Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US black) food prepared and preferred by the black community.

1964		E. Wilson Earl Wilson’s New York 24: We had overlooked one spot—Jennie Lou’s restaurant, ‘for soul food.’ [...] You got everything Southern—candied yams, ham hocks, chitlins, lima beans, potato pie, fried chicken.
1968		C. Claiborne ‘Cooking with Soul’ N.Y. Times Mag. 3 Nov. 102: Soul food may be said to embrace all the food created or developed over the centuries by the Negro cooks of the South [...] It embraces such obvious dishes as fried chicken, spareribs, black-eyed peas [...] and the lesser cuts not generally coveted for the white man’s table—pig’s feet called trotters, neck bones, pigs’ ears, pigs’ tails, hog maw and, the soul food to beat all, chitterlings.
1975		T. Rhone School’s Out I v: At least you could go down there and bless the soul food.
1980		E. Folb Runnin’ Down Some Lines 27: Git’chu some soul food! [...] Some o’ dat sweet potato pie, chitlins and black-eye peas, corn bread.
1993		J. Mowry Six Out Seven (1994) 49: I think soul-food come along later [...] In the sixties.
2001		Source Aug. 59: What we consider soul food is not soul food: It’s plantation food.

2. attrib. use of sense 1.

2000		G. Pelecanos Shame the Devil 165: We’re turnin’ this place into a soul-food joint.
2021		T. Pluck Boy from County Hell 19: [H]e filled his belly at a soul food buffet.

3. thus, by ext., any nationally preferred food.

1975

J. Wambaugh Choirboys (1976) 79: That’s all in your head, that reaction to Nip soul food.