Women’s History Month: Peggy Daum
Day four of Women’s History Month features Milwaukee Journal food editor Peggy Daum. Peggy was a women’s page reporter in the 1950s and 1960s. She became the food editor of the section in 1968 and remained in the position for two decades.
Daum was a Milwaukee native who earned an undergraduate degree in journalism and a minor in home economics from the University of Arizona. She later earned a master’s degree in journalism from Marquette University. Her thesis was a study of women’s pages.
Barbara Dembski, the Milwaukee Journal’s assistant managing editor of features, said Daum never abandoned her audience. She said of Daum: “Despite her national stature in food journalism, she never forgot who her section was for. She wrote it for the typical, salt-of-the-earth, best cook on the block.” She edited the cookbook, Best Cook on the Block Cookbook.
And those neighborhood cooks, her readers, regularly called her with questions about new dishes and in later years questions about new grocery store items like tofu or cilantro. Yet some Milwaukee recipes so defined the community that calls to the newspaper were not necessary. “If you are making German potato salad, you already know how,” Daum said in 1988. “The right way to make it is the way your mother and grandmother made it. You may argue about it with someone down the block, but you don’t call me.”
Peggy was the first president of the group that is now called the Association of Food Editors.
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