by Susan Marks
Chapter Two Betty Goes Hollywood
Rocks
They should be soft, not hard! To keep them that way, store in air-tight container.
1 cup soft shortening (half butter)
1½ cups brown sugar (packed)
3 eggs
3 cups sifted GOLD MEDAL
Flour
½ tsp. salt
1 tsp. soda
2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. cloves
1 cup seedless raisins
1 cup chopped nuts
Heat oven to 375°. Mix thoroughly shortening, brown sugar, eggs. Sift dry ingredients together and stir in. Add raisins, nuts. Drop with teaspoon about 2” apart onto greased baking sheet. Bake 8 to 10 min. Makes about 5 dozen.
From Gold Medal Jubilee, Select Recipes, 1880-1955:
A treasury of favorite recipes modernized by Betty Crocker
By 1930, radio listeners could dial in Betty Crocker’s Gold Medal Home Service Talks from thirty-six stations on the NBC network, several mornings a week. But Betty wasn’t the only broadcaster chatting about food, recipes, and family. Food-related companies were quick to ride the radio waves into homes across the nation. With radios in two of every five U.S. homes by 1931, radio advertising dollars reached 31 million people, even as the Great Depression worsened. “The radio, it seems to me, is primarily an invention for the benefit of woman,” wrote home economist Christine Frederick for Good Housekeeping:
Its greatest achievement is banishing isolation … isolation, whether mental or geographical, has been the cause of much of woman’s restlessness and has done more to retard her progress than any other one factor. The important problem now is to find out how the radio can best utilize the possibilities it opens up as a means of service to woman and her family.
Taking its cue from Betty Crocker’s success, the Heinz Company launched a Home Economics Department in 1930. “Announcing a New Help in Solving the Housewives’ Problems,” declared a Heinz ad in Ladies’ Home Journal. A Miss Josephine Gibson was promised to lecture to thousands of visiting women “in the big auditorium at Pittsburgh,” “answer any question directed at her” by mail, and to broadcast, “direct from the Home Economics Model Kitchen of H. J. Heinz Company,” every Tuesday and Friday at 10:45 in the morning, also on the NBC Network.
“For your pleasure,” Hostess introduced the “Happy Wonder Bakers,” who sang on the radio every Wednesday evening, along with Frank Black (NBC’s musical director) and his orchestra. With a “Yo-Ho! Ho-Yo!,” the Bakers and their musical accompaniment (renamed the Wonder Bakers Orchestra) quickly moved to Tuesday evenings. Hostess made entertainment available with the flip of a switch, while dessert could be had for just a quarter (for the Hostess Cocoanut Layer Cake), or even a nickel (for two Hostess Cup Cakes).
“New Radio Thrills” arrived in the fall of 1930 from Quaker Oats, who in October rolled out “The Radio Program Every One’s Talking About. While you’re eating your breakfast of Aunt Jemima pancakes, tune in on the Quaker Man. Every weekday morning at 8:00 to 8:15.” The very next month, the Quaker Man was down for double duty: “And don’t miss the coast to coast evening program at 7:30.”
The competition continued to heat up with new radio programs aimed at stealing some of Betty Crocker’s thunder. In 1933, General Foods invited women to “Tune in on General Foods Baking Day. Complete course in home-baking conducted by Frances Lee Barton, famous Swans Down cake-maker. Every Thursday, 11:15 AM, Eastern Standard Time, over WEAF and 35 associated N.B.C. stations. Listen in next Thursday!” Mary Lee Taylor for Pet Milk and Mary Ellis Ames for Pillsbury’s Best Flour also chimed in, but to no avail. Throughout the 1930s, rival radio cooks came and went, while Betty remained a constant. Not a one of her competitors, it seemed, could match the charm that Betty, and even her very name, seemed to emanate.
Despite the nation’s mounting economic troubles, Betty’s radio shows flourished. By 1933, around 250,000 on-air students registered for her Cooking School of the Air. The same year marked the unemployment of over 14 million workers, or close to 30 percent of a labor force of 47 million. Of that 47 million, 40 million to 42 million normally worked full-time in support of a population of 122 million. With so many men out of work, some whiled away the hours in the comfort of Betty’s company:
May an unemployed husband join your cooking school of the air? If so, I would like to join. Perhaps you think this is a bit odd, but I have been out of work almost a year. However, I am fortunate enough to have a good wife who is employed and has been ever since we were married. In the meantime, I have been doing the housework and the cooking. I was always able to get a meal [together], but since listening to you over the air, there is not the sameness over and over again. My wife told me I was a good cook, but now she says I am still better. If that is true, the credit belongs to you and not me.
*
If you ever enroll old men in your cooking school, kindly enroll me. Will be 75 years in March, but don’t feel any older than when I was 50. White hair puts the old men on the shelf and the result, no employment. You gave a recipe for Pumpkin Pie in the fall, if you have it on a card, kindly send me a copy.
A failing economy meant that more and more Americans were skimping on essential food items. In 1932, the American Red Cross distributed more than 8.5 million barrels of flour to 5,140,855 families representing nearly every county nationwide. Between 1929 and 1932, the average income of the American family fell 40 percent, from $2,300 to $1,500, of which food costs demanded approximately 25 percent. Dr. Julius Klein, assistant secretary of commerce, helpfully pointed out that this ratio was kinder than in other world population centers—“Asia spends ninety per cent of her earnings for food, and ten per cent for the comforts of life; Europe eighty per cent for food and twenty per cent for comforts; while the United States spends thirty per cent for food and seventy per cent for comforts”—but meal planning was far from easy for women struggling to feed their families on spartan budgets. Homemakers writing to Betty named grocery bill management as their biggest problem.
Like millions of other husbands, mine had to take a severe cut in salary and oh, Miss Crocker, sometimes I become so discouraged.
*
My husband is just barely making a living for my four children and myself. He has had his wages cut terribly. I must try and do something.
*
Of course you can’t realize how it is when your savings are almost gone and now your home is at stake and you have to smile and try to make a meal out of nothing so your loved one will keep up the fight and not lose hope and courage; so I thought perhaps you might be able to scour up tempting, nourishing menus (that is, something out of almost nothing) so the thousands of women situated as we are, may help fight this Depression War and keep up a stiff upper lip for all.
*
I used to be enrolled in your cooking schools of the air when I lived in Springfield. Then hard times hit this family and we moved to the farm … I had to sell my radio and G.E. refrigerator. I sure do miss them … What I want to ask you is, would it be too much trouble for you to send me some of your recipes that you have given out within the past year?
Every day, thousands of pleas for help flooded the fledgling General Mills, Inc., established in 1928 by the merger of several mills including Washburn Crosby. The pace in the General Mills Home Service Department would have seemed especially familiar to I.R.T. Smith, who had been executive mail clerk at the White House since 1897. Of the letters received by the Roose-velts during the Depression, Smith said, “I have never seen anything like it. I used to be able to get along with two or three assistants. Now I have twenty-two and they are all overworked. …Well, the average is seven thousand letters a day, and that includes Sunday.”
Like the President, whose influential “Fireside Chats” moved one critic to dub him “the best broadcaster known in America today,” Betty Crocker answered her queries not only by post, but on the radio. Her blend of you-can-do-it optimism and pract
ical advice was precisely what her public wanted. One listener praised her talents: “I want to tell you that I enjoy your talks far more than those of any other home economist program on the air. Your talks have a real person-to-person feeling that is absent from the other radio cooking shows.” By mid-decade, two of Betty’s weekly broadcasts focused exclusively on recipes and menus designed for families on relief.
In a June 1, 1932, radio broadcast, Betty explained how “thrift can be made easy” by restyling leftovers:
Thrift has always been the banner of house-wifely skill and in these days of financial strain everyone is trying to avoid waste of every kind. Scraps of vegetable and bits of meat, which in a time of plenty might have been discarded, must return to the table again, to go just a little bit further. So even the least experienced cook won’t want to be feeding the garbage can at the expense of her husband.
Opinion makers continued to marvel at the far-reaching Betty Crocker radio community: “While the wise farmer’s wife turns the dial on her radio in Dallas County, Texas, the Minneapolis bride of a few months tunes in on the same morning program in her small city apartment—the experienced cook and the beginning, both seeking new ideas and new inspiration to help plan and prepare the universal three meals a day.” But critical approval paled in comparison to heartfelt listener appreciation.
Your recipes are more within our means than most recipes are; they are economical and yet very good. It is a nice little visit in our home every time you come in over the radio.
*
I tried your muffin recipe and found it delicious. My husband doesn’t usually care for muffins but he literally devoured these. “You know,” he said, “the recipes you get from Betty Crocker are worth the price we paid for the radio.” I agree heartily and he doesn’t know the half of it. He doesn’t know about all the inspiration and help I get for my homemaking.
*
Your talks, Betty Crocker, have given me hope.
For a week’s worth of rabbit recipes, Betty Crocker suggests: “Having Guests On Sunday? Rabbit Pie • Like Hearty Fare On Monday? Rabbit Fricassee • Southern Fare For Tuesday? Rabbit Creole • Dining Home On Wednesday? Rabbit Curry • Something New for Thursday? Rabbit in Tomato Sauce • Friends In On Friday? Rabbit Cutlet • Family Dinner Saturday? Hassen-pfeffer No. 1.” Circa mid 1930s.
The radio broadcasts were just one part of Betty Crocker’s national relief service. In a free brochure, “Meal Planning on Minimum and Low Cost Budgets,” Betty Crocker discussed how to procure nutritious food on Depression-era wages and maximize relief staples on the lowest budget possible. Reported one of the thousands who followed her advice:
Now we live on a budget and far more economical and much more tempting and appetizing meals, thanks to you, my dear. You make things so easy and your products are so sure, I never fear to take anything…. You surely have our votes unanimously for our good, wholesome, tempting, economical meals.
Some of Betty’s loyal listeners confided personal details that were nothing short of astonishing.
I hesitate just a wee bit to tell you what I’m going to now, for it makes a difference in the way people feel towards me sometimes. You see Betty Crocker, I am a blind girl and when people know that, they can’t quite understand why I’m so interested in recipes and cookery ideas … for they think a blind girl is utterly helpless and should do nothing but sit and try to be as happy as possible under the circumstances. Here is the reason I’m so interested and why you have helped me so much. My mother died seven months ago and since then I have been doing all the housework and cooking for my two brothers and father.
One grateful mother was moved to make Betty a part of the family—until fate intervened.
I have wanted to write for some time now. I have just had my third son born to me on November 16. I was so sure it was going to be a girl and we were going to call her Betty because you have helped me so very much in making my home a success. I had to settle for the name of Teddy.
“Meal Planning on Minimum and Low-Cost Budgets,” as well as the recipes from the Cooking School of the Air, were saving graces for many Americans. Betty Crocker’s sound dietary advice won national recognition among nutritionists and social workers. The Gold Medal Home Service Department also contributed to the National Recovery Administration (NRA) by composing and distributing low-cost menu brochures and conducting free nutrition classes and cooking demonstrations. James Gray, whose history of General Mills was published in 1954, chronicled Betty’s Depression-era service:
It should be pointed out, as a comment on the character of Betty Crocker as citizen, that her response to the public plea for help was spontaneous and unselfish. The use of her skills to advertise General Mills and to serve the miller’s enlightened self-interest was a secondary importance. In her mind—the collective mind of the Home Service Department—it was almost an afterthought.
Developing low-cost recipes was no small undertaking, even for Betty Crocker’s staff. Husted was famous for her standard line, “Would you serve this in your own home?” To ensure the necessary affirmative, seemingly limitless resources were allocated for researching, creating, testing and retesting every conceivable way of ruining a recipe: underbaking, overbaking, omitting ingredients, using a pan of the wrong size, baking at the wrong temperature.
Betty Knows Best
Betty Crocker’s 1930s may be best remembered as her altruistic decade, but that trademark charm of hers never stopped working. In 1930, as the nation’s economic woes bore down in earnest, the “noted Cooking Authority” was in the midst of a “Gold Medal National Exhibition of Foods Men Like.” A continuation of the “Kitchen-tested” concept ads begun in the 1920s, these latest recipes were “A Revelation in Easier Home Baking.” Recent “scientific developments in flour milling” yielded spectacular kitchen achievements: “467 Women Baked This ‘Difficult’ Yorkshire Pudding, with a Record of 462 Perfect Results. Only 5 Missed Perfect Success Their First Try!” The campaign continued—recipe number 5 was a “Kris Kringle Stollen” that “Men Can’t Get Enough Of”—with an invitation from Betty Crocker to send in 10 cents for the “‘15 Ways to a Man’s Heart’ Recipe Set Containing 15 Simplified Recipes.” Try them, Betty explained, “if you would like to hear your husband say—‘My wife is the greatest cook in the world.’”
The innovations of some great cooks might have been long forgotten if not for Betty. According to company lore, a General Mills executive named Carl Smith took a 1930 train trip into baking history. Traveling on Southern Pacific’s Portland-San Francisco line, Smith ordered a late dinner. When fresh, hot biscuits were served with the meal, Smith knew the railroad chef had solved a longtime mystery: how to keep shortening fresh and the leavening agent active long after the ingredients are combined. The General Mills chemists worked with the concept—and created Bisquick, which came on the market in 1931 with great fanfare.
Bisquick flour was popular with homemakers starting in 1931. Throughout the next two decades, Betty Crocker’s staff created thousands of Bisquick recipes.
“The name of this marvelous new food invention is Bisquick—B-I-S-Q-U-I-C-K. And the way it acts borders on the miraculous.” Bisquick’s special features were almost too numerous to mention, but Betty was more than up to the task. First came the technical innovations: “The ‘knack’ or ‘trick’ of perfect biscuits is made into it. By an amazing, newly discovered process of mixing the shortening and dry ingredients.” Next came the ease of making shortcake biscuits in “90 seconds from package to oven,” so simple “even a child can’t go wrong.” Last came the sweet reward: “And—look for a kiss and a compliment from your husband.” All this cost just the price of a postage stamp—plus one Bisquick top, or 25 cents-with Betty Crocker’s “101 Delicious Bisquick Creations.”
Just as Betty proclaimed, “Millions of women everywhere are abandoning pet recipes in favor of this wonderful new Bisquick way. Try it. You’ll say it’s as easy as A-B-C.” Bisquick was also perfectly
positioned to ride the 1930s culinary craze for waffles. In January 1933, McCall’s recommended serving this treat “if you want to cause a sensation at the luncheon or tea table.” Waffles made by adding milk and eggs to Bisquick “are like something from heaven—light as a feather … gold as Autumn … good as the magic of Betty Crocker can make them.”
Betty made it impossible for homemakers to forget the ease and convenience of Bisquick. “Remember the name—spelled B-I-S-Q-U-I-C-K,” she instructed. “Avoid cheap substitutes.” And no need for substitutes, with Bisquick newly packaged in “Bride’s size—makes 40 Bisquicks,” and “Family size—makes 80 Bisquicks.”
That‘s Entertainment
To Betty, home baking meant endless hours of fun. But one of her competitors, “Mrs. Alice Adams Proctor” of New York City’s Continental Baking Company—owner of the Hostess brand—meant to liberate Betty and her acolytes from the kitchen once and for all. “There are always things to do nowadays that are more fun—and more important—than baking cake. So why bake when you can buy cake like this Hostess Cocoanut Layer—rich, delicious, tender as any homemade cake?” For 25 cents, “You couldn’t make such rich, good cake as this for anything like the price—and that doesn’t even count your time and labor.”
In the face of these convenient, cheap foods with “fun” built in to the purchase price, General Mills needed to keep ahead of the competition. Gold Medal Flour and Bisquick recipes alone were not enough to maintain Betty Crocker brand loyalty. But $5,000 in cash just might do the trick.
The Betty Crocker Cake Naming Contest of 1933 delivered the good news. “Now at last—a contest which even the average woman can enter and win! You don’t even have to make the cake! Just make up a name for it.” Nine hundred thirty-six cash prizes—from a $1,000 first prize down to $2—would be awarded. “Don’t say you can’t win,” Betty urged, “until you have at least read the instructions. Now this is no ordinary contest. It is not a word-building struggle, nothing that will take much time…. Any name that is descriptive of the cake or seems especially appropriate will have a good opportunity to win the first prize” for naming this “cocoanut-orange” layer cake.