Pamela C. Allison Cookbook Collection
M2016.01

Table of Contents

Summary Information

Biographical Note

Scope and Contents

Administrative Information

Collection Inventory

Summary Information

Repository

UNC Asheville Special Collections and University Archives

Title

Pamela C. Allison Cookbook Collection

ID

M2016.01

Date [inclusive]

1932-2015

Extent

8.0 Linear feet

Physical Description

The collection contains books and pamphlets.

Location

Regional cookbooks and community cookbooks are located in the Special Collections Reading Room. Commercial food and appliance cookbooks are located in Special Collections closed stacks, Row 4, Section 5.

Language

English

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Biographical Note

A biographical note provided by the donor:

Dr. Pam Allison, Professor Emerita, received her B.S. in Physical Education from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, her M.A.T. in teaching from UNC-Chapel Hill, and returned to UNC-Greensboro for her Ed.D. in Curriculum and Instruction in Physical Education. She began her career teaching elementary school physical education, grades 1-6, in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools and retired from Bowling Green State University where she taught freshmen through graduate students in the School of Human Movement, Sport, and Leisure Studies for 20 years. She has authored and edited two books and several articles on physical education teacher education, and living with multiple sclerosis. She developed an interest in cooking while teaching, but did not become interested in collecting cookbooks until she retired.

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Scope and Contents

The Pamela C. Allison Cookbook Collection contains over 700 community and commercially published cookbooks that document recipes, cooking, and foodways in the Southern Appalachians, North Carolina, and the American South. In addition, the collection includes nearly 200 commercial food and kitchen appliance company cookbooks as well as a small collection of historic cookbooks and books on cookbook collecting. The main sections of the collection are outlined below.

Commercially published cookbooks from Southern Appalachia, North Carolina, and the South include over 300 volumes published by small regional publishers and larger national publishing houses. Some books discuss regional cooking in such areas as the Great Smokies, the Virginia Blue Ridge, or South Carolina’s Low Country, others look at particular foods or cooking styles such as barbecue, seafood, grits, or biscuits, while some explore offerings and recipes from restaurants such as Crook's Corner or Tupelo Honey. Some feature noted Southerners such as author Dori Sanders writing about cooking, while others take a more general approach and examine Southern or Appalachian cooking in broader regional terms.

The nearly 350 community cookbooks in the collection were produced by such community organizations such as churches, women’s clubs, garden clubs, extension services, arts councils, and school groups. Many were published to sell as fundraisers, and many are spiral bound. Their distinction comes from the fact that recipes are supplied by members of the community and reflect individual and community culinary tastes, practices, and influences.

The commercial food and kitchen appliance company cookbooks include nearly 200 pamphlets, brochures, booklets, books, and handbooks produced by food, cookware, and kitchen appliance manufacturers. Included are materials from such commercial food manufacturers as Borden’s, Jell-O, and Spry and kitchen appliance manufacturers as Sunbeam, Hotpoint, and Calphalon. A complete list of these cookbooks can be found in the Collection Inventory below.

The commercially published cookbooks and the community cookbooks are cataloged in the library’s online catalog and are shelved in the Pamela C. Allison Cookbook Collection shelves in the Special Collections Reading Room. The catalog listing is available at this link.

The collection also contains 21 community cookbooks from states outside of the South, mostly Ohio and Pennsylvania. These are in Box 8 of the Collection Inventory listed below.

Additionally, there are a few dozen historical cookbooks, books on cookbook collecting, and several Jewish cookbooks. These appear in the library's online catalog and are shelved in the Special Collections Reading Room.

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Administrative Information

Publication Information

UNC Asheville Special Collections and University Archives

Custodial History

The collection was donated by Dr. Pamela C. Allison in 2015. Dr. Allison contacted UNC Asheville Professor Dr. Erica Locklear in the Spring of 2015, and Dr. Locklear and Head of Special Collections Gene Hyde visited Dr. Allison during the summer to view the collection. The collection was donated to Special Collections in the summer of 2015 and physically transferred to Ramsey Library in late summer - early fall 2015.

Special Collections asked Dr. Allison if she would write about her personal interest in collecting cookbooks and she provided the the following text:

Developing My Cookbook Collection By Pamela C. Allison

My cookbook collection is rooted in three seemingly unrelated interests—good food, reading, and research.

My interest in good food began in my grandmother’s kitchen. She was the quintessential Southern cook. She cooked her green beans, freshly snapped, with a piece of fatback in a Club Aluminum pot, and she made her biscuits with buttermilk and lard, baking them on a dark pan that had to be at least 50 years old. She would send some of her biscuits home with me when the family visited, but they seldom made it out of her driveway (which, by the way, was only 20 feet long). As far as I know, my grandmother did not cook from recipes, and I do not recall seeing a cookbook in her house. She cooked good food from the heart, and I loved the food she prepared.

My interest in reading was encouraged by my parents. We always had books in the house. Thankfully, my elementary school library had lots of sports books, every one of which I read, and my parents would take me to the local library so I could get even more sports books to read. Eventually, I broadened my reading interests, or better said, I was forced to broaden my reading interests to include those required and recommended in my undergraduate and graduate classes. During my academic career, however, no class I took had a cookbook on the required or recommended reading lists. When I began collecting cookbooks, I did so as much to read them as to cook from the recipes.

My interest in research became focused during graduate school and continued throughout my teaching career. When I retired, however, my love of research did not stop. From the beginning, researching cookbooks seemed like an important outcome of having a collection. As a retiree of many years now, my best research strategy is to let others do the work. I prefer to focus to cooking and eating good food.

I cannot say when I began collecting cookbooks, only that collecting evolved from an obsession to own every cookbook printed. I read that after the Bible, more cookbooks are printed than any other type of book. I realized then that I had made a big rookie mistake—not focusing my collection. Too late, I started collecting books on collecting cookbooks, and belatedly decided my focus would be on Southern cooking, particularly Southern charity cookbooks. I was delighted to find Dr. Erica Locklear was interested in researching culture through the cookbook literature, and Gene Hyde was interested in receiving my collected cookbooks. I am pleased to know that my collection housed at UNC-Asheville will be a place that can aid scholars in their work and broaden their networks for research on cookbooks.

Processing Information

The collection was processed by Gene Hyde with assistance from Colin Reeve, Markia Brooks, and Diane Lanctot. Books were cataloged by Barb Svenson.

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Collection Inventory