{"id":33884,"date":"2026-08-22T10:13:54","date_gmt":"2026-08-22T14:13:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=33884"},"modified":"2026-08-22T10:24:07","modified_gmt":"2026-08-22T14:24:07","slug":"beth-tartan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=33884","title":{"rendered":"Beth Tartan"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The dust jacket of the 1992 edition, published by the University of North Carolina Press. Click here for high-resolution version<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Old cookbooks (to me, anyway) are far more interesting than new cookbooks. I have only one newish cookbook on my cookbook shelf — The Complete Irish Pub Cookbook<\/em>, published in 2012. Even that, of course, is about traditional Old World cooking.<\/p>\n

Recently, while browsing old books on eBay, I came across Beth Tartan’s North Carolina & Old Salem Cookery<\/em>. I realized that I needed a copy of that. Though it sold quite well nationwide, to me it’s a local cookbook. Not to mention that I knew Beth Tartan, having spent the first half of my newspaper career at the newspaper where she was food editor, the Winston-Salem Journal. Beth Tartan was her pen name. Her real name was Elizabeth Hedgecock Sparks.<\/p>\n

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\nBeth Tartan with Frank Jones, a Winston-Salem Journal photographer, in 1964. Jones, like Beth Tartan, was very much a local celebrity. Source: Digital Forsyth archive.<\/em><\/p>\n

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The first edition of this cookbook was published in 1952. It went through many editions and several different publishers. The last edition, I believe, is the UNC Press edition, 1992. Elizabeth Sparks died in 1992.<\/p>\n

Because of its age, this cookbook is about a cuisine that has been lost. It even includes some American Indian cuisine, not to mention methods of cooking that go back to the Moravians of North Carolina in the 18th Century.<\/p>\n

American Southerners like me are sentimental about the cuisine we grew up with. Done well (it takes a grandmother), it was awesomely good. And yet it’s also shocking how unhealthy it seems by today’s standards — lard, dehydrated potatoes, lots of things out of cans, cake mixes, and desserts, desserts, and more desserts. That has everything to do with why I modify old recipes to make them healthier and to use better ingredients. Nor do I always agree with Beth Tartan. On pumpkin pie, she writes that canned pumpkin is better than home-cooked fresh pumpkin. This puzzles me. I can only guess that it’s because she boiled the pumpkin she started with rather than baking it in its own juices, scraping it out of the shell, and mashing it.<\/p>\n

Based on what I see on eBay, the UNC Press hardback edition of this book is scarce. The UNC edition is a beautiful book — nice cover, a proper sewn binding, and acid free paper. On eBay there are many copies of earlier paperback editions, as well as a nice-looking hardback edition from 1955 with a bright red cover.<\/p>\n

I’ll never forget something that Betty Morrison, a Winston-Salem Journal copy editor, said about Elizabeth Sparks: “She can afford to go to Paris for the weekend.”<\/p>\n

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\nClick here for high-resolution version<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Here’s something to be sentimental about — Pamlico Sound oysters. I’m pretty sure that such oysters as we can west of the East Coast these days come from the Chesapeake Bay. To get Pamlico Sound oysters now, I think, a trip to the North Carolina coast would be required. Hmmm. Oyster season is coming up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The dust jacket of the 1992 edition, published by the University of North Carolina Press. Click here for high-resolution version. Old cookbooks (to me, anyway) are far more interesting than new cookbooks. I have only one newish cookbook on my cookbook shelf — The Complete Irish Pub Cookbook, published in 2012. Even that, of course, … Continue reading “Beth Tartan”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33884","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-food"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=33884"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33884\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33915,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33884\/revisions\/33915"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=33884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=33884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=33884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}