CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Although Mark Sohn began to garden at the age of 5 and his love of food would later blossom in Paris, he's been particularly fond of Appalachian cooking for the last three decades.

"It became big for me because I thought that the food was particularly good," he said.

Sohn, a professor of educational psychology at Pikeville College in Kentucky, is also a foods author, columnist and cooking teacher.

During Sunday's West Virginia Humanities Council Little Lecture at the MacFarland-Hubbard House, Sohn shared some recipes and the history of Appalachian cooking with the audience.

Sohn began talking about prehistoric Appalachian natives who dined on mastodon and giant tortoise. Thousands of years later their successors favored whitetail deer, turkey, acorns, black walnuts and other delicacies as glaciers receded from present day Ohio.

About 1,000 years ago, corn and beans became a dominant food staple in Appalachia, Sohn said shortly before he offered up a recipe for succotash.

In the frontier period, the hunting of elk, deer and bear was a dominant method of food gathering. From 1800 to 1900, pork, corn and beans were common foods consumed on rural farmlands.

For dessert, foods such as sweet apple stack cakes were a popular Appalachian food, Sohn said. Bean cakes, while not a dessert, could be made with pinto beans and were common in the region.

Sohn also listed what he considers the top 10 Appalachian foods: Chicken and dumplings, cornbread, dried apple stack cake, biscuits and gravy, soup beans, fried potatoes, pork chops, deviled eggs, green beans and fried chicken.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Although Mark Sohn began to garden at the age of 5 and his love of food would later blossom in Paris, he's been particularly fond of Appalachian cooking for the last three decades.

"It became big for me because I thought that the food was particularly good," he said.

Sohn, a professor of educational psychology at Pikeville College in Kentucky, is also a foods author, columnist and cooking teacher.

During Sunday's West Virginia Humanities Council Little Lecture at the MacFarland-Hubbard House, Sohn shared some recipes and the history of Appalachian cooking with the audience.

Sohn began talking about prehistoric Appalachian natives who dined on mastodon and giant tortoise. Thousands of years later their successors favored whitetail deer, turkey, acorns, black walnuts and other delicacies as glaciers receded from present day Ohio.

About 1,000 years ago, corn and beans became a dominant food staple in Appalachia, Sohn said shortly before he offered up a recipe for succotash.

In the frontier period, the hunting of elk, deer and bear was a dominant method of food gathering. From 1800 to 1900, pork, corn and beans were common foods consumed on rural farmlands.

For dessert, foods such as sweet apple stack cakes were a popular Appalachian food, Sohn said. Bean cakes, while not a dessert, could be made with pinto beans and were common in the region.

Sohn also listed what he considers the top 10 Appalachian foods: Chicken and dumplings, cornbread, dried apple stack cake, biscuits and gravy, soup beans, fried potatoes, pork chops, deviled eggs, green beans and fried chicken.

Several ingredients, he said, have proven essential to Appalachian cooking.

"Ingredients make the recipe," he said. "The recipe makes the food."

He named salt, pepper, apples, pinto beans, salted or smoked ham hocks, pork, chicken, corn, moonshine, paw paws, buttermilk, trout and sassafras as some of the most important ingredients.

For several years, Sohn has taught a course in Appalachian cooking. A woman in the audience asked how he stays so thin.

"I love to eat, and I do eat," Sohn said. However, he runs often and doesn't believe in over-eating, which is why he stores a lot of food in his freezer.

Another person asked him if fast food is going to overtake home cooking in future generations. He said when the trend of fast food was on the rise, so was the gravitation toward "slow food."

"Every time there's a current in food, there's a crosscurrent," he said.

Reach Davin White at davinwh...@wvgazette.com or 304-348-1254.