water while whisking. The thickening is the way scattered fragments of memory were held together when everything else was taken." },
{ "step": 3, "action": "Add cinnamon, cloves, star anise. Spices that traveled thousands of miles through empire and exchange." },
{ "step": 4, "action": "Remove spices. Stir in coconut milk, condensed milk, vanilla. Coconut reached African coasts centuries ago; condensed milk was a plantation-era adaptation when fresh dairy was scarce." },
{ "step": 5, "action": "Pour into cups. Serve warm. This is liquid memory: a recipe built from African technique, American grain, Caribbean adaptation, and the will to survive." }
],
"metadata": {
"significance": "Culinary survival of the Atlantic world",
"proverb": "Dèyè mòn gen mòn – Behind mountains there are more mountains."
}
}
}
Behind mountains there are more mountains.
— Haitian proverb
This marks the beginning of our Edible Archives sub-series within The JSON Kitchen. Some recipes feed the body. Others preserve historical memory. The most powerful do both.
— The African Gourmet
