The Foxfire Book of Appalachian Cookery

by Linda Garland Page (Editor), Eliot Wigginton (editor)

The Foxfire group are dedicated to preserving and recording the traditions of America's Appalachian area, and this book of over 500 recipes, with black and white photography of the people of the area, is a classic from them. The food is nutritious, easy to prepare, and totally unpretentious, including recipes for potato candy, cry-baby cookies, lime pickles, and much more.

Genres: Cookbooks, Food, Nonfiction, Cooking, History, Southern, Food History

352 pages, Hardcover

First published November 5, 1984

Reviews

[Mel · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you are interested in Southern and Appalachian traditional food ways then you will probably enjoy this. This contains some recipes but really is more of a history book. Very enjoyable.
5 stars and best reads.

[Bonnye Reed · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received a free electronic copy of this e-book from Netgalley, Linda Garland Page, and University of North Carolina Press. Thank you all for sharing your hard work with me. I have read this cookbook of my own volition, and this review reflects my honest opinion of this work.

I was not able to read all of this protected e-book as my Apple Products won't convert them into something I can save. I was able to read enough to add this book to my list of must-buys however and to know that I would treasure the old recipes and stories found in this work. Like the old Justin Wilson cookbooks, Linda Garland Page brings us much more than a recipe - she brings to life a way of life left behind in our 'modern' age. It is a mirage, perhaps, but one I am glad to visit again.


Pub in 1984, again on Feb 15, 2009, by University of NC Press
re-pub Sept 16, 2019, also University of North Carolina Press
Reviewed on Goodreads and Netgalley on September 13, 2019.
Reviewed on Goodreads and Netgalley on Sept 6, 2019. Reviewed on AmazonSmile, Barnes & NOble, BookBub, Kobo, and GooglePlay on Sept 16, 2019.

[Tim · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have the original 1984 paperback edition of this marvellous, historical cookbook.
These were the people Horace Kepart wrote about in Our Southern Highlanders in 1913, people with whom he lived with, with a certain amount of suspicion and mistrust on their part !
This is an admirable attempt by Foxfire to keep alive, and bring to a wider audience, the food culture of a people that have been cooking the same things in the same way for generations.
Kephart would have recognised many of the recipes and cooking techniques that are in this book and indeed wrote about them himself.
Many of the original Appalachians were immigrants from Ireland and Scotland, bringing with them the knowledge and ability to distill their own whiskey/whisky.
I looked in vain for recipes for either !
Other than that, a wonderful and inspiring book.

[Rivkah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love this book: it is one of those that does not diminish a story by trying to get all the facts straight, but on the other hand most of these recipes are replicable in a modern kitchen. The butchering and lye-baths are perhaps beyond me at the moment, though... and now I really want a wood cookstove... Yes, I did read it from front to back and yes I do use some of the recipes. It would also make an excellent camping cookbook, with some of the basic recipes and techniques.

[Alexia Sabor · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book chronicles Appalachian foodways that were already fast disappearing when the book was first written in the early 1980s and are almost certainly all but gone today. It's a collection of memories and recipes, the latter limited to things that are reproducible in a modern kitchen. An engaging piece of modern food anthropology.

[Cynthia · Rating 5 out of 5]

Foxfire books have valuable information and this one is on good Appalachian food. Memories came flooding back from my years of growing up in the Appalachian Mountains. Good wholesome food without the preservatives.

[Ben Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great glimpse into the history of cooking food and cultural life in the mountains

[emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoy reading 'old' cookbooks and this one did not disappoint . It's not just a regular cookbook; it includes lovely bits of stories in little informative chunks wedged between 'recipes' . I thought that the 'Half-Moon' pie was such a cute idea (and the name too ofc); they've given it such an - almost whimsical name instead of simply an 'Apple Turnover' which is a such boring name in comparison.

A few ways of prepping/cooking offals can be found in the book as well. I've tried/tasted many weird things in my life but I've not gone as far as to try eating an animal's brain, but it was interesting to read about it anyway. I do personally feel like it's more 'ethical' for people who eat meat to (try to) eat the 'whole animal' (it's more sustainable and less wasteful that way methinks). However, having said that - as someone who generally enjoys eating 'offals', I still find the kidneys of chickens/pigs a little hard to like unlike lamb/ox kidneys which I find quite lovely (when used in pies; or perhaps - it was BECAUSE they were used in pies).

About halfway through the book, the writers/editors introduce the ways of preparing 'wild game'. 'Wild game' - but also things like 'Squirrel', 'Possum', and 'Raccoon'. As 'adventurous' as I'd like to think I am about food - I probably won't ever try eating these animals. Rodent-esque animals - I can't, except for rabbits.

On the sweet side of things - I'd love to try the 'Persimmon Cake', and 'Mary's Rhubarb Wine' featured in this book. I do however think that if I were to ever try the recipes out, I'd have to do a good bit of change to it. The 'concept' of the recipes itself is attractive but most of them are way too 'simple'/'basic' - and not in the best ways. Cooking/baking a tender/mild-tasting fruit like a persimmon in the same way as a banana would probably not do it justice in my personal opinion.

I do feel like a lot of the recipes in the book are not 'practical' or well-suited to the 'modern diner'. Some of the recipes even include 'margarine' in the ingredient list (and that is a big hell-no for me). However, it's a lovely book to have in one's cookbook library/collection. If not for the sake of finding culinary inspiration then for a light and entertaining read about the Appalachian 'culture'/way of life back in the days the book was written in.

[David Ward · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Foxfire Book of Appalachian Cookery edited by Linda Garland Page and Eliot Wigginton (Gramercy Books 1984) (641.5975). This book follows Foxfire 10 in the chronological order of publication in the Foxfire series. The Foxfire series was a genius-level multi-year book project conceived by a teacher and his high school students in remotely rural and mountainous Rabun County, Georgia in the heart of Appalachia. Students from tiny Rabun County High School sought out the elderly members of this extremely rural county and then watched and/or recorded the oldtimers as they taught the kids “the ways of mountain living.” The Foxfire Book of Appalachian Cookery is a country cook's cookbook of required recipies. Most of the recipies gathered herein use only simple ingredients and simple food preparation techniques. It's a catch-all volume of instruction on how to use homegrown or wild-gathered foods. According to the text, some of the research and the photographic essays included herein were gathered for previous Foxfire books but were not selected for inclusion into an earlier volume. This is good stuff – and tasty too. My rating: 7/10, finished 4/16/19.

[Andrea M · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you want to know how to butcher a chicken, cook on an old fashioned wood stove, make your own yeast, cook a raccoon or other wild animals, this book has some useful information. Some things don't have enough information like the section on making cheese. Since I've made cheese I understood the process described but I wouldn't try it based only on the information given here. I liked the stories and anecdotes about how things used to be done. This isn't just a cookbook. It has the dialogue from interviews with the old timers whose recipes are shared. The recipes aren't fancy, you might even have a better one already, but there are some real gems like a recipe for gingerbread that's a hundred years old!

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Foxfire is such an interesting project. I can't believe I didn't learn about it until recently. And this cookbook really gives you sense of how people really cooked on fires, coal stoves, wood-fired ones. It is also helping me polish the recipes I got from my mother-in-law (she didn't leave anything out intentionally, but some things just don't turn out like hers). The beans I can never get right - I've got a couple new ideas for making them turn out more like hers. I'm confident one of the recipes will work.

[Dray · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is not every day you come across recipes for raccoon, possum and bear. But here they are. I found this book fascinating and a great window into culture that was common but now rare. being a vegetarian most of the recipes relied on meat and meat products although there were some good baking recipes. Mosre important than recipes is the stories and narration of the range of sources used. Fascinating.

[Marianne · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really read this for the oral history component, which I loved. I think it's a pretty thorough set of old-fashioned recipes for plain food, too, but I didn't test them out or anything. On a personal note, the explanations of methodologies for lost/largely forgotten cooking and food prep skills were a slightly jarring but mostly fascinating experience for me, because of the combination of stuff I too learned as a kid (tending a wood stove! skinning a rabbit!) albeit sometimes in ways that were not considered kid-appropriate for most people even in the 80s, and stuff I definitely did not (building a spring house! making hominy!).

[Daphne Shapiro · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed every minute of it. The oral history element was fascinating, and if you didn’t already respect how hard these people worked to keep alive, you’d certainly respect it after reading this. The only part that was disappointing were the photographs.

[Kyja Wilburn · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a beautiful and approachable revision.

[Emily Morris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is definitely one of the most entertaining cookbooks I've read, something I picked up more for the history and I was not disappointed.

[David Harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was so hungry while reading this. Fascinating. Important cultural record. These food ways are mostly gone now.

[Absurd Book Nerd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Love the stories. Reminds me of sitting around listening to my grandparents talk about their childhood.

[Fredrick Danysh · Rating 3 out of 5]

The people who complied the Foxfire series of story collections of the Appalachia Mountains have collected some old times recipes and cooking techniques of the region.

[Dawn Vanderpool · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic stories and old recipes.

[Sarah]

My parents gifted me an old set of the Foxfire books recently. When I see that others have also collected them onto their shelves, I am instantly comforted.