Archives of Appalachia begins Appalachian Foodways series with digital exhibit on apple butter traditions

The Foodway Series on apple butter features a documentary film taken in the Chinquapin Grove community in Bluff City, Tennessee. Click on the photograph to visit the digital exhibit. (Photos courtesy of the Archives of Appalachia.)

By Sandy Laws

In 2005, author, food writer, radio host and associate professor of Appalachian Studies Fred Sauceman created and taught the Appalachian Foodways course at East Tennessee State University. He considers the course a natural fit for academic studies of Appalachia or any other part of the world. 

“Foodways studies are vitally important and should be incorporated in all college and university curricula, no matter the location,” Sauceman said. “Food connects people in powerful ways. Food is often the first step in building relationships, whether they be personal or international. Food ties us strongly to place, it teaches us to be stewards of this earth, and it affirms the value of appreciating and celebrating differences among its peoples.” 

Fred Sauceman established ETSU's Appalachian Foodways course, now taught by Dr. Rebecca Adkins Fletcher.

Foodways are an important cultural, social, and economic connection of people to their heritage, geographic location, and social structures. Foodways explore the why behind what we eat and the historical and cultural significance of food as it relates to people and place.

As an ETSU-based repository for memories that document life in southern Appalachia, The Archives of Appalachia includes a series on Appalachian Foodways including a digital exhibit on apple butter.  The exhibit highlights two churches that make apple butter annually: Greenwood Methodist Church in Greeneville, Tennessee, and Hiltons Memorial United Methodist Church in Hiltons, Virginia. The step-by-step recipes in the exhibit highlight differences and similarities within the two approaches to the lengthy and labor-intensive process of making apple butter. Appalachian Foodways: Apple Butter contains films, oral histories, and photographs already documented in the Archives, as well as new materials such as photographs and film footage of the process.

Notable among the exhibit’s ingredients are opinions expressed within each community as to the correct “recipe” for apple butter, mainly focused on sugar and cinnamon oil quantities.

The Appalachian Foodways Series will be included in the curriculum of the Appalachian Foodways course taught at ETSU each spring by Dr. Rebecca Adkins Fletcher. 

“Appalachian Foodways: Apple Butter” is among 30 digital exhibits created by Archives of Appalachia staff and graduate assistants that are available online. Together, these projects demonstrate the breadth of research topics that the Archives’ collections can support while providing in-depth introductions to select holdings. 

Sandy Laws is an assistant archivist for the Archives of Appalachia at East Tennessee State University.