Joy of The Joy: How to play favourites

The Joy of Cooking changed through the years to reflect new developments in American kitchens.

To say that The Joy of Cooking is an American classic is slightly misleading.

It’s more accurate to say that it is an institution, shifting its form, adapting to the way Americans live and eat. With each edition new recipes are added, old ones dropped, almost all of them revised. Even entire sections have changed substantially. In the 1997 edition an encyclopaedic section called ‘Know Your Ingredients’ was eliminated and the information spread throughout the rest of the book. And in 1943, Irma Rombauer altered the recipes to reflect the war rationing, which made that edition a very useful and successful book indeed.

So it is entirely possible to have a ‘favorite’ Joy of Cooking. In this final post of the series I’m having a look at the different Joys through the twentieth century, how they reflected the times and how they may still be worth a look.

1931

Irma’s first edition, self-published. About 450 recipes. She included what one historian calls ‘casual culinary chat’, making the book not just easy to cook from but easy to read. There was a facsimile reprint done in 1998. Fantastic dragon illustration on dust jacket.

1936

Within a few years The Joy of Cooking had become a local sensation and was spreading to other parts of the nation. Irma had the momentum to get a publisher, so she revised her book, inventing the unique recipe format that has been a Joy hallmark since.

1943

Bit of trivia for you: this was Julia Child’s first cookbook. To this edition were added a number of quick recipes and substitutions for rationed items then hard to find. This was the first American cookbook to make serious use of soy. Technology developments of this decade begin to leave marks on – or rather appliances in – the American household.

1951

Times were a-changing. After the war refrigeration spread into the American heartland and new ways of eating followed.

As Irma grew older her daughter Marion Rombauer Becker began to take a hand in the production of Joy. Marion brings an interest in gardening, herbs, and wholefoods (she had an eight-acre homestead in Cincinnatti), as well as related philosophies on health and eating. The index was considered incomplete and was revised for the 1953 reprint.

1962

Now double the size of the 1931 edition. Following a series of strokes, Irma had died and Marion took on the book’s production. A number of other authors left their fingerprints on this edition, not it seems to the knowledge of the one whose name is on the cover. The result was one not very coherent book and one very irritated Marion Rombauer Becker. Becker made so many corrections for the 1963 reprint that the type had to be reset.

1975

“What tail? I don’t see a tail. Please don’t eat me!” (The 1975 Joy of Cooking included an illustrated guide to the art of beaver-skinning and, yep, a recipe for Beaver Tail.)

This is the most popular edition: if you want the authentic, good ol’ American classic, go find a nice 1975 Joy. It says something about the monumental quality of this edition (the one my mother owned when I was a lad) that it is the longest-lived of any Joy: it would not be revised for over twenty years. Marion saw her aims more fully realised in the 1975 than in the 1962 (or 1963). Raw and natural foods abounded, and there was a special section explaining the uses and qualities of common ingredients.

There are some quirks. Marion did not, for example, entirely trust microwaves. While menu ideas had been familiar since the 1936 edition, here there were some for those inevitable ‘backpacking’ dinners on the trails. This is also the Joy that tells you how to prepare beaver tail and skin a squirrel. Oh, the seventies.

1997

Marion died and Ethan Becker took up the reins, releasing a substantially new edition of Joy in 1997. (The list of authors grows lengthy.) American cookery had changed quite a bit – thanks in part to women like Julia Child and Martha Stewart – and the new emphasis is on freshness, convenience and health. Ethan brought in more global tastes and expanded the descriptions of ingredients. Unfortunately, the decision was also made to nix the handy section called ‘Know Your Ingredients’ (which really could be a useful book in itself) and scatter that information throughout the other sections. And, roll in your grave Marion: no canning section.

2006

Weighing in at 1152 pages is the 75th Anniversary edition, which I have on the desk in front of me. The editors (who include yet more family) restored the ‘Know Your Ingredients’ section and employed a number of contributing ‘experts’, including Irma’s biographer Anne Mendelsohn who has written a very good, short history of the book. It is no compliment to the 1990s that this edition is not based on the 1997 one – generally seen as a regrettable lapse of judgement – but rather on Marion’s masterpiece from 1975.

The Joy of Cooking, 75th Anniversary Edition, by Irma Rombauer, et al. (Scribner, 2006)
In addition to hundreds of brand-new recipes, this JOY is filled with many recipes from all previous editions, retested and reinvented for today’s tastes. This edition restores the personality of the book, reinstating popular elements such as the grab-bag Brunch, Lunch, and Supper chapter and chapters on frozen desserts, cocktails, beer and wine, canning, salting, smoking, jellies and preserves, pickles and relishes, and freezing foods.

Joy of The Joy: How to grieve

‘Whenever I leave home and begin to move about, I am appalled to find how many people with a desire to write feel impelled to share their emotions with the general public.’

The Great Depression upset certain aspects of American life.

Such was Irma Rombauer’s unusual start to the 1931 The Joy of Cooking. Strong emotion was no stranger to her family – she had lost her first child within a year of the birth – or indeed to many American families at that time. The Great Depression seeped like poisonous gas into cities and homes. One of these homes was Irma’s, though not in the direct manner.

[This post continues a series on the classic American cookery book, The Joy of Cooking, by Irma Rombauer, et al.]

Edgar Rombauer, a lawyer and an outdoorsman, did well enough in the decades between his marriage and his death, except for recurring episodes of depression. By 1930, he and Irma had raised to adulthood a son and a daughter. Irma had made herself well-connected in St. Louis society, sat on the right committees, joined the right causes; the family holidayed in Michigan and South Carolina; they had spent considerable time in Europe. But on February 3, 1930, Edgar made a hole in his head and a widow of his wife. His suicide was unexpected and devastating to those who loved him. But for Irma, alone and unemployed, emotions were no substitute for lost purpose and lost income.

Spot the marketable skills.

What we do to transform grief, for it must be transformed if we are to live again. I don’t know how the idea came to Irma Rombauer to transform her recipe box into a book, and not just that, but to pour into the book her own spirit. It seems the idea of ordinary employment was out of the question. Perhaps she wouldn’t have been able to find a job even if she had the right sort of skills and the inclination. She had lived the life of an upper-middle-class wife; she was, should we need a model, Margot Leadbetter. (Irma was even president of the Women’s Committee of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra Board of Directors.) She knew how to cook and to entertain.

She had no professional training, no professional experience – nothing, in short, that would qualify her to be the author of such a book. Who would, in a down market, become the publisher of just-another-housewife? What bookstore would stock and sell the book? Self-publishing was expensive; Irma had only a small savings in the bank and no reasonable expectation of employment. Why take the risk of writing it at all?

“Stand facing the stove”

In Irma’s famous words, if you want to cook, or have to cook, the first step is to ‘Stand facing the stove’. How simple an instruction, and yet how difficult it might have been for her in those months following Edgar’s death. Was The Joy of Cooking Irma’s way of grieving the abrupt loss of her husband, the sudden shift to meals for one? ‘For thirty odd years,’ she wrote in the prologue, ‘I have enjoyed cooking as an avocation …. In this practical outgrowth of a pleasant experience, I have attempted to make palatable dishes with simple means and to lift everyday cooking out of the commonplace.’ And out of the commonplace the love and commitment, the pleasant family life, the everyday tasks made sacred, joyful, in their regularity.

Her daughter Marion designed and illustrated the book, but the clever recipe format of later editions had not yet been thought of. For the next several years The Joy of Cooking would be sold by mail order out of Irma’s small apartment. The Rombauer savings – $6,000 – went into the first printing, of 3,000 copies, by a sign company. (It was their first book.) This recognised American classic, which has been called the most important cookery tome of the twentieth century, began its existence as a small-run, self-published recipe box.

The Joy of Cooking, 75th Anniversary Edition, by Irma Rombauer, et al. (Scribner, 2006)
In addition to hundreds of brand-new recipes, this JOY is filled with many recipes from all previous editions, retested and reinvented for today’s tastes. This edition restores the personality of the book, reinstating popular elements such as the grab-bag Brunch, Lunch, and Supper chapter and chapters on frozen desserts, cocktails, beer and wine, canning, salting, smoking, jellies and preserves, pickles and relishes, and freezing foods.

Joy of The Joy: How to slay a dragon

The Joy of Cooking, 1931 edition. Very few of these still out there.

Welcome back to our series on that classic American cookbook, The Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer. Last post (How to Enjoy a Wild Sheep) I promised you a dragon or, precisely, a cookbook with a dragon on its cover.

Nowadays, and in fact since the 1960s, you have a standard Joy-of-Cooking cover. It’s basic, clean, iconic. It has ‘Joy’ in extra big modern type, below it ‘of cooking’ all in capitals, and the red/white palette of Italian restaurants. It’s the cover of a book that knows it’s a classic.

The first edition (1931) was something else. On it, a cut-out illustration of a woman, head encircled by a halo, body ensnared by a great dragon. She is beating her captor with a mop or broom; she is St Martha of Bethany. Look at the cover, look at it. Why?

Martha is the patron saint of cooks and servants, a distinction given her because of this part of the book of John (12:1-2)…

Six days before the Passover, Jesus came to Bethany, where Lazarus lived, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. Here a dinner was given in Jesus’ honor. Martha served, while Lazarus was among those reclining at the table with him.

Yep. And this part of the book of Luke (10:38-40)…

Velazquez, Christ in the House of Martha and Mary, London, National Gallery, c. 1620

As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village [Bethany] where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”

Set the bar high, did Martha, patron saint of barely mentionable domestics and whining scullions. So. The Joy of Cooking cover illustration of 1931 did not draw on the Biblical Martha. Her real claim to fame and cover (that dragon run-in) can be traced to the popular legend concerning the later part of her life, the part to which we now turn.

Of Cooks and Dragons

St Martha wins the hearts and minds (and presumably souls) of the local peasants, by taming their terrible dragon.

According to the Legenda sanctorum, a medieval collection of saints’ lives, Martha, unmarried, left Judea circa the year 48 for the south of France. It was a business trip. Alongside her sister and brother she began reforming the local polytheists and performing the odd act of charity. “Right facound of speech, and courteous and gracious” is how she projected herself, already an improvement over the earlier Martha, but not yet dragon-bopping heroical.

When Martha went to Tarascon she met with tales of ‘a great dragon’, a menace of such anatomical perversity that its description alone recalls the whole of creation:

‘Half beast and half fish, greater than an ox, longer than an horse, having teeth sharp as a sword, and horned on either side, head like a lion, tail like a serpent … with two wings on either side … strong as twelve lions or bears.’

When pursued the beast had a nasty habit of shitting, in quantities measurable by the acre, putrid streams of white-hot lava. Surely, cried the townsfolk, but a wee volcano-arsed dragon will be no match for that Lord of yours. So Martha set out.

The fearsome dragon of Tarascon, known as the tarasque. Here shown feeding.

She happened upon the creature in the woods between Arles and Avignon, where it was casually devouring a man (presumably without a marinade?) and not paying anything else much attention. A natural dragon-hunter, Martha thrust a cross at the beast and squirted it with some holy water. It submitted to her instantly and she bound up its limbs with her girdle, which she had removed for that purpose. (No mention of any mop.) After presenting her captive to the people of nearby Tarascon, who quickly set upon it with spears, St. Martha decided to settle permanently in that place as a sort of hermit-nun (i.e., she retired to Provence).

Now see if this makes sense to you. Our cookbook-cover heroine finished the rest of her days ‘daily occupied in prayers and in fastings … She eschewed flesh and all fat meat, eggs, cheese and wine; she ate but once a day.’ Martha may have run the best diner in Bethany, but she ended up a hermited, teetotaling, subsistence-level vegan. Thus, dubious, methinks, is become her bid for patron saint of cooks and servants.

But Irma Rombauer – ‘precocious’, according to her family, and agile of mind – was not a-feared of dubious bids. See what I mean as this series continues.

The Joy of Cooking, 75th Anniversary Edition, by Irma Rombauer, et al. (Scribner, 2006)
In addition to hundreds of brand-new recipes, this JOY is filled with many recipes from all previous editions, retested and reinvented for today’s tastes. This edition restores the personality of the book, reinstating popular elements such as the grab-bag Brunch, Lunch, and Supper chapter and chapters on frozen desserts, cocktails, beer and wine, canning, salting, smoking, jellies and preserves, pickles and relishes, and freezing foods.

Joy of The Joy: How to enjoy a wild sheep

Bighorn sheep, Joshua Tree National Park

“Wild sheep and goats live in rugged terrain in the western part of the United States and Canada. They are plentiful, but one species of the bighorn sheep is currently considered endangered. There are four kinds of wild sheep that are called bighorn: Rocky Mountain, desert, Dall’s, and stone sheep. The desert bighorn is on the endangered list (not from overhunting, but from loss of habitat)….”

The things you learn from American cookbooks, eh? That’s right, cookbooks. You see, the author goes on:

Wild sheep and goat are both delicious; the meat is distinct and flavorful yet mild. Best cooked on the bone, the meat has a texture like lamb. Any goat – from the mountain goats we hunt to the domestic goats of the Caribbean – can be used in the recipe below…

But I won’t spoil the fun for you. Then again, it’s hard to resist revealing another national secret, just entre nous. On the same page you’ll find below the heading “About Bear”:

All bear is edible. Remove all fat and bone from bear meat and freeze or render. If rendered at once, it is prized for cooking; if held, it is good only for boot grease.

Rather Extraordinary

Goldilocks knew all about cooking bears.

Don’t tell anyone about this. At one time, perhaps still today, these recipes could be found in most American kitchens – though this may be news to the cook. They are published in The Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer, Marion Rombauer Becker, et al, America’s most enduring cookbook. Irma Rombauer’s “amateur but highly evolved enthusiasm,” wrote Christopher Kimball, founder and editor of Cook’s Illustrated, was “a breath of fresh air after the slightly earlier era of culinary dowagers Fannie Farmer, Mrs. Beeton, and Marion Harland.”

Since 1936 The Joy (shorthand) has been continuously in print. It has sold more than 18 million copies. Its energy and confidence make it as essential for the beginner as for the seasoned chef. It is, they say, the book your grandmother learnt to cook from (and still uses). Classic.

Yet this ordinary piece of American life turns out upon close inspection to be rather extraordinary. It isn’t just the way the recipes read like stories or the presupposition that what is cooked has first to be shot, skinned, plucked, and “rendered”. It isn’t just style: the cook’s love of food spiced with a dash of dogma and sugared with the teacher’s wonder. In this series of posts, we’ll discover how it is that just a handful of first editions had a dragon on the cover, the unlikely publishing history, the teaching and preaching, and the social upheaval that make America’s classic cookbook what it is.

The Joy of Cooking, 75th Anniversary Edition, by Irma Rombauer, et al. (Scribner, 2006)
In addition to hundreds of brand-new recipes, this JOY is filled with many recipes from all previous editions, retested and reinvented for today’s tastes. This edition restores the personality of the book, reinstating popular elements such as the grab-bag Brunch, Lunch, and Supper chapter and chapters on frozen desserts, cocktails, beer and wine, canning, salting, smoking, jellies and preserves, pickles and relishes, and freezing foods.