If New Englanders were satisfied with the fruits of their cold sea and rocky land, then the colonial south must have been paradise. The colonists in Virginia and South Carolina were less encumbered by the weight of the long northern winters and the scorn of the Puritan God. Pleasures came more easily and the American south was a cornucopia. Originally entirely under the culinary sway of the British bourgeoisie, influences of the French from Louisiana, and the Spaniards from points west and south, not to mention the Native American presence and African tastes among slaves, all mingled variously, and the South soon asserted its culinary autonomy -- or perhaps autonomies is more to the point. There are several broad "schools" of southern cooking, "classic" southern, Cajun and Creole, and soul. By now, however, southern food has borrowed from itself so thoroughly that these categories are nearly impossible to maintain. They serve rather to give some historical context to the flavors that now mingle together.