a wordfixins

The sides and trimmings that come with the meat: slaw, hushpuppies or cornbread, boiled potatoes in the east, hash and rice in South Carolina, pickles, sweet tea. 'Fixings' is American English of 1839 for the garnishing of a meal; fixins is how it is said and, on Carolina signs and menus, how it is spelled. Beth Tartan wrote of a Raleigh hostess telephoning Melton's — 'Ride me a party' — and Melton's putting barbecue and fixings on the bus to her.

Fix is a verb that does a great deal of work in the South, and its noun did the same: fixings, first the apparatus of a thing, in 1820, then by 1839 the food that goes round the main thing. The barbecue plate is the word's natural home because the meat is one thing and the rest is a list. The Skylight Inn tray is barbecue, slaw and cornbread; Melton's plate in 1929 was barbecue with boiled potatoes for 45 cents, and in 1988 came with coleslaw, hushpuppies and Brunswick stew; a pig pickin' is eaten with hushpuppies, coleslaw, baked beans or Brunswick stew, and in South Carolina with hash over rice or pilaf; the Dukes buffets run to collard greens, macaroni and cheese, black-eyed peas, hushpuppies, corn nuggets, potato salad, coleslaw and white bread. The spelling is the speech: a menu that prints fixin's is telling you how the owner talks. Inference — the word keeps the order of the plate — barbecue is the noun, and everything else is fixins.