What's Cooking?

 

Here is another piece of history. Some of you may know it.

 

Joy of Cooking, often known as “The Joy of Cooking”, is one of the United States’ most-published cookbooks. It has been in print continuously since 1936 and has sold more than 18 million copies. Irma S. Rombauer (1877–1962), a homemaker in St. Louis, Missouri published privately during 1931.

 

Born to German immigrants in 1877, Irma Starkloff was born and grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. She married Edgar Rombauer, a lawyer, during 1899. Edgar committed suicide after a severe bout of depression during 1930, widowing Irma at age 52, and leaving her with $6,000 in life savings.

 

Rombauer’s children, Marion Rombauer Becker and Edgar Roderick (“Put”) Rombauer, Jr., encouraged her to compile her recipes and thoughts on cooking to help her cope with her loss. Rombauer spent much of the summer of 1930 in Michigan, creating the first drafts that would later become ‘Joy of Cooking’.

With the help of her late husband’s secretary, Mazie Whyte, Rombauer began writing and editing recipes and commentaries while searching for more recipes in St. Louis.

During the autumn of 1930, Rombauer went to the A.C. Clayton Printing Company, a printer for the St. Louis shoe manufacturers. The A.C. Clayton was a company that had printed labels for fancy St. Louis shoe companies and for Listerine mouthwash, but never a book.

She paid them $3,000 to print 3,000 copies of ‘The Joy of Cooking: A Compilation of Reliable Recipes with a Casual Culinary Chat’ in November 1931.

 

Before all the cooking shows, there were cookbooks. Before that were verbal recipes handed down from grandmothers to mothers to daughters. The women would gather over a hot stove to watch and learn how to cook.

As women married, they started to customize the techniques and ingredients for new taste. Kitchens got new appliances making the preparation of a meal an art.

Someone else always prepared food for me.

My mother wasn’t much of a cook. Neither was my first wife, but my second wife got the bug.  The cooking shows on PBS Saturday afternoons presented different cooking styles and national heritages.

And each show had a cookbook, many more than one.

Barnes & Noble became a routine venture to stock up on the latest editions. Specialty shops gave custom cooking classes and offered all the utensils and appliances to prepare 5-Star culinary delights. Cookbooks lined the selves to reference everything from Oriental stir-fry to Tex-Mex grilling.

 

After the chef passed on, I boxed hundreds of cookbooks (some barely opened and others covered in cooking history) and donated them.

All but one.

The “Joy of Cooking” I think was my mother’s. If she ever used it was to refer to times of how long to bake in an oven before the smoke starts. Still it is a hand-me-down heirloom.

For years it has been gathering dust on top of the refrigerator. If I needed help in boiling water, I’d reference the Internet rather than the “Joy of Cooking”.

Today it was donated to the local free library on the corner. Someone else can now enjoy the history or become exposed to the basics.

 

I’ll eat as long as someone else cooks.