About Dish
If Virginia had an official state legume, it certainly would be the peanut. Virginia peanuts (actually grown beyond the Old Dominion, too) are bigger and fuller-flavored than any others. Eating peanuts is said to have been the reason the state’s hogs earned a reputation for their delicious hams. In no other state will you find so many different variations of the old African favorite, peanut soup. Known colloquially as “Tuskegee Soup” after the university where George Washington Carver conducted his famous experiments that turned peanuts into everything from tile flooring to peanut butter, it is a dish that can seem sophisticated or plain, and that serves well as the companion for a sandwich at lunch, or as the first course of an elaborate dinner. Versions of it are shockingly diverse, from an elegant broth just barely tinged with peanut flavor to cloddish brews that taste like watery peanut butter. Our gold standard has always been that served by The Southern Kitchen, a modest town lunch room in New Market not far from I-81, where it is creamy but not too thick, just-right nutty-flavored, and laced with fetching onion sweetness.