Southern Cook Carlye Jane Dougherty Talks Cookbooks and Culinary Arts

Carlye Jane Dougherty and I are casually seated next to an exposed red brick fireplace in her charming home in historic downtown Charleston, SC. We’re sipping a perfectly chilled white wine, which helps soften the balmy afternoon air wafting in through open windows. Scattered haphazardly before us on her cloth-covered dining table is an eclectic and eye-catching array of cookbooks. Some are vintage and some are current. Some out-of-print and some antiquarian. Some heralded and some long-forgotten.

Carlye Jane has kindly invited me over during my recent extended stay at nearby Kiawah Island to talk cookbooks. A lifelong Southern cook, she’s also a passionate cookbook collector with a professional pedigree.

In 2011 in the heart of Charleston, Carlye Jane Daugherty launched Heirloom Book Company, a definitive cookbook shop dedicated to the “Literature of Food” and serving up an abundant feast of books, publications, and coolly creative novelties (like heirloom seeds, of course) showcasing all manner of foods and drinks. Until its closing in 2015, when she transitioned her career to full-time design, Heirloom claimed uncommon status among this cuisine-centric city’s iconic destinations, attracting both avid foodies and enthusiastic readers, and anyone, really, who craved being surrounded by good books.

“I’m a cookbook collector,” she punctuates the point. “The end.”

She’s sharing her knowledge, insights, and remembrances about cookbooks, enlivening our conversation with her trademark effervescence and gleeful laughter. I first “met” Carlye Jane Dougherty on Zoom when she presented a class on holiday cookbooks hosted by Suzanne Pollak, author and founder of Charleston’s Academy of Domestic Pursuits. The virtual format did nothing to dampen Carlye Jane’s zeal.

Even online, I sensed we were of like minds regarding cookbooks. My instinct then is proving to be spot-on in real life today. Turns out we both consider cookbooks to be far more than mere compendiums of recipes. To us, cookbooks are time portals and cultural touchstones. They tell essential and elevated stories of food, traditions, and societal conventions that transcend their eras.

Carley Jane Dougherty and Heirloom, her ultimate cookbook shop

Carlye Jane Dougherty draws a well-worn, obviously treasured copy of The I Hate to Cook Book from the assembled pile of cookbooks. Peg Bracken, a “riotously funny journalist,” she grins, authored the book in 1960. The then-bestseller was revolutionary in its day, for Bracken targeted women who scoffed at society’s pigeonholing presumption of a familial duty to prepare daily gourmet meals. Instead, she presented quicker, simpler recipes using basic ingredients and requiring less fuss.

A mix of upbeat emotions – amusement, reverence, delight – flickers across Carlye Jane’s expressive face as she thumbs through the work. The cover illustration of a toque-topped woman flinging a challenging look at the reader triggers my childhood memory, for I recall this cookbook being a staple in my mother’s kitchen.

The I Hate to Cook Book is but one of umpteen thousands of cookbooks that have passed through Carlye Jane Dougherty’s hands over the years, most notably at Heirloom.

Heirloom Book Company, she explains, was a welcoming, stylish hangout, fostering camaraderie and connection for locals and travelers alike. They pored through the thoughtfully curated offerings on the shelves, met up with neighbors throughout the day, sipped and shopped, or even flipped open their laptops to work off-site as a respite from the office.

Recalling the look of Heirloom, she describes an interior befitting a feature in a modern design magazine… “hardwood floors, high ceilings, comfy furniture, and big white bookcases full of pops of color of awesome book covers.” She supplemented the bricks-and-mortar building with a robust online and e-commerce presence.

In addition, Heirloom was a special events destination (think author signings, dinner parties, and cooking demonstrations) hosting celebrity chefs and writers, among them Nathalie Dupree, Sean Brock, and Julia Reed. It served as home base for strategic partnerships with Le Creuset, Southern Living magazine, Whole Foods, and other food and media industry giants. Carlye Jane even opened the space for photography and art shows.

How enchanting the experience must have been for Heirloom regulars, I think wistfully. Nowadays, about the only printed books I buy are cookbooks. In this age of digital reading, I still crave the tactile, weighty pleasure of opening a hardcover and turning actual pages. I purposely slow my perusal of any new purchase to heighten my sense of anticipation and discovery. I note the cover art and inside layout, and devour the author’s introductory commentary. I consider the creativity of each recipe and study the style of accompanying photographs and illustrations, attempting to perceive the dish’s potential for ease and fun of preparation and ultimate deliciousness.

Chatting about Cookbooks with Carly Jane Dougherty

The Roads Traveled:  What’s your background in cooking and cookbooks?
Carlye Jane Dougherty:  I’m from western North Carolina, and food has always been a huge part of my life. My family has great kitchen cooks. I had recipe boxes from the time I was young. Every woman I knew had cookbooks. What I have isn’t an unusual amount by any stretch. My collection ebbs and flows.

When I lived in New York City in the early 2000s, food was having a moment. Food Network was on fire. I discovered amazing places for cookbooks like Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks, Strand Bookstore, and Kitchen Arts & Letters. It was eye opening that someone could make a living doing a cookbook shop. I hosted big dinner parties for friends in my small New York kitchen, where my stove was this big (she holds up a cookbook in approximation) and I made amazing fried chicken and biscuits. For them, eating Southern food was like an ethnic food experience. I worked my way through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

I started developing a real interest in collectible cookbooks and specific authors. Lee Bailey is your holiday go-to guy. Clementine in the Kitchen was the first food narrative I ever read. Martha Stewart had been at the forefront of including super-styled food photography in her books. Then Ina Garten was really the first to say here’s the recipe and here’s what it looks like. Prior to Ina, photos had been inserted between recipes in books, but hers were the first where you got a visual identity of each thing she made. I dedicated myself to finding the first edition of rare cookbooks, and several subsequently have come and gone through my life.

TRT:  Why do we need cookbooks?
CJD:  Opening cookbooks is a culinary journey where someone’s ethos and taste buds inform you. Cookbooks are inspiring and fun. People take them way more seriously now. In the digital world with algorithms, if you type in “potatoes” it takes you where it wants you to go. If you open an old cookbook to potatoes, you think, “Oh, I could do this.” I appreciate the digital realm, but I also like a cookbook on my counter that I can go through. The more stained the page, the more complimented the recipe.

TRT: What’s the history of cookbooks?
CJD:  They go back forever, when people had access to paper and a binding process and recipes could be written down rather than passed on through oral history. When I was learning to merchandise cookbooks, especially older ones, at Heirloom, it never ceased to amaze me how amazing the covers were. They didn’t have cameras for photography. Instead, they used illustrations by significant artists. Andy Warhol started his career illustrating Amy Vanderbilt’s cookbook. Eric Carle did The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Betty Crocker wasn’t a real person, but her cookbooks are instantly recognizable.

Lately, I’ve had a specific interest in the history of women and cookbooks. I’m spending time researching, and I hope to do something with all this information. There are astonishing stories totally untold. A Woman’s Place is one of the first that goes behind the scenes. Irma Rombauer, who published The Joy of Cooking, did so because she had to support herself and children after her husband committed suicide. And who doesn’t have a copy? Marjorie Hillis was a Vogue editor in the 1920s. She traveled all over America promoting her cookbooks. She was an original influencer because companies dressed her for her talks in hopes women in the audience would buy the dresses. And there’s M.F.K. Fisher and all her lovers, and the beautiful way she wrote.

I’ve always loved that people stash things in old cookbooks, like old, handwritten recipes or photos. Once I found a whole repository from Prohibition on how to make shrubs and wines. I always hoped I’d find money.

TRT: What are some of the definitive cookbooks we need in our libraries?
CJD:  I always go back to Ina Garten’s first one. It’s my favorite of all time. Better Homes and Gardens. You can’t beat Richard Olney, and you can’t go wrong with Edna Lewis. Anything by M.F.K. Fisher. I can’t be interviewed and not mention Elizabeth David.

TRT:  Other favorite cookbooks?
CJD:  The French Menu Cookbook always captures my imagination. One of my favorite antiquarians is really old – The Unrivaled Cookbook and Housekeeper’s Guide, which covered fancy entertaining and what to do with leftover parts of things from your farm. My single favorite recipe of all time is from it…take a piece of fish, put it in a crock with a piece of butter the size of a walnut, and bake until brown and bubbly. I love the simplicity of it. It didn’t tell you what kind of fish or butter or temperature to use.

TRT:  Favorite cookbook author?
CJD:  Nathalie Dupree for her quality recipes, and depth and breadth of her career.

TRT:  Favorite cookbook title?
CJD: Campy Cuisine and Menus for Men or What Have You. Also, The Male Chauvinist’s Cookbook.

TRT:  You speak about the “Literature of Food.” What do you mean by it?
CJD:  I read an article with that term, and I thought that’s my tagline.  Over the years I had all these photos of covers, so I organized them into categories and put them online as a visual repository of books we had and sold at Heirloom. If you see something and want it, reach out to me and most likely I can source it for you. I want to be an open source of information rather than a vendor.

TRT:  What’s the current state of cookbooks and cooking?
CJD:  People are cooking more at home and feeling more empowered to do fancier things than they ever thought they could. The internet is like a giant culinary school. There’s nothing you can’t teach yourself. People are far less intimidated saying, “I’m a good cook.”

TRT:  What are you cooking nowadays?
CJD:  I love a giant platter in the middle of the table for communal eating with grilled zucchini, grilled squash, grilled lemons, and grilled chicken and meat, along with a yummy salad. I grill everything in a simple way, with olive oil, salt, pepper, and maybe a little garlic on the meat. The trick is you grill your lemons, cut side down. Flip them over, lightly char the skins, and squeeze them over everything, like a sauce. With a big platter you can feed a lot of people without too much money.

TRT:  What are some of your current go-to Charleston restaurants?
CJD:  Mike Latta’s The Ordinary and FIG for seafood. Rodney Scott’s barbecue. The ham and butter sandwiches at babas on cannon (lower case spelling it is) saved me during the pandemic.

TRT:  What’s your signature dish?
CJD:  Biscuits. Generations of my family have passed down the recipe, which calls for the Southern staple White Lily flour.  Fingers make fluffy biscuits. It’s all about the technique, and not so much the recipe. Everyone has their own jam on biscuits. Some people like them big and fluffy, some like them square. I’m a big round classic fluffy kind of biscuit girl.

Driving back to Kiawah Island, I’m mentally sorting through the cookbooks Carlye Jane Dougherty recommended, hoping to someday add a few to my own much more modest collection. Perhaps while traveling I’ll come across an Heirloom-ish shop, spot a rare find on a shelf, curl up with it on a comfy chair, and get lost in culinary dreams.

Photos of Heirloom Book Company reprinted with permission of Carlye Jane Dougherty.