Chef Kwame Onwuachi explores his roots in his debut cookbook 'My America'

No other entry in the Jamaican canon of cooking captures the island’s history as tidily, or as deliciously, as the beef patty. Layer upon layer of history and immigration—some forced, others voluntary—can be found in this patty and its pastry casing. English immigrants from Cornwall, where meat pies called pasties are common, are responsible for the invention of the hand pie itself. Indentured Indian laborers, who often served in the houses of the English colonizers, introduced turmeric to the pastry and curry to the filling, as revolutionary an evolution as perspective is to painting. West Africans and their descendants sharpened the flavors with peppers, while Jamaica’s own Scotch bonnet pepper brought additional heat. As Jamaicans moved abroad, they carried these patties with them from Brixton to the Bronx. The yeasty sweet smell of the dough baking rises from the end of the line of the 2 train, in Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, to the other in Wakefield, in the far North Bronx. Dancing images of beef patties tucked into pillows of coco bread got me through endless church services on Sundays because I knew what awaited me, a divine reward.