THE JOY OF COOKING, by Irma S. Rombauer (1931)
In 1931 Rombauer was a newly widowed 54-year-old socialite and homemaker from St. Louis. She was not a professional writer nor even much of a cook. That’s probably why her family and friends were astonished when she decided to take the $3,000 left to her by her husband and self-publish a cookbook. She called it The Joy of Cooking. In the more than 75 years since its first printing, Joy has gone through eight editions, sold more than 18 million copies, and become one of America’s all-time most beloved and relied-upon cookbooks.
Rombauer’s innovation was first to sweep aside the prevailing approaches to cooking—that it was laborious, exacting, an art, a science, and a challenge to the ordinary housewife. The chatty tone of her writing welcomed readers and reminded them that food was supposed to be a joy, not a burden. At the same time, she was down to earth: she specified precise weights and measures and correct pan sizes for baking, and used readily available ingredients. She cared about the ordinary homemaker’s food budget and recognized that women cooked both to feed their families and to entertain their friends. They needed simple, speedy recipes (such as applesauce and creamed chicken) as well as fancy ones. And she wrote for everyone: There are recipes for squirrel, porcupine, raccoon, and armadillo, as well as recipes for sachertorte, soufflé Grand Marnier, and lobster thermidor. Third, she had an original approach to recipe instructions: She integrated the ingredients into the recipe steps and made the process of preparation as clear and straightforward as possible. Rombauer spoke to women as they actually were, not as some hoity-toity chef thought they should be. Women loved her book.
Napoleon was only 26 years old when he took command of the French Army in Italy.
The Joy of Cooking was a family business. Rombauer’s daughter, Marion Rombauer Becker, illustrated the first edition and joined her mother in the production of later editions. After Rombauer died in 1962, Becker took over the next few Joys, including the 1975 edition—the most popular ever. After Becker died in 1976, there was no new edition of the book…until 1997’s All New, All Purpose Joy of Cooking. For that one, the publisher and the supervising editor made substantial changes to the original, generating a storm of criticism over what had been eliminated (whole chapters on ice cream and pickling) and how the book had lost its unique character. Marion’s son Ethan Becker was reportedly very unhappy with the 1997 edition, but got the chance to repair the damage in 2006: The 75th-anniversary edition (based on the 1975 edition) restored traditional recipes…and popular approval.
THE MOOSEWOOD COOKBOOK, by Mollie Katzen (1977) Ithaca, New York, is the home of the Moosewood Restaurant, started in 1973 by the Moosewood Collective, a group of idealistic friends who wanted to create imaginative vegetarian meals using natural ingredients. Mollie Katzen was one of the founding members. Vegetarianism was a new and intriguing concept to many Americans, and when the restaurant prospered (even in that small college town), Katzen began to compile and adapt its recipes for home cooks. The first edition of The Moosewood Cookbook, hand-lettered and illustrated by Katzen, was privately published in 1974; in 1977 a small publisher, Ten-Speed Press, brought out the next edition—and had the good sense to keep the hand-lettering and illustrations that gave the book its uniqueness. Suddenly this “new” kind of cooking was accessible and even fun (not to mention health-oriented and Earth-friendly), and Katzen was largely responsible for making “vegetarian” a household word. Moosewood was followed by The Enchanted Broccoli Forest, and somewhere along the way Katzen had to fight a legal battle with the Moosewood Collective for the right to use the Moosewood name. (They wound up with the right to use the name too; they don’t sell her books at the restaurant or on their Web site). But Mollie Katzen isn’t complaining: she has more than six million books in print, she’s been host of several PBS TV cooking series, and in 2007 The Moosewood Cookbook was inducted into the James Beard Cookbook Hall of Fame.
The average disposable diaper can hold up to 7 pounds of liquid.
MASTERING THE ART OF FRENCH COOKING, by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle, and Simone Beck (1961)
Almost everyone knows Julia Child. But how did she get to be a culinary icon? In 1948 Julia and Paul Child went to live in Paris when Paul was posted to the American Embassy there, and Julia fell passionately in love with French food. She started taking classes at Le Cordon Bleu, the world’s premier cooking school, and spent her days mastering the recipes that comprised the basics of classic French cuisine. It seemed to her and her two close friends, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle, that they could write a cookbook that would demystify French cooking for Americans. Convinced that they had a valuable contribution to make, they tested recipes repeatedly, refined techniques, wrote extensive information on equipment and fresh ingredients, and suggested menus and appropriate wines. The huge manuscript took 10 years to complete.
The three women had many difficulties with prospective publishers until the manuscript reached the hands of Judith Jones, a young editor at Alfred A. Knopf, who “got it.” At a time when popular American cookbooks were mostly of the Betty Crocker’s Picture Cookbook variety and the use of convenience foods (canned, frozen, and packaged) was standard practice, Jones felt that Americans might be ready for this groundbreaking book. She threw her full support behind it, and it was finally published in 1961. Jones was right. The first printing sold out immediately; within a year there were 100,000 copies in print.
A year after the book’s publication, Child became public television’s French Chef—giving her (eventually) national exposure and a dedicated following. She wrote 16 more cookbooks, won Emmy awards, and received the French Legion of Honor and the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Declaring Child a “national treasure,” the Smithsonian Institution transported her entire Cambridge, Massachusetts, kitchen to Washington, D.C., and reassembled it in the National Museum of American History.
THE I HATE TO COOK BOOK, by Peg Bracken (1960) When advertising copywriter Peg Bracken showed her husband (also a writer) the manuscript of The I Hate to Cook Book, he said, “It stinks.” Their marriage didn’t last, but the book did—and went on to sell more than three million copies.
The Declaration of Independence, Constitution, and Bill of Rights were secretly stored in Fort Knox to keep them safe during World War II.
It all started in the 1950s, when Bracken and a group of Portland, Oregon, women friends who called themselves “The Hags” used to meet after work to down martinis and do a little griping about their lives. “At that time,” she wrote, “we were all unusually bored with what we had been cooking and, therefore, eating. For variety’s sake, we decided to pool our ignorance, tell each other our shabby little secrets, and toss into the pot the recipes we swear by instead of at.” What struck people most about about The I Hate to Cook Book was that it was witty, funny, and totally irreverent about the sacred subject of cooking. Bracken hated spending time in the kitchen and wasn’t afraid to say so—and it turned out that thousands of other women felt the same way. The recipes relied on the use of convenience foods (her recipe for “Sweep Steak,” for example, was pot roast cooked with a can of cream of mushroom soup), avoided complicated techniques, and took very little preparation time. She told women—in a tone both friendly and unapologetic—that it was time to stop feeling guilty about dinner and get on with their lives. That was revolutionary for the 1960s. Sales of The I Hate to Cook Book topped 3 million copies, which encouraged Bracken to write other books, including the equally irreverent I Hate to Housekeep Book (1962) and I Try to Behave Myself (1964), an etiquette manual. And in keeping with her motto of “keep it simple” she became the spokeswoman for Birds-Eye frozen vegetables in the late 1960s.
NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM
One night in May 2008, two security cameras suddenly stopped working at the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver, British Columbia. Shortly after that, the security guard received a call from the alarm company informing him that there was a problem with the security system a
nd to ignore any automated alarms that may occur…which he did. Bad move: The next morning, the guard discovered that 15 art pieces, worth $2 million, were gone. And the alarm company had no records of any calls leaving their headquarters.
REEL DUMB
Each year the Golden Raspberry Foundation “honors” the year’s worst movies. Here are some memorable lines from Worst Picture winners.
Tom Green: Are you okay?
Marisa Coughlan: I’d be a lot better if you beat my legs with these bamboo reeds.
—Freddy Got Fingered
“That’s such a good name.
‘Tom Lone’ rhymes with cone, bone, phone. Not that rhyming’s all that important.”
—Alex Borstein, Catwoman
“I feel like a dolphin who’s never tasted melted snow. What does the color blue taste like?”
—Andie MacDowell, Hudson Hawk
“We may have lost the war, but we haven’t lost our sense of humor—even when we lose a lung, a spleen, a bladder, 35 feet of small intestine, two legs, and our ability to reproduce.”
—Kenneth Branagh, Wild Wild West
“In the way of love, we’re kindergarten toddlers.”
—Bo Derek, Bolero
Prince: I must have that disease, what’s the name of it? Kristin Scott Thomas: It’s called stupid.
—Under the Cherry Moon
“I am going to make you as happy as a baby Psychlo on a straight diet of kerbango.”
—Kelly Preston, Battlefield Earth
Opening title card: “This is not a documentary of the war in Korea but a dramatized study of the effect of war on a group of people. Where dramatic license has been deemed necessary, the authors have taken advantage of this license to dramatize the subject.”
—Inchon
“How much mail can a dead postman deliver?”
—Kevin Costner, The Postman
“I’m so terrifical, I have my own toll-free number: 1-800-UNBELIEVABLE.”
—Andrew “Dice” Clay, The Adventures of Ford Fairlane
Mole rats are the only mammals that live in colonies, like ants, with a single fertile queen.
OOPS!
Life is full of little slips-ups. Here are a few more tales of seemingly simple things that went very, very wrong.
YOU NAME IT
A computer’s spell-checking program only works when there’s a human around to double-check that it’s not turning people’s names into words. Otherwise it could lead to a mishap like the 2008 Middletown Area (Pennsylvania) High School Yearbook. Only four pages were affected, but that came as no relief to Kathy Airbag (Carbaugh), Max Supernova (Zupanovic), and Alexandria Impolite (Ippolito), who said, “It was kind of funny but kind of rude at the same time.” The printing company sent out little stickers printed with the correct names, reassuring the students that “this kind of thing happens all the time.”
GUNPLAY
In 2007 Robert Glasser and Joey Acosta, two friends from Chaparral, New Mexico, wanted to get matching gun tattoos. For an added touch of realism, the 22-year-olds decided to trace the patterns onto each other’s arms using a .357 Magnum. Bad idea: The gun was loaded. It fired as Glasser was tracing the trigger; the bullet travelled through his hand and then hit Acosta’s arm. Both men survived. (No word on whether they ever got the tattoos.)
THROW IN THE TOWEL
A 49-year-old Japanese man (name not released) went to his doctor complaining of abdominal pain. After an MRI, he was informed that he had a large tumor that had to be removed immediately. When the surgeons went in, they did find a large lump in his abdomen, but it wasn’t a tumor. It was a surgical towel. The doctors described it as “greenish blue, although we are not sure about its original color.” It turned out that the towel had been in the man’s gut for 25 years—doctors treating him for an ulcer in 1983 accidentally left it there. Officials from the hospital that performed the 1983 surgery apologized for the goof and promised to pay all of the man’s medical bills. Amazingly, he isn’t suing.
There are more than 200 parts in a typical telephone.
MORE LOST ARTS
On page 44 we told about works of drama and film that were lost to the ravages of time. But they aren’t the only artworks that have vanished. Tragically, books, paintings—and even classic TV programs—sometimes suffer the same fate.
TELEVISION
Programs from television’s early years, the 1940s and 1950s, weren’t saved…because there were few ways to preserve them. Videotape was introduced in 1956, but it was so expensive that networks recycled tapes dozens of times. (A show would be recorded on the tape in the studio, the show was broadcast, then the tape was erased and reused.) Sometimes a process called kinescoping or telerecording was used in order to save shows for later broadcast—a video monitor was filmed by a 35mm camera—but many early shows are gone for good. Here are some notable losses:
• The Tonight Show. The first 10 years of Johnny Carson’s tenure as host of the classic late-night show (1962–1972) were recorded and aired using recycled videotapes. Result: Just a handful of segments—Carson’s personal favorites, saved only at his request—survive. The rest of the entire 10 years is gone.
• Beulah. This sitcom aired on ABC from 1950 to 1953. It was the first television show to star an African-American performer. Of the 87 episodes, 80 are lost.
• DuMont shows. When the DuMont Network, one of the first broadcasters, went out of business in 1956, ABC took over many of its facilities. Needing warehouse space, ABC employees dumped hundreds of DuMont kinescopes—nearly its entire 1947–1956 output—into Upper New York Bay in the early 1970s, forever losing footage of early TV shows such as Your Show of Shows with Sid Caesar, and Captain Video, which was the first science-fiction program. The network produced more than 300 episodes of Mary Kay and Johnny, considered by historians to be the first TV sitcom, but only a few minutes of footage survive.
• Soap operas. Networks didn’t begin to save soap episodes until the late 1970s, believing there was zero replay value in serialized dramas. For example, only the 1982–1986 episodes of Search For Tomorrow were saved—the episodes from 1951 to the early ’80s are long gone.
• Game shows. The networks didn’t think game shows had any replay value, either. Only a few episodes each of the original black-and-white runs of To Tell the Truth, Concentration, Match Game, and The Price is Right still exist. ABC’s $10,000 (later $20,000) Pyramid ran from 1973 to 1980, but just 15 episodes survive. At least three game shows from the ’60s and ’70s are entirely gone, with not even a pilot episode surviving: Split Second, Second Chance, and Snap Judgment (hosted by Ed McMahon).
• Jeopardy! Videotapes were used over and over to capture each day’s broadcast of the original run of Jeopardy!, hosted by Art Fleming in the 1960s and 1970s. Only four episodes are still around.
• Doctor Who. In 1975 the BBC needed to make room in its vault, so it removed and erased thousands of tapes. Network executives realized they’d made a mistake in 1980, when the BBC science-fiction series Doctor Who became a hit on American public television. In trying to round up the show’s earliest episodes from 1963 (so as to sell them to PBS), the BBC found out they’d taped over 108 episodes of Doctor Who.
• News and sports. The BBC’s coverage of the 1969 Moon landing was taped over. CBS and NBC both broadcast Super Bowl I, and neither kept the tape. Parts of nearly all World Series broadcasts between 1947 (when they began) and 1974 are missing. For example, only the first few innings of one game of the 1955 Series remains, and the 1947–1949 broadcasts are gone entirely.
The day of the week on which Americans are least likely to eat out: Monday.
BOOKS
• Sylvia Plath. Plath was primarily a poet but is best known for The Bell Jar, a thinly veiled fictionalization of her descent into severe depression. Plath committed suicide a month after The Bell Jar was published in 1963. After her death, the manuscript for her unpublished second novel, Double Take, disappeared.
• James Joyce. The Irish author (Ulysses, Finnegans Wake) wrote a play called A Brilliant Career. He hated it, his publisher hated it, and so Joyce burned it.
• T. E. Lawrence. Lawrence (the real-life “Lawrence of Arabia”) wrote a 10-volume memoir called Seven Pillars of Wisdom about his time fighting in the Arab Revolt of 1916–1918. In 1919 Lawrence accidentally left his only copy on a bench in a train station in Reading, England, and had to rewrite it from memory.
• Herman Melville. Now it’s a classic, but Melville’s Moby-Dick was not well received during the author’s lifetime. In fact, Harper & Brothers, Melville’s publisher, rejected his follow-up novel, Isle of the Cross, in 1853. It has since been lost.
• Ernest Hemingway. In 1922 Hemingway’s wife, Elizabeth Richardson, was traveling with a suitcase carrying all of Hemingway’s unpublished fiction to that point: 20 short stories and a nearly finished novel about World War I. The suitcase was stolen and never recovered.
In Saudi Arabia, it is considered polite to decline any invitation at least once before accepting.
ART AND SCULPTURE
• Le Peintre (1963). This Picasso painting was in the cargo bay of Swissair Flight 111 when it crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near Nova Scotia in September 1998. Le Peintre was never recovered.
• Still Life: Vase with Five Sunflowers (1888). Vincent Van Gogh painted a series of six still lifes depicting various numbers of sunflowers in vases. This one is gone. Once in the collection of a Japanese art collector, it burned up in an American air raid during World War II. Around the same time, Van Gogh’s The Painter on His Way to Work and The Park at Arles with the Entrance Seen Through Trees were also destroyed in World War II bombing raids in Berlin.
Uncle John’s Unsinkable Bathroom Reader Page 43