Newspaper Cookbooks: Day 5

Chicago Tribune food editor Ruth Ellen Church (who often wrote used the byline Mary Meade) wrote numerous cookbooks during her 38 years at the newspaper. They reflect changes in gender roles, technology and trends in food.

These were the ones that the New York Times mentioned in her obituary: "The Indispensable Guide for the Modern Cook" (1955), "The Burger Cookbook" (1967), "Entertaining With Wine" (1970) and "Mary Meade's Sausage Cookbook" (1967).

I like her Blender Cookbook and her cookbook about pancakes.

Newspaper Cookbooks: Day 4

Former Arizona Republic food editor Dorothee Polson's Pot au Feu Cook Book. The title is French for "pot on the fire."

The book is a mix of her witty weekly columns about her family and recipes. One of my favorites was Miami Beach Birthday Cake. Polson noted that she had received the recipe from the Baptist Hospital Auxiliary.

Here is a link to a recipe for Dorothee Polson's Rice Chile Verde.

Newspaper Cookbooks: Day 3

Another of my favorite newspaper cookbooks was edited by Milwaukee Journal Food Editor Peggy Daum: The Best Cook on the Block Cook Book.

It is full of selected recipes from the "Best Cook on the Block" series that ran in the Journal from October 1977 through September 1978.

In the introduction to the cookbook, Daum wrote:
"Milwaukee - with its strong ethnic tradition - is known for the good food of its restaurants. But that's only part of the good food in this area. Some of the best meals are served in the homes, where the tradition of good food fosters a tradition of good cooks."

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.

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 wrote it after many years as the food editor of the New York Times. She had relocated to Central Florida to raise her children. She went on to be the food editor of the Lakeland Ledger.

Jeanne's book (co-authored with Caroline Stuart) was published in 1993 and became a classic. In the 1950s, Jeanne was the food editor of the Miami Herald in the 1950s and the food editor of the Los Angeles Times in the 1960s. She eventually became the food editor at Woman's Day.

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.

Thinking of Betty Ewing

I was sad to see that Larry Hagman has died. Hagman was best known for playing J.R. Ewing on the longtime television show Dallas.

Houston women's page journalist and society reporter Betty Ewing was happy when the show became popular. Prior to that, many people mispronounced her last name as "Urine."

Lance and I went through Betty's papers several years ago at Texas Woman's University.

I included Betty in my recent book chapter about gossip and the women's pages.

Happy Thanksgiving

When Carol Sutton was the women's page editor of the Louisville Courier Journal in the late 1960s, she ran a lengthy story about poverty and starvation on Thanksgiving Day. She strove to include a mix of hard and soft news in the women's pages - what I think of as quilted news. Carol went on to become one of the first women to be the managing editor of a metropolitan newspaper not owned by her family. Here is my article about Carol.

Happy Thanksgiving. We are again spending the holiday at the beach.

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 common practice at the time.""

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.

Mad Men Presentation at NCA

Mad men from Kimberly Voss

Today I presented a paper today about women characters in the TV show Mad Men at the National Communication Association Convention. I also looked at the women who worked as advertising copywriters in the 1960s such as Jane Maas and Helen Gurley Brown. One of the women who went from women's magazines and women's pages to advertising and back was Poppy Cannon. She is best known for writing the Can Opener Cookbook although she was significant for many others reasons that I am researching.

This is the second time I have presented on a panel about gender and Mad Men along with some of my favorite people: Jane, Erika & Tracy.

Guest Blog Post: The Quotable Eugenia Sheppard

(Editor's note: This is a guest post by talented UCF journalism student Baileigh Johnson. She has interned at several publications including Marie Claire Magazine and Orlando Magazine. She shares my interest in fashion journalism. Here is her blog.)

On November 12, 1984, six years before I was born, and 28 years before I would learn her name, The New York Times ran an obituary, Section B, Page 15, titled “Eugenia Sheppard, Fashion Columnist, Dies.” This was the first article I ever read about Eugenia Sheppard, as well as the first indication of a thought that is now a reality: I had found my icon.

A research opportunity secured this thought, as I began spending a few hours out of every week reading up on the fashion writer. She is best known in the fashion world for her establishment of The Best Dressed List, and her uncanny ability to predict what was hot, (and what was not,) but I think it’s the writer’s voice I appreciate the most.

Maybe it was her brutal honesty, which came through with only the prettiest of words, that first intrigued me. She was clever, fresh, and quite the amusing read: she could insult a designer (or a socialite) in a way he or she might not mind bragging about.

“Eugenia wrote my collection was royal rubbish! She compared me to royalty I say!”

“Eugenia wrote I was hardly a best-dressed woman on a shoestring! I have been feeling rather thin lately!“

(Eugenia with Pierre Balmain, Pierre Cardin, Yves Saint Laurent, JL Scherrer, and Guy Laroche at Maxim’s. January 26, 1976.)

It seems as if you couldn’t help but love the part-time fan, part-time critic, but of course this was not always the case. The likes of Balenciaga, YSL and Givenchy did, at one point, ban Eugenia from their showrooms… perhaps she was feared. One example might be an article Eugenia wrote for The Montreal Gazette on July 25, 1963 where she took down two of the fashion industries beloveds within sentences of each other.

On Lanvin: “Lanvin is such a hot-headed, impulsive house. It’s always tearing things up.”

On Pierre Balmain: “He’s the only designer left with enough guts to put an artificial pink rose on an evening dress.”

However, her ability to write candidly, but never too crudely, legitimized every punch she threw, giving her credibility not only in the eyes of her readers, but her employers as well. She worked at over 80 publications during her career, a record hard to surpass even in today’s media-pushing industry.

(Eugenia Sheppard. WWD Archives.)

Humor also seems to be a steady-current throughout her work as well, most rendered through witty analogies. If her brutal honestly isn’t what she is most known for, her humorous analogies follow in close second. Some examples:

“What a lovely, feminine white collar you have, grandmother.” ‘The better to run for president in, my dear.” (Milwaukee Sentinel, February 4, 1964.)

“There’s a gypsy in every teacup this season… Let’s face it. The gypsy look has already been done to death all over the world.” (New York Magazine, March 31, 1969.)

“That old stately statuesque work is as dead as a dodo.” (The Montreal Gazette, October 6, 1964.)

(Eugenia with Bergdof Goodman’s Ira Neimark. January 24, 1978.)

Perhaps it was this honesty, cleverness and devoutness to her voice that earned her several awards throughout her career, including one dedicated to her posthumously by the CFDA: The Eugenia Sheppard Media Award for excellence in journalism. This year the award was given to two internet-based honorees (Scott Schuman and Garance Doré,) establishing that the web is, in fact, a mainstream for fashion journalism.

Always ahead of the times, I think Eugenia would approve.

(Eugenia Sheppard with Pauline Trigere, Diana Vreeland, and Nancy White.)

Marie Anderson & the Servicemen's Pier

The Veteran's Day activities yesterday reminded me of some of the work women's page journalists did stateside during World War II. Some went over to the news side of the newspaper - examples include Betty Ewing, Koky Dishon, Jeanne Voltz, Marjorie Paxson and Dorothy Jurney.

Other women were volunteers for the war effort - such as Marie Anderson, pictured above. She oversaw major projects at the Servicemen's Pier in Miami. Here is a story about her work in a 1943 Miami News story.

I wrote about Marie's work at the Pier in this book chapter about women in the Baby Boomer generation.

After the war, Anderson went to work at the Miami News and then the Miami Herald. She eventually won so many Penney-Missouri Awards (the top recognition for women's pages) that she was retired from the competition.

Happy Veteran's Day

A few of the women's page journalists I study were in the Service. For example, Ann Hamann served in the Army during World War II. After the war, she used the G.I. Bill to earn a master's degree in home economics. She went on to become a food editor of an Indiana newspaper.

In her retirement, she joined the Peace Corps I interviewed Ann's son last year and have collected several of her food columns.

Happy Veteran's Day!

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 and stir – made women feel self-indulgent for using them. There wasn’t enough work involved. His advice was to leave the homemaker something to do – for instance, add the eggs – whenever she made a cake from a mix. She would feel she had contributed something of herself, and the mindless nature of the task would no longer plague her.” (75-76)

With that background, I found it interesting that this new product not only doesn’t include eggs but the baker does not even have to stir.

They were delicious and I felt no guilt.

Jane Nickerson & Bread Research

I tracked down the New York Times story about bread that was cited in the book White Bread: A Social History of the Store-Bought Loaf. On page 143, the author was listed as "Janet Nickerson" - a mistake that was repeated in at least one other academic article. As is shown here, the author was Jane Nickerson who I will be presenting a paper on Nickerson next week at NCA.

101 Classic Cookbooks

I recently received the wonderful 101 Great Cookbooks in the mail. It includes an interesting history of cookbooks along with 501 classic recipe.

The book was produced by the Fales Library at New York University. The cookbook collection is largely based on the donation by Cecily Brownstone - the longtime food writer for the Associated Press.

In the introduction to the book, the Fales Library Director Marvin Taylor wrote about a meeting he and Marion Nestle had with Cecily: "Cecily was bedridden at the time, but we did get to meet and speak with her. She was a small woman with a sharp mind and quick wit." (p 13)

Cecily Brownstone's 1972 Associated Press Cookbook is featured on pages 158-159. In the introduction to the cookbook, the New York Times food editor Jane Nickerson is mentioned.

I am presenting papers about Brownstone & Nickerson next week at the NCA convention.

Out On Assignment Book Review

Here is my book review of Alica Fahs' book Out On Assignment: Newspaper Women and the Making of the Modern Public Sphere. The review was published in Journalism History.

I liked the book and appreciate the increased scholarship about newspaper women. I would have liked to see more of an appreciation about the women's pages and soft news.

Studying the Pillsbury Bake-off

I was excited to see that writer Laura Shapiro will be speaking at an event for the Culinary Historians of Southern California. She will be speaking about Rethinking the Pillsbury Bake-Off.

I have been writing about the Pillsbury Bake-Off, too. First, I have looked at the ways in which newspaper food editors covered competitive cooking - from chili cook-offs to newspaper-sponsored Christmas cookie contests.

Second, I have looked at newspaper food editors as judges in these culinary contests where these (almost always) women were considered authorities.

Third, I have looked at some of the complexities the newspaper food editors faced in balancing news and ethics. For example, in 1971, at the Louisville Courier Journal, the editor noted that the $25,000 prize at the time made the Pillsbury Bake-off newsworthy. Yet, the newspaper did not want to provide free publicity so the name "Pillsbury" was not used in the story. Interestingly, the statement was made at a food editors conference that Pillsbury sponsored. Here is a story about it.

Jane Nickerson wrote about the first Pillsbury Bake-Off - before it even had that name. I am presenting a paper about Nickerson next week at the National Communication Association convention.

New Jane Nickerson Reference

I found this great reference to Jane Nickerson, the first food editor at the New York Times, in this posting from Believer Magazine. The author wrote: "Even Jane Nickerson, the New York Times' influential food editor, replicated the unbreachable divide between gourmet taste and industrial fortitude. In an article written during the Rockford study, Nickerson compared American white bread to its European counterparts. Opposition to American white bread, she argued, was divided into two camps, one based on health and the other on flavor.

The epicurean critics held a special place in her heart; indeed, they were incontrovertibly correct. Fluffy, limp-crusted, bland industrial white bread couldn't hold a candle to crisp, nutty-flavored French and Italian breads. Alas—and one can almost hear her sigh echoing across the decades—"health values deal with fact while flavor considerations deal with opinion." Thus, in the end, readers were better off buying industrial white bread, for their family's health."

The author, Aaron Bobrow-Strain, wrote an interesting article in Food and Foodways about the history of white bread. It's called: "Making White Bread by the Bomb's Early Light: Anxiety, Abundance, and Industrial Food Power in the Early Cold War."