Jerk, and the Jamaican Art of Cooking With Smoke

A cooking method the Maroons made in the hills is now Jamaica's most exported flavor. The pimento wood is the part the copies miss.

Jerk is older than the resorts, older than the record industry. It came out of the Jamaican interior, where the Maroons, communities of escaped enslaved Africans, seasoned and slow-smoked meat over pits to preserve it and to keep it hidden. The Scotch bonnet, the allspice and the smoke were survival before they were style.

What makes it jerk is not a bottle of sauce but a method: a wet rub heavy on pimento and thyme, and meat cooked long and low over pimento wood, whose smoke is the flavor the imitations cannot fake. Boston Bay in Portland is the shrine; the roadside drum is the everyday altar.

Jerk now travels on menus from London to Lagos, usually without the wood and often without the heat, and it remains one of Jamaica's most recognizable exports. The dish carries the island's history in its smoke, which is worth remembering between mouthfuls.