As explained at right, the word "barbacoa" is the real source of the word "barbecue". Scores of publications erroneously claim other origin stories for the word barbecue, among them:
The Babracot story. Amerindians in northern South America, especially Guiana, may have called their version of the barbacoa a babricot or babracot. According to barbecue historian Dr. Howard L. Taylor, this is probably a Spanish variant of Taino word barbacoa.
The "Boucan" and "Buccaneer" connection. Some think the word barbecue came from the word boucan. Alas, the experts say this word came after barbacoa and it may, in fact, be derived from barbacoa.
In 1906 John Masefield's made the case for boucan in his book "On the Spanish Main". He said "The meat to be preserved, were it ox, fish, wild boar, or human being, was then laid upon the grille. The fire underneath the grille was kept low, and fed with green sticks, and with the offal, hide, and bones of the slaughtered animal. This process was called boucanning, from an Indian word 'boucan,' which seems to have signified 'dried meat' and 'camp-fire.' Buccaneer, in its original sense, meant one who practised the boucan."
It is interesting to note that Masefield says that "Meat thus cured kept good for several months. It was of delicate flavour, red as a rose [sounds like a smoke ring, doesn't it?], and of a tempting smell. It could be eaten without further cookery. Sometimes the meat was cut into pieces and salted, before it was boucanned - a practice which made it keep a little longer than it would otherwise have done. Sometimes it was merely cut in strips, roughly rubbed with brine, and hung in the sun to dry into charqui, or jerked beef. The flesh of the wild hog made the most toothsome boucanned meat. It kept good a little longer than the beef, but it needed more careful treatment, as stowage in a damp lazaretto turned it bad at once [a lazaretto is a quarantine for sailors, most likely a cellar in this case]. The hunters took especial care to kill none but the choicest wild boars for sea-store. Lean boars and sows were never killed. Many hunters, it seems, confined themselves to hunting boars, leaving the beeves [beef] as unworthy quarry."
Fans of the Pirates of the Caribbean films will appreciate this description of buccaneers from Atlantic Monthly, September 1862: "A cotton shirt hung on their shoulders, and a pair of cotton drawers struggled vainly to cover their thighs: you had to look very closely to pronounce upon the material, it was so stained with blood and fat. Their bronzed faces and thick necks were hirsute, as if overgrown with moss, tangled or crispy. Their feet were tied up in the raw hides of hogs or beeves just slaughtered, from which they also frequently extemporized drawers, cut while reeking, and left to stiffen to the shape of the legs. A heavy-stocked musket, made at Dieppe or Nantes, with a barrel four and a half feet long, and carrying sixteen balls to the pound, lay over the shoulder, a calabash full of powder, with a wax stopper, was slung behind, and a belt of crocodile's skin, with four knives and a bayonet, went round the waist. These individuals, if the term is applicable to the phenomena in question, were buccaneers.
"The name is derived from the arrangements which the Caribs made to cook their prisoners of war. After being dismembered, their pieces were placed upon wooden gridirons, which were called in Carib, barbacoa. It will please our Southern brethren to recognize a congenial origin for their favorite barbecue. The place where these grilling hurdles were set up was called boucan, and the method of roasting and smoking, boucaner. The buccaneers were men of many nations, who hunted the wild cattle, which had increased prodigiously from the original Spanish stock; after taking off the hide, they served the flesh as the Caribs served their captives. There appears to have been a division of employment among them; for some hunted beeves [beefs or cattle] merely for the hide, and others hunted the wild hogs to salt and sell their flesh."
Note that Masefield, the Atlantic, and many others before them, described the natives boucanning and barbecuing humans. Warnes questions the veracity of these claims of cannibalism, saying they were likely invented by Europeans to justify their own violence and rationalize their attempts to convert the "barbarians".
The "de la barbe a la queue" story. The classic 1938 French encyclopedia of cooking, Larousse Gastronomique, naturally claims barbecue came from the French expression "de la barbe a la queue" meaning "from the beard to the tail". It referred to a technique of impaling an animal on a roasting spit. Larousse suggests there may even be a connection to the Romanian berbec, meaning roast mutton. It is hard to find anyone in the know who thinks French or Romanian was the origin of the word.
The "Bar B.Q." story. Robb Walsh, in his excellent book "Legends of Texas Barbecue", reports that cookbooks in Texas tell the fanciful tale of a wealthy Texas rancher named either Bernard Quayle or perhaps Barnaby Quinn. Apparently he loved serving his friends whole sheep, hogs, and cattle roasted over open pits. His branding iron had his initials, B.Q. with a straight line beneath. It was common for ranches to be named for their brand, "Thus, the 'Bar B.Q.' became synonymous with fine eating - or so the story goes". Walsh reports the myth, and a myth it surely is since the word barbecue had been in common use for many years before the hypothetical messers Quayle or Quinn.
The "Bar, Beer & Cue" story. A few folk-historians claim the word barbecue is a contraction of the name of a popular roadhouse that had pool tables. Not likely.
A football ain’t a chitlin’...
According to the fun website, Porkopolis, Jeff White, a Southerner, wrote: "There's one thing you can be sure of though, a Southerner didn't create the football. Ya see, a football was originally made from a pig's bladder. If you're a Southerner, a pig's bladder ain't nothing but one step away from a chitlin'. Now technically a chitlin' is made from the stomach and intestines of a pig. I think we could've found something to do with a pig's bladder other than toss it around at family reunions.
"Of course nowadays when we 'toss the pigskin' we're really throwing the cowhide and that brings me back to the name of a football. If a Southerner had created the football, he/she would have known that pigskins are greasy (not to mention salty enough to make you kiss yourself on the lips). So what you had is a bunch of people tossing around an oily, slippery bladder. I bet the first play from scrimmage was: 'Down, set, 42, blue 42, . . . you know what? This bladder would go real good with some chitlin's.'"
Why is barbecue so popular at football tailgate parties? As any fan will tell you, the greensward the game is played on, marked with parallel white stripes, is called a gridiron. What he may not know is that a gridiron is an early name for the iron grate with parallel bars upon which meat is cooked over coals. And what is the central object of the game? A pigskin, of course. Modern footballs are made from leather or synthetics, but early balls were made with a pig's bladder.
Modern barbacoa
Today, in Spain and other Spanish speaking countries, the word barbacoa is used similarly to the word barbecue in the US, to describe outdoor cooking, especially spit roasting.
It is odd that today in Mexico and Texas, the Spanish word barbacoa has somehow evolved to refer to cooking goat, beef, pork, or lamb, wrapped in agave leaves or aluminum foil and buried in a pit with hot coals or cooked in an oven. This is also an early method of cooking, but it bears little resemblance to what we call barbecue other than it is done outdoors.
The Story of Barbecue and the Origin of the Word
"The story of barbecue is the story of America. Settlers arrive on great unspoiled continent. Discover wondrous riches. Set them on fire and eat them." Vince Stanton
Some chauvinists like to think that barbecue, like jazz, is an American invention. Alas, it is not. Roasting meat over a fire has been around since naked humans lived in caves and long before refrigeration, smoking meats was a worldwide method for preserving it.
In 2007 University of Haifa researchers uncovered evidence that early humans living in the area around Carmel, Israel, about 200,000 years ago were serious about barbecue. From bone and tool evidence, these early hunters preferred large mature animals and cuts of meat that had plenty of flesh on them. They left heads and hooves in the field. Three of their favorites were deer, an ancestor of cattle, and boars. From burn marks around the joints and scrape marks on the bones, there is evidence that these cave dwellers knew how to cook.
Early barbecue cooking implements will likely never be found because they were probably made of wood. According to barbecue historian Dr. Howard L. Taylor "The practice of cooking of meat almost certainly started with a wood fire and a wooden fork or spit to hold the meat over the fire. Spit roasting is common around the world and for many years was the major barbecue cooking method. Baking an animal, vegetables, or bread in a hot pit in the ground was also an early development. Wooden frames were later used to hold meat over the fire, but they often held the meat well above the fire to keep the wood from burning, which resulted in the meat cooking slowly and absorbing smoke. The gridiron [similar to a grate on a modern grill] was developed soon after the Iron Age started, which lead to grilling as we know it. Iliad, Book IX, Lines 205-235 and The Odyssey, Book III, lines 460-468 mention spits and five-pronged forks used to roast meat, basted with salt and wine at outdoor feasts in ancient Greece. Such feasts at the end of a battle or long march were common throughout history."
In Europe, artists have painted pictures of barbecues since pig hair bristles were first wrapped around a stick to make a brush. This ox roast in the painting at the top of the page took place in Italy in the 1500s. Below is a rotisserie mechanism mounted in a fireplace that I photographed in a 13th century castle in Europe.
The international gastronomic society, Chaîne des Rôtisseurs is based on the traditions and practices of the French corporation of roasters. Their written history has been traced back to 1248. King Louis XII awarded them an official coat of arms in 1610. It consists of two crossed turning spits and four larding needles, surrounded by flames of the hearth on a shield encircled by fleur-de-lis and a chain representing the mechanism used to turn the spit.
Many scholars think barbecue began in China where some early kitchens had special devices for smoking meats. A wonderful speculation on the discovery of the delights of fire-roasted pork was penned by the English essayist and humorist Charles Lamb in 1822. He tells of the Chinese peasant Bo-bo who, long long ago, accidentally burned down his father's cottage and the pigs within. Bo-bo not only discovers barbecue, but then embarks on a career of arson, burning down the neighborhood one cottage at a time to sate his hunger for roast pork. Click here to read Lamb's tale, "A Dissertation Upon Roast Pig."
The etymology of the word barbecue
Whether you spell it Barbecue, Barbeque, Barbaque, Barbicue, BBQ, B-B-Que, Bar-B-Q, Bar-B-Que, Bar-B-Cue, 'Cue, 'Que, Barbie, and just plain Q, the origins of the word barbecue (that's how I, and most American dictionaries, spell it) are a bit hazy. Here's my take on the controversy: The word "barbacoa" is the real source of the word "barbecue". Every other goofy explanation you have heard is wrong.
The Diccionario de la Lengua Espanola (2nd Edition) of the Real Academia Espanola traces the origin of the Spanish word "barbacoa" to the Taino dialect of the Arawak American Indians. The Spanish explorer Gonzalo Fernández De Oviedo Y Valdés (1478-1557) traveled extensively in the Caribbean and what is now Florida in the 1500s, and he first used the word in print in Spain in 1526 to describe green wood racks that he saw being used to hold food being smoked over a fire by Arawaks in the Caribbean.
According to barbecue historian Dr. Howard Taylor "Oviedo is reputed to be a reliable source for translation from these American Indian dialects into Spanish because of his dedication to accuracy and experience as Chronicler to Charles V of Spain.
"Arawak tribes and dialects of the Arawak language were widely distributed across the West Indies, Central America, and Northern South America. During the 1500s Arawak tribes were not native to areas now in the United States, but some Arawak tribes moved into southern Florida during the mid-to-late 1600s. The Ancient Native Village Living History Museum in the Camp Bayou Nature Preserve at Ruskin, FL, just south of Tampa, reconstructs some of the Arawak culture, including a barbacoa for cooking food."
In his 2008 book "Savage Barbecue: Race, Culture, and the Invention of America's First Food" Historian Andrew Warnes says a barbacoa was also a "framework of wood on which one might sleep, store maize, or suspend foods high enough above fire that they could be left smoking with little risk of spoiling." This method also allowed the meat to cook without burning the green wood on which it was placed.
The engraving here shows a barbacoa used by Amerindians in Virginia in the mid 1580s. The area is North Carolina today. It was done by the European publisher Theodor de Bry and based on a watercolor by a settler, John White. Similar illustrations were made in the 1560s by the first European artist in North America, Miles Harvey and in 1564 by Jacques le Moyne. Note the smoke in the illustration above and the two fish cooking with indirect heat off to the left. The smoke not only cooked the fish, it kept away flies and animals, and preserved it for storage.
A French explorer describes a barbacoa here: "A Caribbee has been known, on returning home from fishing, fatigued and pressed with hunger, to have the patience to wait the roasting of a fish on a wooden grate fixed two feet above the ground over a fire so small as sometimes to require the whole day to dress it." That's low and slow cooking, folks.
The first recorded barbecue in the Southeastern US may have featured human flesh. In 1527 an expedition led by Panfilo Barvaez came ashore near Tampa. One member of the party, Juan Ortiz was captured by the Ozita tribe. They had fought with the Spanish and decided to sacrifice him by torture and tied him to a barbacoa-like device. The chief's daughter took pity on the slowly roasting man and convinced his father to release him. Ortiz was not flipped, so he was permanently scarred on his back.
Ortiz lived for years with the local tribes until he was rescued by a party led by a fellow Spaniard, the explorer and conquistador Hernando de Soto. Ortiz joined de Soto as an interpreter.
After conquering the Incas in Central America, de Soto had sailed from Cuba to Tampa Bay in 1539. He brought about 650 men, many horses, and Spanish hogs, which were not native to the continent. He then set out exploring and pillaging what is now the Southeast of the US.
According to Charles Hudson's 1998 book "Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun: Hernando De Soto and the South's Ancient Chiefdoms", on March 25, 1540 a party of about 40 Spaniards led by de Soto invaded a village in what is now Georgia and found venison and turkey smoke roasting on a barbacoa-like device. Although the word had not been brought north by Indians yet, DeSoto called it a barbacoa because he had probably heard the word in Spain. Famished from a 35 hour ride, despite the fact that it was Holy Thursday, they feasted on the first barbacoa in recorded history.
On May 17, 1540, according to Hudson, they enjoyed another meal cooked on a barbacoa near present day Salisbury, NC: Corn and small dogs.
According to archeologist Sam Brookes, in December 1540, near what is now Tupelo, Mississippi, de Soto collaborated with the Chickasaw tribe on a feast cooked on a barbacoa. The Chickasaws were fond of pork and covered it with a mixture of tomatoes and peppers, items that were only found in the New World. The Spanish adopted the cooking method and refined it. Today tomato and chile peppers are at the core of Spanish cuisine and most barbecue sauces have tomato as a base and peppers as a source of spiciness and flavor.
Eventually the method of cooking found its way north to the English colonies in Virginia and the Carolinas where they doused the meat with a favorite condiment from home, vinegar. Vinegar remains the major ingredient of most sauces in eastern North Carolina to this day. German settlers were fond of mustard on their pork so the classic mustard based barbecue sauce of South Carolina evolved.
The first big barbecue in Texas, according to Taylor, "Was probably held on April 30, 1598, near San Elizario on the Rio Grande, about 30 miles Southeast of El Paso, TX. The leader of the later celebration was Juan de Onate." Natives were present, and it was a traditional, religious, outdoors feast that included spit roasted wild game and birds and native vegetables in addition to the usual salted pork, hard biscuits and red wine from Spain.
According to etymologist Michael Quinion, William Dampier, in his New Voyage Round the World of 1699, used the word in English for the first time to describe a raised wooden sleeping platform that protected Indians from snakes: "And lay there all night, upon our Borbecu’s, or frames of Sticks, raised about 3 foot from the Ground." One can assume there was no fire beneath. According to Quinion, the Dictionary of National Biography describes Dampier as a "buccaneer, pirate, circumnavigator, captain in the navy, and hydrographer." Ironic that the first to use the word in English should be described as a buccaneer since that occupation comes from the French word boucan, "which in turn comes from mukem, a word used by a group of Brazilian Indians, the Tupi, for a wooden framework on which meat was dried."
The evolution of barbecoa into barbecue
The flavor of slowly smoke roasted meat with flavorful sauce grew in popularity, especially in the southern US. Many plantations had smokehouses for preserving meat, especially hams. Slaves did most of the cooking, maintained the smokehouses, and were given responsibility for preparing open pit barbecues for big celebrations such as weddings and holidays. At right is the restored smokehouse at the Tennesse plantation of President Andrew Jackson, the Hermitage. It was built between 1819-1821.
For barbecues, they typically dug long pits in the dirt approximately 3' wide and 3' deep, burned hardwood down to coals in the bottom, put green saplings across the top, and laid meat on top of the crossmembers. The meat was basted with water, vinegar, and spices to keep it from burning.
Master got to eat the best cuts of meat. They ate the tender loin from along the pig's back, high on the hog (yes, that's where the expression came from), while the slaves got the tougher, more gristle riddled cuts. The pork was often pickled by storing in a barrel of brine. It didn't take them long to learn the concepts of low and slow cooking with smoke to make the tenderest most juicy meats from these less desirable cuts.
Slaves ate mostly pork and chicken, but sometimes there was beef, mutton, or fish, depending on where they lived. Corn meal was also a staple, as were greens, especially collards, and beans. Corn oats and wheat were often stored in an open air crib on some farms. Some farms had potatoes. Just about everything was fried in the plentiful pork lard.
Molasses from the Caribbean was occasionally available. Liquor and coffee were not uncommon. Peanuts were readily available in Georgia and a faux coffee was made from roasted peanuts and corn. Most of the dairy products, butter, milk, cream, and cheese, went to the big house.
Eventually the saplings used to hold the meat over the open pits in the ground were replaced by metal gridirons, and before long the pits were built with stones or bricks above ground.
In the 1950s portable metal grills became popular in suburban backyards and George Stephen, Sr., frustrated by his inability to control the heat in his backyard grill, had the metal workers at the Weber Brothers Metal Works where he worked cut up a buoy for Lake Michigan boating. The Weber Kettle, still the most popular backyard grill, was born.
Meanwhile in Texas welders began building heavy duty steel cookers from oil barrels, pipe, and propane tanks creating large tubular "pits" that could be towed from jobsite to jobsite on a trailer.
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, naturally claims barbecue came from the French expression "de la barbe a la queue" meaning "from the beard to the tail". It referred to a technique of impaling an animal on a roasting spit. Larousse suggests there may even be a connection to the Romanian berbec, meaning roast mutton. It is hard to find anyone in the know who thinks French or Romanian was the origin of the word.
The international gastronomic society, Chaîne des Rôtisseurs is based on the traditions and practices of the French corporation of roasters. Their written history has been traced back to 1248. King Louis XII awarded them an official coat of arms in 1610. It consists of two crossed turning spits and four larding needles, surrounded by flames of the hearth on a shield encircled by fleur-de-lis and a chain representing the mechanism used to turn the spit.
", on March 25, 1540 a party of about 40 Spaniards led by de Soto invaded a village in what is now Georgia and found venison and turkey smoke roasting on a barbacoa-like device. Although the word had not been brought north by Indians yet, DeSoto called it a barbacoa because he had probably heard the word in Spain. Famished from a 35 hour ride, despite the fact that it was Holy Thursday, they feasted on the first barbacoa in recorded history.
The flavor of slowly smoke roasted meat with flavorful sauce grew in popularity, especially in the southern US. Many plantations had smokehouses for preserving meat, especially hams. Slaves did most of the cooking, maintained the smokehouses, and were given responsibility for preparing open pit barbecues for big celebrations such as weddings and holidays. At right is the restored smokehouse at the Tennesse plantation of President Andrew Jackson, the Hermitage. It was built between 1819-1821.
Slaves ate mostly pork and chicken, but sometimes there was beef, mutton, or fish, depending on where they lived. Corn meal was also a staple, as were greens, especially collards, and beans. Corn oats and wheat were often stored in an open air crib on some farms. Some farms had potatoes. Just about everything was fried in the plentiful pork lard.
Eventually the saplings used to hold the meat over the open pits in the ground were replaced by metal gridirons, and before long the pits were built with stones or bricks above ground.
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