food history
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Newspaper Cookbooks: Day 2
The pair of cookbooks I would add to the list of top newspaper editor cookbooks include two from the Los Angeles Times. The first is the California Cookbook written by the 1960s L.A. Times food editor Jeanne Voltz. Here is a nice blog post about Jeanne. The second is Dear S.O.S. which details thirty years of recipes requests from readers. Recipe requests were an early form of social media.
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Food Studies Presentation: Ohio Food Editor History
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Newspaper Cookbooks: Day 1
I was pleased to see Marion Nestle’s blog post about the cookbook above that I posted about a few weeks ago. The book includes Cecily Brownstone’s Associated Press Cookbook. The 101 Classic Cookbooks is an excellent resource for both recipes and cookbook history. Each day this week, I am going to blog about the cookbooks that newspaper food editors wrote or edited that I would add to the list. Today, I will address Florida cookbooks. I would add two: Jane Nickerson’s Florida Cookbook and Jeanne Voltz’s The Florida Cookbook: From Gulf Coast Gumbo to Key Lime Pie. Jane’s book was published in 1973 by the University Press of Florida. She…
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Green Bean Casserole & Food Editor Cecily Brownstone
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Los Vegas Food Editor Ann Valder
I was excited to come across another new (to me) newspaper food editor from the 1960s: Ann Valder of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. I went through a her papers a few years ago when I was researching Ruthe Deskin but had forgotten about Ann. Here is a link to her papers at UNLV. In this story, Ann explains that she will be testing budget-friendly recipes using primarily canned foods. I am adding Ann to my list of newspaper food editors and looking for her daughters to interview.
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NCA Presentation About Cecily Brownstone
I finished up the NCA convention yesterday with a presentation about Associated Press food editor Cecily Brownstone. You may not have heard of Cecily but she may be a part of your Thanksgiving dinner menu. This is from a Saveur story about the history of the green bean casserole: “According to Cindy Ayers, the vice president of Campbell’s Kitchens, the recipe was first tested in order to fulfill a request from Cecily Brownstone, the food editor at the Associated Press, who sought help in reproducing a green bean casserole she’d tasted at a press dinner. “We partnered with a lot of writers back then,” Ayers says. “It was a pretty…
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Green Bean Casserole & Food Editor Cecily Brownstone
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NCA Presentations About a Food Editor & an Advice Columnist
Jane nickerson from Kimberly Voss This morning I presented a paper at NCA Convention that Lance and I wrote about the first food editor at the New York Times: Jane Nickerson. The food news ran in the women’s section. Eleanor hart.nca from Kimberly Voss In the afternoon, we presented a paper about Eleanor Hart and her advice column that ran in the Miami Herald in the 1960s. It was named a top paper in its division. It was great to tell the stories of these important but often forgotten women.
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Cake Mixes and the “Egg Theory”
Chicago Tribune food editor Mary Meade (Ruth Ellen Church) often said that recipes for cakes were the most common request from her readers. When companies began producing cake mixes in the 1950s, some makers did not appreciate the efficiency of just adding water to the mix. A researcher for General Mills set out to find out what the program was and came up with the “egg theory.” The “egg theory” about cake mixes can be found in Laura Shapiro’s Something From the Oven. She wrote: “After interviewing women and exploring the emotions that surrounded cakes and baking. Ernest Dichter reported that the very simplicity of mixes – just add water…
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Food Studies Presentation: Ohio Food Editor History
