It originated in the American South from the cuisines of enslaved Africans trafficked to the North American colonies through the Atlantic slave trade during the Antebellum period and is closely associated (but not to be confused with) with the cuisine of the American South.

Unfortunately "soul food" has become shorthand for all African-American cooking, but it's really the food of the interior Deep South, that landlocked area of mainly Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama—essentially what used to be called the Cotton Belt and the Black Belt.

Adrian Miller, author of Soul Food: The Surprising History of an American Cuisine, One Plate at a Time, told Epicurious that Southern food is the foundation, but “soul food tends to be more intense in terms of flavors and seasoning.”