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. It was published privately during 1931 by Irma S. Rombauer (1877-1962), a homemaker in St. Louis, Missouri, after her husband's suicide the previous year. Rombauer had 3,000 copies printed by A.C. Clayton, a company which had printed labels for fancy St. Louis shoe companies and for Listerine mouthwash, but never a book. Beginning 1936, the book was published by a commercial printing house, the Bobbs-Merrill Company. With eight editions, Joy of Cooking is considered the most popular American cookbook.[1]
A cookbook or cookery book is a kitchen reference containing recipes.
Self-publishing is the publication of media by its author without the involvement of an established publisher. In common parlance, the term usually refers to physical written media, such as books and magazines, or digital media, such as e-books and websites. It can also apply to albums, pamphlets, brochures, video content, zines, or uploading images to a website.
Irma Starkloff Rombauer was an American cookbook author, best known for The Joy of Cooking (1931), one of the world's most widely read cookbooks. Following Irma Rombauer's death, periodic revisions of the book were carried out by her daughter, Marion Rombauer Becker, and subsequently by Marion's son Ethan Becker. The Joy of Cooking remains in print, edited by members of the Rombauer–Becker family, and more than 18 million copies have been sold.
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.,[2] 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. 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.[3]
Editions
First edition (1931)
During 1931 Rombauer self-published The Joy of Cooking: A Compilation of Reliable Recipes with a Casual Culinary Chat with more than 500 tested recipes and related commentaries.
The book was illustrated by Rombauer's daughter, Marion Rombauer Becker, who directed the art department at John Burroughs School. Working during weekends during the winter of 1930-31, Marion designed the cover,[4] which depicted Saint Martha of Bethany, the patron saint of cooking, slaying a dragon. She also produced silhouette cutouts to illustrate chapter headings.[5] By 1932, a majority of the 3,000 copies printed by A.C. Clayton were sold. [6] Rombauer began to look for a new publisher in 1932.
Founded in 1923, John Burroughs School (JBS) is a private, non-sectarian preparatory school with 600 students in grades 7–12. Its 47.5 acre (192,000 m²) campus is located in Ladue, Missouri (US), an affluent suburb of St. Louis. It is named for U.S. naturalist and philosopher John Burroughs.
Martha of Bethany is a biblical figure described in the Gospels of Luke and John. Together with her siblings Lazarus and Mary of Bethany, she is described as living in the village of Bethany near Jerusalem. She was witness to Jesus resurrecting her brother, Lazarus.
A patron saint, patroness saint, patron hallow or heavenly protector is a saint who in Roman Catholicism, Anglicanism or Eastern Orthodoxy, is regarded as the heavenly advocate of a nation, place, craft, activity, class, clan, family or person.
Second edition (1936)
After searching for a publisher and being rejected many times, the Bobbs-Merrill Company published an expanded (640 page) second edition on May 1, 1936.[7] The company had limited experience with publishing cookbooks, and Irma Rombauer, similarly inexperienced in dealing with publishers, performed the negotiations herself without an agent or lawyer. The resulting contract, in which Bobbs-Merrill was granted the copyright not only for the 1936 edition but for the original 1931 version as well, resulted in many years of conflict between the author and the publisher.[8]:151–153
The 1936 edition differed from other commercial cookbooks of the era by its retention of the author's folksy comments and anecdotes, and its new layout for the recipes.[8]:153–154 Instead of listing the ingredients for a dish at the top with preparation directions following, the recipes in Joy (1936) were presented by narratives, with the ingredients indicated as the need for them occurred, with each placed in boldface on a new indented line — thus preserving a conversational style throughout the recipe. This method came to be known as the "action method".[9] These innovations, along with an aggressive marketing effort by Bobbs-Merrill, resulted in good sales.[8]:159–161Joy reached the best-seller list in St. Louis and promoted as "the famous private cookbook" in the New York Times.[10][11] By the end of 1942, the second edition had had six printings, and 52,151 copies had been sold.[7]
Third edition (1943/1946)
During 1939, Rombauer published Streamlined Cooking, a collection of recipes that could be prepared in less than 30 minutes, with an emphasis on use of canned and frozen foods. This book was not a commercial success,[8]:166–169 but many of the recipes it contained became part of a new edition of Joy of Cooking published during 1943. This edition also included material intended to help readers deal with wartime rationing restrictions, including alternatives to butter in some recipes.[12] Sales of this edition were phenomenal: from 1943 through 1946 a total of 617,782 copies were sold, surpassing sales of Joy of Cooking's principal competitor, Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book.[8]:172
During 1946, a minor revision of the 1943 edition was published. While substantially the same as its predecessor, the 1946 revision omitted the material related to wartime rationing and incorporated additional recipes from Streamlined Cooking.[7]
Fourth edition (1951)
Irma Rombauer was 69 years old when the 1946 edition of Joy was published, and her health was beginning to decline.[8]:194–195 She was concerned about the future of her book, since Bobbs-Merrill (which owned the copyright for the original publication) might have selected an author of their own choosing for future editions once Rombauer was unable to continue. To ensure that the book remained a family project, Rombauer negotiated with the publisher a clause in her contract naming her daughter, Marion Rombauer Becker, as her sole successor in any future revision.[8]:201
Relations between Rombauer and Bobbs-Merrill, never cordial, worsened during the late 1940s, and in the fracas Marion Becker gradually assumed increasing responsibility, at first regarding the book's design, and eventually its content. Partly for legal reasons, the 1951 edition was published with Marion Rombauer Becker listed as co-author, and she received 40% of the royalties.[8]:chap 8The authors strongly resisted the publisher's wish to illustrate the book with photographs and instead embellished the book with simple, functional line drawings by Ginnie Hofmann, a friend of Becker's.[8]:262–270
Becker was a passionate advocate of healthy eating, and the 1951 edition was marked by an increased emphasis of such topics as whole grains and fresh produce. Many of the old "can-opener" recipes from Streamlined Cooking were eliminated. This edition also was the first to introduce the use of the blender and other modern household items into its recipes. The number of recipes had increased to more than 4,000.
Because of the time taken by the protracted legal arguments, final editing of the 1951 edition was done hastily. The same edition was reprinted during 1952 with some errors corrected, and again during 1953 with a revised index.[7]
During 1962, the year of Irma Rombauer's death, a revised edition of Joy of Cooking was published. This edition was released without Marion Becker's consent. Subsequent releases of the book during 1963 and 1964 were essentially massive corrections, and Becker arranged for the publisher to exchange copies of the 1962 edition for later corrected versions upon request.[8]:342
The foreword of the 1962 edition explains that Becker's favorite recipes include "Cockaigne" in the name, (e.g., "Fruit Cake Cockaigne"), after the name of her country home in Anderson Township, near Cincinnati, Ohio.[13][14]
This edition was also published in paperback format (most notably, a two-volume mass market paperback edition); it is still widely available in used bookstores. The 1964 edition was also released as a single-volume comb-ring bound paperback mass-market edition starting in November 1973 and continuing into the early 1990s.[15]
Sixth edition (1975)
The 1975 edition was the last to be edited by Becker and remains the most popular, with more than 6 million copies sold.[16] More than 1,000 pages long, and with over 4,300 recipes, it became a standard in kitchens throughout the country. The book included sections concerning backpacking, hiking, and substitutions, and though many sections may seem antiquated to contemporary fashion, many home cooks still use it.[16]
Seventh edition (1997)
After the 1975 edition, the project was unchanged for about 20 years. During the mid-1990s, publisher Simon & Schuster, which owns the Joy of Cooking's copyrights, hired influential cookbook editor Maria Guarnaschelli, formerly of William Morrow, and editor of works by Jeff Smith and others. Guarnaschelli, supervised by Rombauer's grandson Ethan Becker, managed the creation of the edition of 1997, published by Simon & Schuster's Charles Scribner's Sons division. The new edition kept the concise style of its predecessors, but it eliminated the conversational first-person narration. Much of the edition was ghostwritten by teams of expert chefs instead of the single dedicated amateur Irma Rombauer had been when she created the book. The 1997 version is fairly comprehensive; however, it no longer contains much information about ingredients or frozen desserts.
Upon its publication during January 1997, the edition was titled The All-New, All-Purpose Joy of Cooking; during November of that same year, it was reissued with the title The 1997 Joy of Cooking.[17][18]
During 1995, a hardbound edition illustrated by Ginnie Hofmann and Ikki Matsumoto was released.[citation needed]
During 1998, a reproduction, described as "a perfect facsimile of that original 1931 edition", was released.[6]
Eighth edition (2006) 75th Anniversary Edition
During 2006, Scribner published a 75th anniversary edition, containing 4,500 recipes, that reproduced much of Rombauer's original style. The new version removes some of the professionalism of the 1997 edition and returns many simpler recipes and recipes assisted by ready-made products such as cream of mushroom soup and store-bought wontons. The 2006 edition also reinstates the cocktail section and the frozen desserts section, and restores much of the information that was omitted for the 1997 edition.
The new version includes a new index section named "Joy Classics" that contains 35 recipes from 1931–1975 and a new nutrition section.[19] It is still edited and written by the Rombauer-Becker family.
Reception
The Joy of Cooking became a bestseller originally due to its readability for the middle classes and Rombauer's unique style. Her recipes were designed specifically for middle class people doing most of their own cooking for their family. She specifically tested and practiced the recipes to ensure they could be produced easily in a relatively brief period of time without much complication. Once she combined her witty comments on the cooking and serving with the action method, her cookbook became readily readable by the average cook in America. Moreover, Rombauer paired the conversational style of the recipes with casual discussions of etiquette and hosting. Her methods were distinct from the other cookbooks of the time, which featured many complex recipes, while her style was simple and conversational. By providing an interesting and easy to read cookbook for the middle class, The Joy of Cooking became the main reference book for many mid-century American cooks.[6][9][14][20][21]
Legacy
The Joy of Cooking is considered the most popular American cookbook.[1]
Julia Child learned to cook from The Joy of Cooking and Gourmet magazine. She enjoyed “’Mrs. Joy’s’ Book” and believed it taught her the basic principles of cooking.[22]
Allemande sauce or sauce parisienne is a sauce in French cuisine based on a light-colored velouté sauce, but thickened with egg yolks and heavy cream, and seasoned with lemon juice. Allemande was one of the four mother sauces of classic French cuisine as defined by Antoine Carême in The Art of French Cooking in the 19th Century.
The Bobbs-Merrill Company was a book publisher located in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Gratin is a widespread culinary technique in which an ingredient is topped with a browned crust, often using breadcrumbs, grated cheese, egg or butter. Gratin originated in French cuisine and is usually prepared in a shallow dish of some kind. A gratin is baked or cooked under an overhead grill or broiler to form a golden crust on top and is traditionally served in its baking dish.
The term "Chicken Maryland" or "Maryland Chicken" refers to a historic dish associated with the U.S. state of Maryland, but has other meanings from other nations. In its home base, the food dish consists of fried chicken served with a cream gravy.
Spinach salad is a salad with spinach as its main ingredient. Common additional ingredients include tomatoes, eggs, cheese, slivered almonds, walnuts and/or fresh or dried berries, such as cranberry, or strawberry.
Scalded milk is dairy milk that has been heated to 83 °C (181 °F). At this temperature, bacteria are killed, enzymes in the milk are destroyed, and many of the proteins are denatured. Since most milk sold today is pasteurized, which accomplishes the first two goals, milk is typically scalded to increase its temperature, or to change the consistency or other cooking interactions due to the denaturing of proteins.
Chinese chicken salad is a salad including chopped chicken and Chinese culinary ingredients that are common in parts of the United States. Though many variations exist, common features of Chinese chicken salads include lettuce, cabbage, chicken, deep-fried wonton skins or rice vermicelli and nuts. A basic vinaigrette for the salad includes ingredients like vegetable oil, sesame oil, rice vinegar. Optional seasonings include dry hot mustard, sesame seeds, coriander and raw ginger or pickled ginger. In restaurants, Chinese chicken salad may be more embellished and offered as an American-style entree salad, similar to Caesar, Chef, and Cobb salads.
Shrimp creole is a dish of Louisiana Creole origin, consisting of cooked shrimp in a mixture of whole or diced tomatoes, the Holy trinity of onion, celery and bell pepper, spiced with hot pepper sauce and/or cayenne-based seasoning, and served over steamed or boiled white rice. The shrimp may be cooked in the mixture or cooked separately and added at the end. Other "creole" dishes may be made by substituting some other meat or seafood for the shrimp, or omitting the meat entirely.
Scaloppine is a type of Italian dish that comes in many forms. It consists of thinly sliced meat, most often beef, veal, or chicken, that is dredged in wheat flour and sautéed in one of a variety of redux sauces.
Anne Mendelson is an American food journalist and culinary historian. She lives in Hudson County, New Jersey with her cat, and believes that the medley of ethnic cooking in her neighborhood, combined with memories from her childhood in rural Pennsylvania, provided inspiration for her writing.
Cecily Brownstone, was a food writer, who wrote several cookbooks and articles about food over a period of 39 years.
Calf's liver and bacon is a dish containing calf liver and bacon. It was popular in cookbooks of the 19th and early 20th century.
Creamed eggs on toast is an American breakfast dish. It consists of toast or biscuits covered in a gravy made from bechamel sauce and chopped hard-boiled eggs. The gravy is often flavored with various seasonings, such as black pepper, garlic powder, celery salt, Worcestershire sauce, sherry, chopped parsley and/or chopped chives. The Joy of Cooking recommends making the bechamel with 1⁄2 cream and 1⁄2 chicken stock and adding capers or chopped pickle. As with many other dishes covered in light-colored sauce, a sprinkle of paprika or cayenne is often added as decoration.
Common oven temperatures are set to control the effects of baking in an oven, for various lengths of time.
Shaker lemon pie, also known as Ohio lemon pie, is a fruit pie typical of the Midwestern United States.
Sauce andalouse is a Belgian specialty, a sauce consisting of mayonnaise, tomato paste, and peppers typically served with Belgian fries. Some recipes use velouté or espagnole sauce instead of mayonnaise. The origin of the name is due to the region of Andalusia.
Donald Angus Cameron, publicly known by his middle name, was an American book editor and publisher. Cameron scored his first success handling The Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer for Indianapolis publisher Bobbs-Merrill Company in 1936. He moved to Little, Brown and Company in 1938.
A Cloverleaf roll is an American type of bread roll consisting of three separate sections. It is named after the leaf of the clover plant, which has three lobes. They are made by placing three small balls of dough in the cups of a muffin tin; as the dough proofs and bakes, the cloverleaf pattern is formed. After baking, they are easily pulled apart. "Cloverleaf roll" refers to a shape, not a specific recipe: many recipes lend themselves to the cloverleaving process.
Richard Blechynden was an American merchant who is credited with popularizing iced tea. Blechynden sold iced tea at the 1904 World's Fair, after which the drink attained nationwide recognition.
↑ Rombauer, Irma S.; Marion Rombauer Becker (1967). Joy of Cooking(hardbound)|format= requires |url= (help) (1964 ed.). Indianapolis, Indiana: Bobbs-Merrill (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Limited Edition). p.2 of Foreword (not numbered). Finally, in response to many requests from users of "The Joy" who ask "What are your favorites?", we have added to some of our recipes the word "Cockaigne", which signified in medieval times "a mythical land of peace and plenty," and also happens to be the name of our country home.
1 2 Mendelson, Anne. "The History of the Joy of Cooking [on the Joy of Cooking official website]". Retrieved 7 December 2013. In this edition, Marion, who loved the sense of sharing pleasures with reader-friends as much as Irma, pointed to her family’s special favorites with the designation “Cockaigne”—the name of the Beckers’ beloved Cincinnati home, where she had created an eight-acre “wild garden” and model of ecological restoration.…Because of serious author-publisher disagreements, though, the new edition was not published in a form acceptable to Marion until 1963 (a version had appeared during 1962, the year of Irma’s death).
↑ Rombauer, Irma & Rombauer Becker, Marion (1973). The Joy of Cooking. ISBN0-452-25665-8.CS1 maint: uses authors parameter (link)
↑ Rombauer, Irma S.; Becker, Marion Rombauer; Becker, Ethan (1997-11-05). The All New All Purpose: Joy of Cooking (Revised ed.). New York: Scribner. ISBN9780684818702.
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