Food & Drink: Remembered Joy

FOOD & DRINK

More than 6,000,000 Americans are eating better today because one hired girl, almost 65 years ago, could not cook.

The hired girl could manage fairly well on plain things, but for one young St. Louis bride that was not enough. Irma Rombauer had sampled some of the pleasures of European cooking when her father served for several years as American consul in Bremen. In those turn-of-the-century days, directions for more exotic dishes were almost always in French, and began: “Make a white sauce, stir until ready.” Or: “Simmer your leftover grouse for 36 hours and season to taste with duxelles.” Irma Rombauer had no idea how to make a white sauce or what duxelles was—even her young lawyer husband, a longtime camper, could cook better than she could—but she set out to find out.

A Staple Like Salt. She begged what recipes she could from her family and methodically added to that basic list whatever could be garnered from gourmet columns of the day or pried out of restaurant chefs and neighboring hostesses. Aware that she did not possess the gift of cooking by instinct, she took care to note measures and ingredients in explicit detail, never said “some butter” when she meant 4½ tablespoons or “cook until done” when she could define “done” as taking 2¼ hours. In 1931, when her children left home to get married, they took with them a compendium of mother’s recipes which so dazzled her friends that they urged her to publish it privately. The experienced cooks received it with respect, and the beginners, to whom “basting” was something done with a needle and thread, were pathetically grateful. Bobbs-Merrill, equally impressed, brought it out publicly four years later. Since then, The Joy of Cooking has sold more than 6,000,000 copies to become the second largest-selling cookbook in the world* and as familiar a staple in the American kitchen as salt.

Author Rombauer, widowed since her husband’s death in 1930, became a celebrity of sorts. Fan mail, at the rate of 2,000 letters a day, streamed into her St. Louis home; the Cordon Bleu and London’s Flower School brought out an English edition of The Joy of Cooking; the story goes that an eloping bride sent her family a cable—AM MARRIED. ORDER ANNOUNCEMENTS. SEND ME ROMBAUER COOKBOOK AT ONCE.

Herbs in the Ozarks. Interested in art and opera, Mrs. Rombauer was conspicuous in nearly every cultural enterprise the city offered, served as president of St. Louis’ Women’s Symphony Society. Once a week she retired to her country cottage in the Ozarks, where she grew herbs and worked on revisions of her book; there she kept drinks and sauces on hand, but welcomed unannounced friends for dinner only if they arrived with staples in hand.

Eight years ago, a stroke curtailed her activities and impaired her speech. She took to her bed in her city apartment, where a staff of four Negro maids attended her, prepared the new dishes she devised, and brought them to her for tasting and correction. Last week, at the age of 83, Irma Rombauer died, leaving two children, two grandchildren, and legions of cooks to whom her book was—and is—the kitchen bible.

* No. 1: The Better Homes and Gardens Cook Book, now loose-leaf and four-color illustrated, which has sold some 8.600.000 copies since its first edition was published in 1930.