In the rural Black South where Alvin Ailey grew up, the meal that counts is Sunday dinner, after the long service at the Baptist church. All week you eat lean and simple; on Sunday, the table is covered with a single shared spread where savory dishes, long-simmered greens, tangy pickles, sweet drinks, and desserts all arrive together, set in the center, everyone helping themselves with a ladle or by hand. This is the cuisine known as "soul food": born from poverty, slavery, and African American ingenuity, it transforms cheap cuts and leftovers into a feast. Ailey turned it into the substance of his masterpiece *Revelations*, nourished by what he called his "blood memories" of Texas.

A cheap piece of smoked meat (shank, skin, ham hock) simmered for hours in water: it flavors everything, from greens to beans. The resulting broth, the "pot likker," dark and fortifying, is precious — you drink it, dip cornbread in it, give it to the weak. It is the backbone of Black Southern soul cooking.