Remembering New York Times Food Editor Jane Nickerson
Craig Claiborne gets a lot of attention but it was Jane Nickerson who was the first food editor of the New York Times, from 1942 to 1957. She was a significant journalist who wrote about food as rationing changed cooking and post-World War II technology changed the food on our store shelves. She also reviewed restaurants, while also writing about both famous chefs and home cooks.
I am not alone in recognizing Jane’s significance. Culinary historian Anne Mendelson wrote about Jane’s work in this article. According to Mendelson: “Jane Nickerson’s articles and recipes show her as an observer of wide-ranging curiosity and knowledge, moving with some sensitivity between prosaic ‘service’ information and higher- flying gastronomic matters.” (Anne Mendelson, “Review of Craig Claiborne’s Revised New York Times Cookbook,” Journal of Gastronomy, 1990, 83.)
The creation of the 1950s New York food community likely began with Jane Nickerson at the New York Times. Over the years, she introduced James Beard to the A.P.’s Cecily Brownstone. Those two were often dinner companions along with Nickerson and her husband. It was Brownstone who introduced the New York food community to Irma S. Rombauer, author of the popular cookbook Joy of Cooking.
Later, it was Beard who introduced Julia Child to the food community. Yet, in another example of marginalization, Nickerson rarely get the credit in historical culinary stories. Instead, she has been overshadowed by the scholarship about Craig Claiborne, who followed her as food editor. In fact, she is often described as “retiring” from the New York newspaper. Instead, she took a few years off to raise her children and then returned to being a newspaper food editor in Florida.
Craig Claiborne certainly had a significant impact on food journalism, I would respectfully add that Nickerson had certainly laid the foundation at the New York Times during her 1942 to 1957 tenure. In 2003, former New York Times food journalist Molly O’Neill noted that Jane Nickerson was one of the first food journalists who applied ethics to her craft. O’Neill noted that there was news in a vast majority of the coverage of food. According to the New York Times index, of the 675 stories about food, 646 had a news hook. The percentage remained the same throughout the 1950s.
According to the Evan Jones’ book about James Beard, Epicurean Delight, Nickerson regularly went to dinner with her future husband, Alex Steinberg, Brownstone and Beard. Jones wrote: “They probed New York’s ethnic neighborhoods, titillating their palates and venting their curiosities about origins of recipes.” In a letter, Beard wrote to food writer Helen Evans Brown about Nickerson:
“Going to four parties for Jane this week. She leaves next week for Florida, and how we hate to see her go. She has done more for dignified food coverage than anyone. Everyone will miss her keenly, and I more than most, for she was a good friend and a most amusing person always.”
The story of Nickerson’s resignation from the newspaper was explained in Claiborne’s memoir, A Memoir with Recipes: A Feast Made for Laughter (New York: Doubleday & Co., 1982). He wrote that at the beginning of 1957, she told the Times that “for reasons for family” she would be resigning from the newspaper as of September 1. Claiborne, who became the NYT food editor following Nickerson, wrote:
“I was a bit startled at the news because of my respect for Jane as a journalist and also because I knew of her devotion to the job. She was a workaholic, a lady who often went into the office seven days a week to pursue her career. She was a diligent researcher with a thoroughgoing interest in learning more about the world of cuisine.” (p. 125)
He also wrote of Nickerson: She “was, to my mind, the most inventive and diligent food written in Manhattan. What she did not know she researched with great gravity and concern.” (p. 122)
You can read more about Nickerson in The Food Section. An article about Nickerson’s impact at the New York Times will be featured in NYFoodStory later this month. It is the publication of the Culinary Historians of New York.
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