November 10, 2017 • 39 mins
Cookbooks have come a long way from their Mesopotamian origins. Will and Mango try to pinpoint the Joy in Joy of Cooking, peek inside the world of cookbook ghostwriters and debate whether an official Titanic cookbook is better than the one from Coolio (it isn't.) Featuring “Leave Me Alone with the Recipes” editor Sarah Rich.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Guess what will what's that man go? Do you know
that romance writer Barbara Cartland? Yeah, well, did you know
she put out a cookbook in the nineteen eighties. It's
called The Romance of Food and it is amazing. I
found it from that wonderful site Messy, Messy and and
it's basically all these so called romantic meals photographed in
the most surreal way, like they're bright technicolor backgrounds, and
(00:22):
each dish is surrounded by Barbara's kitchy porcelain dolls and figurines.
I guess it's all weird stuff she had around her house.
It is so creepy. And are these her recipes or what?
I guess there were her personal chefs. But here, take
a look at this. Aren't those pictures ridiculous? And she
wrote these sultry descriptions for each meal. So here's her
(00:43):
pitch for lamb with baby vegetables quote, what woman does
not long to be carried like a lamb in the
arms of the man she loves? I haven't seen it
for years. And here's our description for special strawberry ice
cream quote, as e found in the garden of Eden.
Fruit isn't exciting? Temptations such a naughty cookbook. But by
(01:05):
reading about Barbara Cartland's cookbook made me wonder, what are
the other super strange cookbooks out there? What's the oldest
cookbook on record? And how does celebrity chefs pump out
so many cookbooks every year? So those are some of
the big questions we'll be tackling. Why don't we dive
in anyway? Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson
(01:40):
and as always I'm joined by my good friend man
guest Ticketer and sitting behind that soundproof glass bragging about
his brand new George Foreman grill as our producer Tristan McNeil.
What are we on like our two of bragging. I
know it's a good grill. We get it, Tristan. It's
very functional, very functional, And I know we could sit
here and keep complimenting Tristan's grill forever. We'll do more
of that after we finished this episode. But but let's
(02:02):
talk cookbooks. The cookbooks are so prevalent in our lives.
I mean, there's something you don't really think to contemplate,
but you know it's strange. They're essentially these instruction manuals
for how to use food. I mean, that's such a
weird way to put it, but I guess you're right.
I mean, I feel like if an alien came to Earth,
that's how they'd refer to them, like food instruction manuals.
But that's actually part of what's so interesting about cookbooks, right,
(02:25):
I mean, they're basically these documents of how we eat,
or at least how we want to eat. Yeah, and
and also how we used to eat. I mean, I
think we should get into this a little bit later,
because it's fascinating to look at how cookbooks from like
imperialist Russia talk about households in a very different way
than cookbooks that came out from maybe like the Great Depression,
and even how we write recipes changes from era to era.
(02:47):
So how do you mean, Well, I was reading this
article from The Economist about how cookbooks have evolved and
transformed with the times. In the sixteen hundreds, of British
cookbook advised cooks to quote heat water until it was
a little hotter than milk that comes from a cow.
And those weren't vague directions, I mean they're very specific.
So essentially any cook or kitchen hand at the time
(03:08):
would have some knowledge of farm life. So a little
hotter than milk as it comes out of the cow's
utter meant a specific temperature too that it's so weird. Yeah,
and and and that's how recipes were written until the
Industrial Revolution a couple of hundred years later, you know,
when people were separated from their rural roots. That's pretty crazy.
So I know you and your family enjoy cooking, but
I can't remember. Do you have a lot of cookbooks around?
(03:31):
There's definitely a few that we used frequently, and then
way too many that just kind of sit there on
the shells. But what about you guys? Are you big
cookbook users? Yeah, well we're the same way. Like we
used to live in a small apartment with too many cookbooks,
and after we Marie condoed the place, we only kept
the essentials. But I mean, I I do like to cook,
and I'm a sucker for beautiful cookbooks, like I have
this Jerusalem cookbook that I use a lot, and this
(03:53):
old Market Bitman cookbook that's really warm. But mostly cookbooks
are aspirational for me. I kind of like just having
them around. And why is that? Are like are the
recipes too hard or just intimidating or what. Yeah, I
mean it's a little of that. And as much as
I like things like the Momo Fuku cookbook or whatever,
I mean, I'm not gonna cold smoke wings and make
ramen unless it's a really special occasion, especially since we
(04:17):
have ramen downstairs. I mean, it's kind of the same
way I think about foreign films and how they sit
on my Netflix cue. Like, I totally intend to use
these books and make all these recipes when I have
time and the mood strikes, But instead I just make
nachos and watch Old Dirty Rocks every single time. Nacho
my life. Well, there's there's definitely an aspirational aspect to cookbooks.
(04:39):
But you know what's funny. I feel like I see
new cookbooks everywhere now. But you remember back around two
thousand and ten and tablets had just come out that
was supposed to be one of the things that was
going to die with the invention of tablets and such,
that they would go away. Yeah, but I mean, if
vinyl records can make a comeback, I guess anything can.
I I actually found some articles from around that same
(05:00):
time period and and the book industry was really worried
apparently like editors stopped making as many acquisitions. But but
then it turned out people really wanted their cookbooks in
dead tree form, and of course food appreciation went through
this all time hive. You know that there was that
farm to table movement that took off and Instagramming your
food and the popularity of food shows. Actually, I think
(05:22):
I might have already told you this, but last summer
we took our kids to this Italian restaurant and my son,
who was five then, had actually eaten nicely and behaved,
which is kind of a rarity. So we said to him,
if you'd like, you can have a slice of cake
for dessert, and he just looked at me and said,
is it a walnut cake? I was honestly so confused,
(05:43):
like I didn't even know walnut cake was a thing.
But apparently he had been sneaking off and watching The
Great British Bake Off on our iPad, just on the slide,
and he really got into the show and then into
baking and cooking, and he had very specific demands for
what you eat for dessert. I'm glad that that's what
he was sneaking often watching, rather than the Barbara Cartland
uh show. But well, clearly people of all ages have
(06:05):
been inspired by TV shows and this greater food movement
that you were talking about. But why don't we get
back to the cookbooks and and I want to get
some of the early cookbooks in the conversation. Of course,
I want to talk about some of the really important
ones that have shaped American cooking. But why don't we
warm up by listing, you know, maybe the strangest cookbook
that each of us found, other than the Barbara Cartland
(06:25):
when you started the show, I'm a friend, what do
you find? Well, it's it's hard to choose what would
be the weirdest. I mean, there there are some weird ones,
like the Star Trek cookbooks and the one that I
think is just hilarious cooking with coolio and things like that.
But but the one that really stuck with me is
called Last Dinner on the Titanic. And that's a real cookbook. Yeah,
(06:46):
and it's meticulously researched and based off of real recipes,
including the ten course meals served in first class. It's
a beautiful book too. But as Bone Appetite puts it
in their review, quote, your inner history buff will be sated.
You may never be able to look at lobster thermidor
the same. Again, I have no idea what that means.
I have only one look for lobster Thermador. But I
(07:09):
love that. I mean, to me, the Titanic Cookbook feels
like the perfect book for a book club. Like if
I was in a book club or a cookbook club,
that'd be my first suggestion. Yeah, I'm with you on that,
I mean, So, what's your pick for weirdest cookbook? Well,
there are obviously a lot of funny cookbooks out there.
I've got a list of Um, there's a reason Mommy drinks.
There's an original road kill cookbook, which shouldn't be confused
(07:31):
with all the impost road kill cookbooks out there, right,
But but the craziest cookbook I found was Cooking with
the serial Killer. Have you heard of this? What is that? So?
This woman, Dorothea Puente was a serial killer who also
ran a boarding house. Apparently she worked her way up
in crime. She started by running a brothel, then she
started forging checks, and eventually she ran this boarding house
(07:54):
where she murdered the elder tenants so she could catch
in on their social security and she buried them in
her basement, and then with each body she put a
new layer of concrete floor over the bodies. It was
super elaborate. I can say she worked her way up,
like she she forged her signature on checks and then oh, yeah,
she became a serial killer. But then that's terrible. Yeah,
But but she also kept her tenants well fed. And
(08:16):
the weird thing is one that she has a book
of recipes out right. I mean, it came out in
two thousand and four and and it was basically through
her correspondence with a writer. And secondly, the Food Network
actually reviewed the thing and said, quote, the biggest surprise
of this are you freaking kidding us? Cookbook? Is the
recipes are actually pretty good. I mean, I guess it's
(08:37):
a good lesson for anyone trying to stereotype serial killers.
Killing isn't their only hobby, you guys. They have other
hobbies to multi talented. Well, all right, let's take this
back to the beginning for a second and maybe talk
about some of the ancient cookbooks. Definitely, so, I know
you looked into some of the early stuff, but what's
the earliest cookbook he found? Well, the first cookbook we
know of is is just three tablets long. That's tablets long,
(09:00):
and so it's way back from seventeen hundred b C.
And it's known as the Yale Culinary Tablets and it's
it's part of Yale's Babylonian collection. And the writing it's
actually all in Cuneiform. So what food recipes are on there? Like?
Have academics actually been able to decipher it? Apparently it's
like twenty five recipes for stu. I think it's supposed
to be very fancy stews, like the kind that we're
(09:22):
fit for Mesopotamian king, so it may be better than
it sounds. And but they're actually not real clear directions
or quantities listed on the tablets. Is just mainly just
a list of ingredients. So basically they're really old shopping
list for student. Yeah, pretty much. Well, I mean, seventeen
hundred BC is far older than I imagine for the
first cookbook. But where's it go from there? Well, the
(09:43):
best known ancient cookbook is probably a Pitious and it's
nicknamed for the Gorman who used the number of the recipes,
and it's from the fourth century and it has another
title that translate as the art of Cooking or more
literally like maybe like concerning cookery. But for being the
first real Western cookbook, it's it's actually pretty organized. So
(10:04):
their ten chapters, including a section on ingredients, one on
the sea, one on the Careful Housekeeper. Apparently, and I've
only read about it, but it definitely gives us a
window into what the upper classes used to eat. So
what was that? It appears to be really gamy birds
like ostrich and flamingo, and more than cooking. It seems
(10:25):
like a lot of cooking tricks. You know from masking
how bad these birds And it's gross to think about,
but it makes sense when you think about it. And
according to the cookbook, you can smother their smell with very,
very very heavy sauces. As the economists pointed out, quote
one recipe explains that stale bird should be cooked in
a sauce of pepper lovage time meant hazelnuts, date, honey, vinegar,
(10:48):
fish sauce, wine, and mustard. Through that concoction, it would
be impossible to detect the stale smell, or indeed any
smell at all. I actually I can't imagine what that
concoction itself would have smelled, like dates, vinegar, and fish sauce. Also,
I see that Epicious added honey to everything. He used
(11:09):
to add honey to lobster even But I mean, is
stale flamingo coated in a strong sauce good? I mean,
it can't be right. And actually according to the people
who've tried to recreate it, they they say it's not
that good either. That the best that's been described. I
saw one that just said, interesting, you know that the
heavy duty sauce does seem to live up to its
reputation and mask any meat you put it on, and
(11:31):
so that I guess that part is good. But there's
some other old cookbooks that get talked about a lot.
There's one from China from the thirteen hundreds that features
an early version of peaking duck. One from ninety that
King Richard, the Seconds Master Cook assembled. It's called the
Form of Curry or Forms of Cooking and Modern English.
It has two hundred and five recipes and mixes spices
(11:51):
you know, like carnamon and nutmeg and ginger with meats
you probably haven't eaten. I mean, it's it's kind of
wild to read about some of these cranes heron ale.
But the thing I kept reading about all these cookbooks
is how much plagiarism there were in the recipes. That's weird.
So why is that? Well, even a picious is recipes
were clearly lifted from Greek and Roman foods, and it
(12:12):
was a mix of styles. But the easiest ways to
spot the plagiarism is in the mistranslations. So according to
writer Mary Evans, there was a book printed in fifteen
nineties six and advised the cook and one recipe to
add three or four dates. By sixteen fifty three, when
the recipe was pinched by the author of a book
of Fruits and Flowers, the cook was told to set
(12:33):
the dish aside for three or four days. You can
see how the mistranslation happened over time. Yeah, that's funny.
But why don't we hit pause for a second then
get into some of America's favorite cookbooks after the break,
So Mango, We've got a special guest on the program today.
We've actually got the co editor of Leave Me Alone
(12:54):
with the Recipes, Sarah rich On. Sarah, welcome to Part
Time Genius. Thanks for having me today. It was all
about cookbooks and when I stumbled into this book, which
is co edited with the incredible illustrator, Wendy mcdonton. I
just couldn't believe how beautiful the book is. It has
this great origin story. So could you tell us a
little bit about that? Yeah? Absolutely. Um. The origin story
(13:16):
of the book is that about four years ago, UM,
Wendy and I we both lived in the Bay Area,
and we went to the San Francisco Antiquarian book Fair,
just kind of on a whim, and UM Wendy beat
me there and she was walking around and UM spotted
the guestbook sitting in a in a glass case like
propped open to um, a painting of worst Um, and
(13:40):
she was just really drawn to it. It felt familiar,
and it felt very current, and it sort of was
reminiscent of Mara Collman's work U, who of course is
very well known and a little bit like Wendy's work,
herself and other illustrators working today. And so she had
the bookseller pulled out of the case, and when she
looked more closely at it, realized that she was looking
(14:01):
at an original manuscript, a sketch book with actual original
gwash paintings in it, and had dozens of paintings, and
all the paintings were of recipes that had been hand
lettered with a quill and hand painted. Um. So she
called me. I was like on my way across the
bridge from Oakland and said, you know, hurry of you
have to get here and see this thing. Um. And
(14:22):
so when I arrived and looked at it, you know,
I was also totally struck by the by the art.
It's just so brilliant and has so much voice and
character and color. Um. But also for me it was
these recipes are you know, very traditional Eastern European Jewish recipes,
which is the food of my own family. Um. And
(14:43):
so as I looked through it, I felt struck by
the fact that not only did I know this food, um,
but it's not really the kind of food that you
find rendered in such a kind of celebratory, lively exciting way.
You know. I know that the fact that you start
with a Borsh recipe is amazing, like that's what drew Yeah, yeah, so,
(15:05):
and you know, it's in most a lot of food
that you know, having grown up with them and they
go back to generations in my family. You know, it's
kind of it's not the food you think of intcessarily
being the most exciting food. It's the food you think
of as being the most sort of comforting and nostalgic.
But she had created this celebration of this food, which
was so cool to see. UM. So we ended up
(15:27):
um signing out from the bookseller. We had never heard
of her. The bookseller said, oh, yeah, it was done.
It was done in by a woman named Cepi Panellis,
And we didn't know who she was, and you know
that they're googling on our phones, UM to discover that
she Although there wasn't too much available online about her, UM,
(15:47):
she has a little Wikipedia entry and uh, we learned
that she was the first female art director at Conde
nast Um And so then discovered that she had this
massive influence on our direction and publishing and graphic design
in in the mid century and was a really important figure.
And we were both shocked we hadn't heard of her,
(16:08):
because you know, she kind of touches the convergence of
art to professions. She worked in publishing and editorial and
UM and was an illustrator, and neither of us have
heard of her, and so these paintings had never been published.
They've been sitting in her estate for her almost seventy
years and we decided we had to get the book
(16:28):
and figure out a way to publish the recipes and
also tell her story. UM. So we called up Maria
Popova and Debbie Millman, who um we thought would be
interested in it because both of them have an interest
in history and culture and design and um and we
asked him if they would want to go in on
it because it was a purchase, you know, it was
(16:49):
it was an art purchase, um in antique really so
so we couldn't afford it on our own before of
us told our resources and and bought it and then
you know, took it and put it into a fire
proof safe in Wendy's house and uh, and and set
out to figure out what to do next. Yeah, it
really is crazy to me how fresh these illustrations feel like.
I remember, like six or seven years ago we were
(17:10):
trying to commission illustrations that looked like this because they
felt like novel at the time. And and uh, it's
amazing to me that you know, we've we've looked at
magazine histories before and you know, sort of the luminaries
along the way, but the fact that Cepe existed and
Andy Warhol loved her and like, I don't know her
name is just crazy to me. Yeah, yeah, she should
(17:32):
be better known. I mean she just said, you know,
she um. One of kind of the biggest influence she
had as far as um steering the direction that publishing
and design went, is that she um She was one
of the first people to start working with artists for
magazines in a way that really was collaborative and responded
(17:53):
to the artists in a way that invited there, you know,
invited their input and their own response. So rather than
you know, if she needed to do a story about it,
you know, a loaf of bread, instead of calling an
artist and saying, I have a story about a love
of bread when you draw a love of bread, it
was I have a story. I want you to read
it and then tell me after you've read it what
(18:15):
you're fass are on how to put visuals to it,
you know, And and and it was more of an
invitation and a collaboration. And that was how she did
work with Andy Warhol, who was doing a lot of
um he did a lot of food illustration early in
his career. Well. And and a big portion of this
book is is your revision of her recipes. I'm curious
how intimidating that was to try to tweak her recipes
(18:36):
for for a modern age. Yeah, it was. It was intimidating,
I guess, or it was more it was more of
kind of like a um strategic challenge because the I mean,
there was the first challenge, which is simply that the
recipes as she wrote them, when you follow them from
start to finish, don't necessarily yield what they are promising you. Um,
(19:00):
you know, which is most likely because the book, her
original credits her mother as the author and herself as
the illustrator. So these are her mother's recipes, definitely passed
to her directly from her mother. And you know, who
knows exactly how she recorded them, if she was standing
next to her in the kitchen trying to write it
down as this she could, or if her mother told
her from her head, but most likely her mother didn't
(19:21):
fit and meticulously measure things out, and so, um, you know,
these recipes. Some of them hold up just as a
set of instructions. Others really don't. And so my first
challenge was just to make them work, you know, so
that you could follow one to three and at the end,
you'd have the thing that you thought you were going
to get. And then the second challenge, the bigger challenge,
was to say, okay, you know, how do we make
(19:42):
these feel a little bit more modern? How do we
make sure the ingredients are ingredients that people are using
right now? Um? You know there are things in they're
like partially route which I had never used or seen,
although I was able to find it. But um, you know,
I didn't want to include ingredients that would be really
unusual in supermarkets today. UM. And then I didn't want
(20:02):
to make them so modern that they departed from the tradition.
So UM. I worked with a recipe development assistant who
is a sou chef here at Zoony Cafe, which is
very you know, modern temvery California food. So he he had,
you know, we would both kind of try the original
and then come together in brainstorm about what we could
do with it. And he would be further out along
(20:24):
the spectrum of making it more modern and edgy and
kind of bringing in ingredients from lots of other places
and um, and then we'd try to find a middle
ground where where it still felt true to what it
had been. And I think for the most part. We
did that and they very you know, some of them
are really close to the original, like the chicken soup
I thought was fantastic, almost exactly as she had it um.
(20:45):
And then some of the other ones, like the lambs too,
you know, kind of invite like Moroccan flavors, because that's
something you find a lot now with lamb, which she
wouldn't have done, but um makes it taste great. Well
for our listeners, if you haven't checked out, leave me
a own with the recipes by CP Panelli's, go out
and buy a copy today. It's definitely a book that
belongs on more bookshelves. But Sarah Ridge, thanks so much
(21:07):
for joining us today on Part Time Genius. Thanks for
having me. Welcome to Part Time Genius. We're talking about
cookbooks now. I know we were going to be talking
(21:27):
about some of the great American books, but before we do,
let's look for a couple of minutes maybe about celebrity
chefs and just how they crank out so many books. Yeah,
I'm curious about this. Well, if you look at the
big chefs with publishing empires and the publishing schedules there on,
some of them have magazine columns, with thousands of recipes.
Some of them put out a new book every year.
(21:48):
It's just impossible for most people to produce at that volume.
And that's where the cookbook ghost writer comes in. I mean,
it makes sense to me that some celebrities wouldn't write
their own cookbooks, right, Like, I don't expect Barbara Cartland
have experimented with that much in the kitchen. But if
these are big TV chefs, I feel kind of cheated. Yeah,
I know, but you know, as The New York Times
(22:08):
did a story on it, and as one ghost writer
for Rachel Ray put it, how many times can one
person invent a new quick pasta dish? Which makes sense. Plus,
you know, where chefs could work on one volume of
beautiful text once upon a time and that could be
their life's work. Now, the pressure on celebrity chefs is
completely different. I mean, they're all supposed to have special
degrees and make appearances on cruises and on talk shows
(22:32):
and have their own weekly shows, all while operating a kitchen,
and it's actually just impossible. So so often these ghostwriters
are really creative cooks who understand how to distill someone's
style and philosophy into these delicious recipes, but can also
write and and the stories are kind of funny. So
there was there was one writer that said the number
of times they've seen chefs tear up reading the introductions
(22:53):
to their own books, that that was how they marked
their success. And another commenty that while these books often
started a labor of love from the chef, they don't
have time and quote dissolution is part of the job.
And every book there's a point where you just can't
stand the sight of each other. So it isn't always pleasant,
and it can be like dating, like you you want
to see that you fit before you commit to anything
(23:14):
long term. But it actually does pay pretty well. That's
pretty funny, you know, now that you mentioned it. I
met this entrepreneur who had a candy company. It was
this taffy that that was supposed to be better for
your teeth, and his wife was a dentist. But the
interesting thing to me was I asked him how do
you make a candy and he told me that you
can strike deals with chefs to come up with food
recipes for you. Like he found this junior chef from
(23:37):
a big deal restaurant in New York and and asked
him to play with the sugar substitute he had, and
he wrote him three or four recipes for not that
much money. But speaking of unsung cookbook authors, let's get
into some of the biggies in American history. Yeah, let's
do it. So let let's do a little quiz here.
What do you think is the best selling cookbook in
the US? Uh? I don't know. Maybe The Joy of Cooking? Yeah,
(23:59):
that that would have my guest too, And it's in
the top three. It's sold about eighteen million copies. Al Right, Well,
what about what's the Julia Child one? Cause that the
the Art of French Cooking? Is that what it's called? Yeah,
it's Mastering the Art of French Cooking? But that isn't either,
got alright, so I give up? What what is it? Yeah,
it's actually Betty Crocker's cookbook, which is sold approximately sixty
(24:21):
five million copies. I mean, it came out in nineteen
fifty and sales actually rivaled those of the Bible. According
to The Daily Meal, it's sold two million copies in
its first two years. And of course Betty Crocker is
this fictional marketing character, so it's a little strange that
America trusted her instincts. But before we talk about that,
I do want to talk about the book that's sold
(24:42):
the second best in the US, and this preceded the
Betty Crocker book by about twenty years, and that's the
Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook, which came out in
ninety that's sold about forty million copies. And it was
revolutionary for a few reasons. Nothern law is going to
be so disappointed in me because we actually have two copies. Escal. Yeah, So,
(25:02):
so why was it so revolutionary? Well, one of the
really simple reasons was that it was one of the
first cookbooks with ring binding, Like the major advantage was
that you could lay it out flat on your countertops.
And at the time, this was a totally new technology,
so it felt kind of modern. And also, the book
had these little tab dividers, so when it was closed,
it looked like a little filing cabinet of recipes, and
(25:24):
there were blank pages at the back for notes and
so you can make your comments on your recipes, like
none of this have been done before. It was all
these gimmicks that emphasized its usefulness. I miss an age
where tab dividers were revolutionary. That's and and but the
thing is, like, the recipes are really good, Yeah they are,
and and the Better Homes cookbook was one of the
first to emphasize that they had actually tested thousands of
(25:46):
recipes in the test kitchen and they were only bringing
you the creme de la creme. Plus it was really instructional. So,
according to Better Homes own site quote, in many books
at the time, a recipe for a current pie might
have read something like this at one cup of raspberries
to three cups of ripe currents and bacon, two crusts,
serve plane or with whipped cream. So most writers assumed
(26:08):
that you know how to prepare the fruit, how to
make a crust, how long to bake the thing, how
to add three fourth cup of sugar to sweeten the filling,
or like a little flour to thick in it. So
this was way more instructive and really taught you how
to cook. Oh yeah that yeah, that's definitely interesting. And
you know, just to be clear, Better Homes wasn't the
first one to use more accurate measurements like French chefs
(26:28):
had been working to codify French cuisine since the late
eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds. And uh. This woman,
Fanny Farmer, she headed the Boston Cooking School. She did
the same for the US and the eighteen nineties. Apparently
she was like super finicky about ingredients, and she claimed
that currents could only be picked between June twenty and
July three, but not when it's raining. And uh. On
(26:50):
the other hand, she wrote with the precision of like
chemistry experiments. And she's the reason we use like proper
measurements instead of saying things like a slab of butter,
the size of the net, a level tea cup of sugar. Now,
I know The Joy of Cooking came out around the
same time as the Better Homes book. But before we
talk about the Joy of Cooking, why don't we talk
about the Betty Crocker book that you mentioned. So, so,
(27:11):
why was it America's top selling cookbook? Yeah, Joy of
Cooking could have been its own episode, but we can
chat about that a little later. The Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook.
It's baffling to me how it got so popular. I
didn't really know the origin of Betty Crocker. Apparently it
all started in when this flower company. It's called gold
Metal Flower. They put out a puzzle and had customers
(27:33):
fill it out and mail it back for like a
free pin cushion. And the company didn't think of pincushion
prize would be that popular, especially since it was just
shaped like a tiny bag of gold metal flower. But
you know, the puzzles poured in. Apparently thirty thousand completed
puzzles came in. And even more surprising than all these
entries was the fact that they were accompanied by so
(27:53):
many letters, all asking bacon questions and listing out like
their concerns, and at the time, it was all up
to this all male advertising department to respond to the queries.
So did they have the answers. No, I mean, that's
part of what's so weird is they had right back responses,
but they'd have to ask the female staff who worked
there for answers. And because none of them felt comfortable
(28:15):
writing their names, they invented this woman, Betty Crocker. Wow.
So so Betty Crocker became sort of like the Dear
Abbey of cooking problems exactly. And so, according to the
Chicago Tribune quote, before Betty Crocker was synonymous with boxed cake,
mix and canned frosting. She was a kitchen confidant and
a maternal and guiding presents and kitchens across America. She
(28:36):
was the woman people could trust with their most frustrating
kitchen woes. And as that relationship built up from nineteen fifty,
people really came to trust her. So everyone just accepted
she was real. Yeah, I mean it was more than that.
So so you have to remember that this book outsold
the Bible, and that's partially because it really spoke to housewives.
(28:57):
So women used to make trips to the flour mill
just to try to neat and thank her. And while
the croquettes and that's what these women who worked the
company called themselves. When they couldn't talk around why Betty
wasn't in that day, there was just this box of
tissues ready for the weeping that would results, I know,
so traumatic. It's like learning that pro wrestling isn't real
(29:17):
and what can you trust here? But but but the
cookbook was it wasn't any good, yeah, I mean the
advice was practical and the recipes were reliable, and it
apparently helps standardize more things in the kitchen, like the
size of oven trays and pans, But the real value
in the book seemed to be and how Betty Crocker
spoke to women, and the book understood the tremendous burden
on housewives. And I'm going to quote the Tribune here again,
(29:39):
but this is some of what's in the cookbook. Quote.
She dispensed good cheer and sympathy. When the cook needed
what Betty terms special helps, Betty suggested she might try.
And then this is quoting Betty a few minutes rest
on the kitchen floor, harboring pleasant thoughts, pursuing a hobby,
wearing comfortable shoes, altern eating, sitting and standing tasks, and
(30:02):
taking time to notice humorous instance such as the kidden
getting stuck in a tree, all to narrated at dinner time.
I mean, it all sounds so quaint and kind of
ridiculous at the same time. But you know, but clearly
cooking and maintaining a house is frustrating, and it must
have been nice, you know, to get that reminder that
you're not alone in these struggles. Definitely, and and people
must have needed it. I mean, books, Yeah, that's a
(30:24):
crazy number. But why don't we take a quick break
and then chat briefly about a few more important books.
So they go, there are obviously two big books that
we haven't talked about yet. Yeah, that's right, Joy of
(30:44):
Cooking and mastering the Art of French Cooking. Well, and
like we said before, both of these books could be
their own show. And in fact, if you want to
learn more about Julia Child, you can check out our
sister show, Food Stuff, And they just did an episode
on her not so long ago, and you know, then
you've got the Joy of Cooking in That book has
gone through so many editions and is definitely the best
known American cookbook. But let's just do the quick version. Yeah.
(31:07):
So the story is incredible in you know, the stock
market crashed and Erma Rombauer, who's the woman who wrote
the book, her husband had been depressed on and off,
but the crash just ruined him and and he took
his own life. But Irma decided to pour all of
her efforts into a cookbook. And the truth is she
wasn't that great a cook, but she was this incredible
(31:28):
hostess and she could really pull a party together really quickly.
And her book kind of reads like the flip side
of the Betty Crocker book, where everyone's trying to be
the perfect housewife. I mean Erma narrates her book from
like imperfection. She cared more about providing cocktail recipes that
loosened the tongue than about any of the fancy spreads.
And she advises to serve the drinks the sooner the better.
And when she does talk about stirring things like soups
(31:50):
for an hour, she acknowledges no real person has that
sort of time. So she comes across this this wonderful,
practical German Midwestern woman who just loves life. There's real
joy and the joy of cooking. It's real. And and
she used all her money to publish the slim volume.
And as the volumes expanded, it kept pace with the times.
So there's things like how to cook a squirrel in
(32:11):
leaner times, to how to make granola or lemonade recipes
for a hundred people. That's really interesting. And you know,
there are people who love certain volumes that her daughter made,
maybe versus her originals and camps who think certain editions
are soulless versus those that have Irma's true spirit. And
I guess what struck me as is how vocal the
fans are about these certain editions, But why don't we
(32:34):
talk quickly about Julia Child too, Because mastering the Art
was definitely also a very big deal. But but why
was it so revolutionary? Well, basically, it brought French cuisine
to America. I mean, French cuisine had been unapproachable and
it was the fanciest food out there. But I didn't
realize her book isn't easy. I mean, the steps are complicated.
(32:54):
I guess that's a subplot of Julia and Julia. But
it was basically the book that pulled the curtain from
these French magicians and revealed the tricks to everyday Americans.
You know, I was watching this American Masters on Jacques
Popin and he's so fascinating. But but the thing that
I thought was most interesting was he actually turned down
cooking at the Kennedy White House to take a job
(33:16):
at Howard Johnson's the hotel chain. Isn't that weird? Like, basically,
it took a very standard restaurant food and for ten
years worked on improving it at scale to make the
food as delicious as it could be, which I guess
is a kid to win. Top chefs worked with like
airlines to make the food better. Yeah, it's exactly like that,
all right. So I know we raised through a ton
of books and and we didn't get enough time with
(33:38):
any of them. But it really is fascinating how you
can look at cookbooks and understand a certain time through them.
There was one I was reading about, a sixteenth century
Russian book called the Mastroy and it tells you how
to cook turn ups but also discloses the best way
to punish wayward servants, which it seems so strange, but
you know, cookbooks were for the wealthy back then, and
(33:58):
it really shows that. I know. And when you look
at books like Cooking under Rations from World War One,
it's really heartbreaking to see meals like brown rice prepared
with drippings if you have them, or stock, or like
a little salt and pepper. It's it's not that they
can't be tasty, but you can just feel the hopelessness
of the times and the recipe. But on the other hand,
you can look at a book like Cooking with Coolio
(34:20):
and his kitchen Pimp recipes like finger licken, rib stick
and fall off the bone and into your mouth chicken
makes me hungry, I know, And you realize we've lived
through some pretty outlandish times too, write write, I have
no idea what future historians are gonna learn from that,
But you know one thing historians will remember the mango
the p GG fact off. Well, probably not, but either way,
(34:41):
let's go back and forth on some great cookbooks. Did
you know one of my heroes, Roger Ebert, had a
cookbook up. It's called The Pot and How to Use
It and it's basically a guy for writers on how
to eat all using meals made in rice cookers. It's
(35:02):
kind of a set it and forget it recipe book. Um,
I mean until you're hungry. I mean I did not
know that existed. Well, have you heard of the Eat
Your Feelings book. It's subtitled Recipes for Self Loathing and
they're very very specific, so it'll show you how to
make everything from worst d eight Ever, nutty cheeseballs too,
Baby Won't Stop Crying, Nachos Supreme. It sounds very cheese forward,
(35:26):
very cheese heavy. Here's one from another favorite writer of mine,
Roll Dolls, Revolting Recipes. You know it's it's it's strange
because I've read most of roll dolls books, including his
kid in adult stories. But I've actually never picked up
this cookbook. But according to the Food Network, it features
recipes like quote, an edible crocodile made from a spinach
covered baghett with almond teeth, all of eyes, gherkin toes,
(35:50):
and a slice of ham for a ton. It's like
funny revolting head. Yes, I was actually going to tell
you about the Twinkies cookbook, but instead I think I'm
gonna go with a different fact. I feel like I
need to clench this fact off. There's one called the
Manifold Destiny Cookbook, so I don't get it. Is it
filled with recipes from that time period or like about
recipes gone West? No? No, no, it's way better than that.
(36:12):
So I learned about this from Bone Appetite and the
subtitle is though one the Only Guy to Cooking on
your car engine. It's a book made in nineteen eight nine.
But but it's basically about how to use your car
and the engine to cook snacks and meals while driving.
I guess maybe West. But apparently it includes recipes like
thru way thighs, you know, so you don't need to
(36:33):
pull off at KFC just to satisfy those cravings. That's amazing. Well,
you know how I love those life hacks where you
learn to make soup and coffee pots or broil fish
and dishwashers. So I'm all about this. You definitely win
this week's cookbook challenge. All right, well, thanks so much now,
but before we go, I actually wanted to read a
letter from from one of our readers named Lauren Paka.
(36:54):
She emailed us after hearing the episode that we did
on the US Postal system, And remember the neumatic two
was that we were talking about where people actually ordered
a sandwich and had it sent from one borough of
New York to another. And we thought that was so interesting,
And so she wrote to us and this is related
to food, which is why I decided to read it here.
And she said, um, I just finished why we don't
use rockets to send mail anymore. At one point, you
(37:16):
guys mentioned wishing you could get a sandwich through pneumatic tube,
and I thought i'd tell you that I have before.
In Adena, Minnesota, they once had a pneumatic McDonald's drive through.
As a matter of fact, on the recipes, they boasted
they were the world's onlyneumatic McDonald's. I looked it up
and apparently it closed in two thousand eleven, so I'm sorry, guys,
(37:37):
noneumatic sandwiches anymore. I think there's a YouTube video of it. However,
an employee stood in a little outbuilding where they also
had a soda machine, not a great idea to send
through a tube, and took your order. The sandwiches were
made in a strip ball nearby and sent to the
outbuilding through the tube. Kind of neat. Thanks to the podcast, guys.
I'll admit I'm pretty jealous of your job, but that's awesome,
(37:58):
So Lauren Packer, thank you so much for h for
that note. You guys know we love hearing from you anytime.
You can always call us on our seven fact hot
line that's one eight four four pt Genius, or hit
us up on our Facebook or Twitter. You can also
email us part Time Genius at how stuff works dot com.
Thanks so much for listening. Thanks again for listening. Part
(38:31):
Time Genius is a production of How Stuff Works and
wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do the
important things we couldn't even begin to understand. Tristan McNeil
does the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme song
and does the mixy mixy sound thing. Jerry Roland does
the exact producer thing. Gay Bluesier is our lead researcher,
with support from the Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan
Brown and Lucas Adams and Eve. Jeff Cook gets the
(38:53):
show to your ears. Good job, Eves. If you like
what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe, And if you
really really like what you've heard, maybe you could leave
a good review for us. Did we? Did we forget Jason?
Jason who
Guess what will what's that man go? Do you know
that romance writer Barbara Cartland? Yeah, well, did you know
she put out a cookbook in the nineteen eighties. It's
called The Romance of Food and it is amazing. I
found it from that wonderful site Messy, Messy and and
it's basically all these so called romantic meals photographed in
the most surreal way, like they're bright technicolor backgrounds, and
(00:22):
each dish is surrounded by Barbara's kitchy porcelain dolls and figurines.
I guess it's all weird stuff she had around her house.
It is so creepy. And are these her recipes or what?
I guess there were her personal chefs. But here, take
a look at this. Aren't those pictures ridiculous? And she
wrote these sultry descriptions for each meal. So here's her
(00:43):
pitch for lamb with baby vegetables quote, what woman does
not long to be carried like a lamb in the
arms of the man she loves? I haven't seen it
for years. And here's our description for special strawberry ice
cream quote, as e found in the garden of Eden.
Fruit isn't exciting? Temptations such a naughty cookbook. But by
(01:05):
reading about Barbara Cartland's cookbook made me wonder, what are
the other super strange cookbooks out there? What's the oldest
cookbook on record? And how does celebrity chefs pump out
so many cookbooks every year? So those are some of
the big questions we'll be tackling. Why don't we dive
in anyway? Welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm Will Pearson
(01:40):
and as always I'm joined by my good friend man
guest Ticketer and sitting behind that soundproof glass bragging about
his brand new George Foreman grill as our producer Tristan McNeil.
What are we on like our two of bragging. I
know it's a good grill. We get it, Tristan. It's
very functional, very functional, And I know we could sit
here and keep complimenting Tristan's grill forever. We'll do more
of that after we finished this episode. But but let's
(02:02):
talk cookbooks. The cookbooks are so prevalent in our lives.
I mean, there's something you don't really think to contemplate,
but you know it's strange. They're essentially these instruction manuals
for how to use food. I mean, that's such a
weird way to put it, but I guess you're right.
I mean, I feel like if an alien came to Earth,
that's how they'd refer to them, like food instruction manuals.
But that's actually part of what's so interesting about cookbooks, right,
(02:25):
I mean, they're basically these documents of how we eat,
or at least how we want to eat. Yeah, and
and also how we used to eat. I mean, I
think we should get into this a little bit later,
because it's fascinating to look at how cookbooks from like
imperialist Russia talk about households in a very different way
than cookbooks that came out from maybe like the Great Depression,
and even how we write recipes changes from era to era.
(02:47):
So how do you mean, Well, I was reading this
article from The Economist about how cookbooks have evolved and
transformed with the times. In the sixteen hundreds, of British
cookbook advised cooks to quote heat water until it was
a little hotter than milk that comes from a cow.
And those weren't vague directions, I mean they're very specific.
So essentially any cook or kitchen hand at the time
(03:08):
would have some knowledge of farm life. So a little
hotter than milk as it comes out of the cow's
utter meant a specific temperature too that it's so weird. Yeah,
and and and that's how recipes were written until the
Industrial Revolution a couple of hundred years later, you know,
when people were separated from their rural roots. That's pretty crazy.
So I know you and your family enjoy cooking, but
I can't remember. Do you have a lot of cookbooks around?
(03:31):
There's definitely a few that we used frequently, and then
way too many that just kind of sit there on
the shells. But what about you guys? Are you big
cookbook users? Yeah, well we're the same way. Like we
used to live in a small apartment with too many cookbooks,
and after we Marie condoed the place, we only kept
the essentials. But I mean, I I do like to cook,
and I'm a sucker for beautiful cookbooks, like I have
this Jerusalem cookbook that I use a lot, and this
(03:53):
old Market Bitman cookbook that's really warm. But mostly cookbooks
are aspirational for me. I kind of like just having
them around. And why is that? Are like are the
recipes too hard or just intimidating or what. Yeah, I
mean it's a little of that. And as much as
I like things like the Momo Fuku cookbook or whatever,
I mean, I'm not gonna cold smoke wings and make
ramen unless it's a really special occasion, especially since we
(04:17):
have ramen downstairs. I mean, it's kind of the same
way I think about foreign films and how they sit
on my Netflix cue. Like, I totally intend to use
these books and make all these recipes when I have
time and the mood strikes, But instead I just make
nachos and watch Old Dirty Rocks every single time. Nacho
my life. Well, there's there's definitely an aspirational aspect to cookbooks.
(04:39):
But you know what's funny. I feel like I see
new cookbooks everywhere now. But you remember back around two
thousand and ten and tablets had just come out that
was supposed to be one of the things that was
going to die with the invention of tablets and such,
that they would go away. Yeah, but I mean, if
vinyl records can make a comeback, I guess anything can.
I I actually found some articles from around that same
(05:00):
time period and and the book industry was really worried
apparently like editors stopped making as many acquisitions. But but
then it turned out people really wanted their cookbooks in
dead tree form, and of course food appreciation went through
this all time hive. You know that there was that
farm to table movement that took off and Instagramming your
food and the popularity of food shows. Actually, I think
(05:22):
I might have already told you this, but last summer
we took our kids to this Italian restaurant and my son,
who was five then, had actually eaten nicely and behaved,
which is kind of a rarity. So we said to him,
if you'd like, you can have a slice of cake
for dessert, and he just looked at me and said,
is it a walnut cake? I was honestly so confused,
(05:43):
like I didn't even know walnut cake was a thing.
But apparently he had been sneaking off and watching The
Great British Bake Off on our iPad, just on the slide,
and he really got into the show and then into
baking and cooking, and he had very specific demands for
what you eat for dessert. I'm glad that that's what
he was sneaking often watching, rather than the Barbara Cartland
uh show. But well, clearly people of all ages have
(06:05):
been inspired by TV shows and this greater food movement
that you were talking about. But why don't we get
back to the cookbooks and and I want to get
some of the early cookbooks in the conversation. Of course,
I want to talk about some of the really important
ones that have shaped American cooking. But why don't we
warm up by listing, you know, maybe the strangest cookbook
that each of us found, other than the Barbara Cartland
(06:25):
when you started the show, I'm a friend, what do
you find? Well, it's it's hard to choose what would
be the weirdest. I mean, there there are some weird ones,
like the Star Trek cookbooks and the one that I
think is just hilarious cooking with coolio and things like that.
But but the one that really stuck with me is
called Last Dinner on the Titanic. And that's a real cookbook. Yeah,
(06:46):
and it's meticulously researched and based off of real recipes,
including the ten course meals served in first class. It's
a beautiful book too. But as Bone Appetite puts it
in their review, quote, your inner history buff will be sated.
You may never be able to look at lobster thermidor
the same. Again, I have no idea what that means.
I have only one look for lobster Thermador. But I
(07:09):
love that. I mean, to me, the Titanic Cookbook feels
like the perfect book for a book club. Like if
I was in a book club or a cookbook club,
that'd be my first suggestion. Yeah, I'm with you on that,
I mean, So, what's your pick for weirdest cookbook? Well,
there are obviously a lot of funny cookbooks out there.
I've got a list of Um, there's a reason Mommy drinks.
There's an original road kill cookbook, which shouldn't be confused
(07:31):
with all the impost road kill cookbooks out there, right,
But but the craziest cookbook I found was Cooking with
the serial Killer. Have you heard of this? What is that? So?
This woman, Dorothea Puente was a serial killer who also
ran a boarding house. Apparently she worked her way up
in crime. She started by running a brothel, then she
started forging checks, and eventually she ran this boarding house
(07:54):
where she murdered the elder tenants so she could catch
in on their social security and she buried them in
her basement, and then with each body she put a
new layer of concrete floor over the bodies. It was
super elaborate. I can say she worked her way up,
like she she forged her signature on checks and then oh, yeah,
she became a serial killer. But then that's terrible. Yeah,
But but she also kept her tenants well fed. And
(08:16):
the weird thing is one that she has a book
of recipes out right. I mean, it came out in
two thousand and four and and it was basically through
her correspondence with a writer. And secondly, the Food Network
actually reviewed the thing and said, quote, the biggest surprise
of this are you freaking kidding us? Cookbook? Is the
recipes are actually pretty good. I mean, I guess it's
(08:37):
a good lesson for anyone trying to stereotype serial killers.
Killing isn't their only hobby, you guys. They have other
hobbies to multi talented. Well, all right, let's take this
back to the beginning for a second and maybe talk
about some of the ancient cookbooks. Definitely, so, I know
you looked into some of the early stuff, but what's
the earliest cookbook he found? Well, the first cookbook we
know of is is just three tablets long. That's tablets long,
(09:00):
and so it's way back from seventeen hundred b C.
And it's known as the Yale Culinary Tablets and it's
it's part of Yale's Babylonian collection. And the writing it's
actually all in Cuneiform. So what food recipes are on there? Like?
Have academics actually been able to decipher it? Apparently it's
like twenty five recipes for stu. I think it's supposed
to be very fancy stews, like the kind that we're
(09:22):
fit for Mesopotamian king, so it may be better than
it sounds. And but they're actually not real clear directions
or quantities listed on the tablets. Is just mainly just
a list of ingredients. So basically they're really old shopping
list for student. Yeah, pretty much. Well, I mean, seventeen
hundred BC is far older than I imagine for the
first cookbook. But where's it go from there? Well, the
(09:43):
best known ancient cookbook is probably a Pitious and it's
nicknamed for the Gorman who used the number of the recipes,
and it's from the fourth century and it has another
title that translate as the art of Cooking or more
literally like maybe like concerning cookery. But for being the
first real Western cookbook, it's it's actually pretty organized. So
(10:04):
their ten chapters, including a section on ingredients, one on
the sea, one on the Careful Housekeeper. Apparently, and I've
only read about it, but it definitely gives us a
window into what the upper classes used to eat. So
what was that? It appears to be really gamy birds
like ostrich and flamingo, and more than cooking. It seems
(10:25):
like a lot of cooking tricks. You know from masking
how bad these birds And it's gross to think about,
but it makes sense when you think about it. And
according to the cookbook, you can smother their smell with very,
very very heavy sauces. As the economists pointed out, quote
one recipe explains that stale bird should be cooked in
a sauce of pepper lovage time meant hazelnuts, date, honey, vinegar,
(10:48):
fish sauce, wine, and mustard. Through that concoction, it would
be impossible to detect the stale smell, or indeed any
smell at all. I actually I can't imagine what that
concoction itself would have smelled, like dates, vinegar, and fish sauce. Also,
I see that Epicious added honey to everything. He used
(11:09):
to add honey to lobster even But I mean, is
stale flamingo coated in a strong sauce good? I mean,
it can't be right. And actually according to the people
who've tried to recreate it, they they say it's not
that good either. That the best that's been described. I
saw one that just said, interesting, you know that the
heavy duty sauce does seem to live up to its
reputation and mask any meat you put it on, and
(11:31):
so that I guess that part is good. But there's
some other old cookbooks that get talked about a lot.
There's one from China from the thirteen hundreds that features
an early version of peaking duck. One from ninety that
King Richard, the Seconds Master Cook assembled. It's called the
Form of Curry or Forms of Cooking and Modern English.
It has two hundred and five recipes and mixes spices
(11:51):
you know, like carnamon and nutmeg and ginger with meats
you probably haven't eaten. I mean, it's it's kind of
wild to read about some of these cranes heron ale.
But the thing I kept reading about all these cookbooks
is how much plagiarism there were in the recipes. That's weird.
So why is that? Well, even a picious is recipes
were clearly lifted from Greek and Roman foods, and it
(12:12):
was a mix of styles. But the easiest ways to
spot the plagiarism is in the mistranslations. So according to
writer Mary Evans, there was a book printed in fifteen
nineties six and advised the cook and one recipe to
add three or four dates. By sixteen fifty three, when
the recipe was pinched by the author of a book
of Fruits and Flowers, the cook was told to set
(12:33):
the dish aside for three or four days. You can
see how the mistranslation happened over time. Yeah, that's funny.
But why don't we hit pause for a second then
get into some of America's favorite cookbooks after the break,
So Mango, We've got a special guest on the program today.
We've actually got the co editor of Leave Me Alone
(12:54):
with the Recipes, Sarah rich On. Sarah, welcome to Part
Time Genius. Thanks for having me today. It was all
about cookbooks and when I stumbled into this book, which
is co edited with the incredible illustrator, Wendy mcdonton. I
just couldn't believe how beautiful the book is. It has
this great origin story. So could you tell us a
little bit about that? Yeah? Absolutely. Um. The origin story
(13:16):
of the book is that about four years ago, UM,
Wendy and I we both lived in the Bay Area,
and we went to the San Francisco Antiquarian book Fair,
just kind of on a whim, and UM Wendy beat
me there and she was walking around and UM spotted
the guestbook sitting in a in a glass case like
propped open to um, a painting of worst Um, and
(13:40):
she was just really drawn to it. It felt familiar,
and it felt very current, and it sort of was
reminiscent of Mara Collman's work U, who of course is
very well known and a little bit like Wendy's work,
herself and other illustrators working today. And so she had
the bookseller pulled out of the case, and when she
looked more closely at it, realized that she was looking
(14:01):
at an original manuscript, a sketch book with actual original
gwash paintings in it, and had dozens of paintings, and
all the paintings were of recipes that had been hand
lettered with a quill and hand painted. Um. So she
called me. I was like on my way across the
bridge from Oakland and said, you know, hurry of you
have to get here and see this thing. Um. And
(14:22):
so when I arrived and looked at it, you know,
I was also totally struck by the by the art.
It's just so brilliant and has so much voice and
character and color. Um. But also for me it was
these recipes are you know, very traditional Eastern European Jewish recipes,
which is the food of my own family. Um. And
(14:43):
so as I looked through it, I felt struck by
the fact that not only did I know this food, um,
but it's not really the kind of food that you
find rendered in such a kind of celebratory, lively exciting way.
You know. I know that the fact that you start
with a Borsh recipe is amazing, like that's what drew Yeah, yeah, so,
(15:05):
and you know, it's in most a lot of food
that you know, having grown up with them and they
go back to generations in my family. You know, it's
kind of it's not the food you think of intcessarily
being the most exciting food. It's the food you think
of as being the most sort of comforting and nostalgic.
But she had created this celebration of this food, which
was so cool to see. UM. So we ended up
(15:27):
um signing out from the bookseller. We had never heard
of her. The bookseller said, oh, yeah, it was done.
It was done in by a woman named Cepi Panellis,
And we didn't know who she was, and you know
that they're googling on our phones, UM to discover that
she Although there wasn't too much available online about her, UM,
(15:47):
she has a little Wikipedia entry and uh, we learned
that she was the first female art director at Conde
nast Um And so then discovered that she had this
massive influence on our direction and publishing and graphic design
in in the mid century and was a really important figure.
And we were both shocked we hadn't heard of her,
(16:08):
because you know, she kind of touches the convergence of
art to professions. She worked in publishing and editorial and
UM and was an illustrator, and neither of us have
heard of her, and so these paintings had never been published.
They've been sitting in her estate for her almost seventy
years and we decided we had to get the book
(16:28):
and figure out a way to publish the recipes and
also tell her story. UM. So we called up Maria
Popova and Debbie Millman, who um we thought would be
interested in it because both of them have an interest
in history and culture and design and um and we
asked him if they would want to go in on
it because it was a purchase, you know, it was
(16:49):
it was an art purchase, um in antique really so
so we couldn't afford it on our own before of
us told our resources and and bought it and then
you know, took it and put it into a fire
proof safe in Wendy's house and uh, and and set
out to figure out what to do next. Yeah, it
really is crazy to me how fresh these illustrations feel like.
I remember, like six or seven years ago we were
(17:10):
trying to commission illustrations that looked like this because they
felt like novel at the time. And and uh, it's
amazing to me that you know, we've we've looked at
magazine histories before and you know, sort of the luminaries
along the way, but the fact that Cepe existed and
Andy Warhol loved her and like, I don't know her
name is just crazy to me. Yeah, yeah, she should
(17:32):
be better known. I mean she just said, you know,
she um. One of kind of the biggest influence she
had as far as um steering the direction that publishing
and design went, is that she um She was one
of the first people to start working with artists for
magazines in a way that really was collaborative and responded
(17:53):
to the artists in a way that invited there, you know,
invited their input and their own response. So rather than
you know, if she needed to do a story about it,
you know, a loaf of bread, instead of calling an
artist and saying, I have a story about a love
of bread when you draw a love of bread, it
was I have a story. I want you to read
it and then tell me after you've read it what
(18:15):
you're fass are on how to put visuals to it,
you know, And and and it was more of an
invitation and a collaboration. And that was how she did
work with Andy Warhol, who was doing a lot of
um he did a lot of food illustration early in
his career. Well. And and a big portion of this
book is is your revision of her recipes. I'm curious
how intimidating that was to try to tweak her recipes
(18:36):
for for a modern age. Yeah, it was. It was intimidating,
I guess, or it was more it was more of
kind of like a um strategic challenge because the I mean,
there was the first challenge, which is simply that the
recipes as she wrote them, when you follow them from
start to finish, don't necessarily yield what they are promising you. Um,
(19:00):
you know, which is most likely because the book, her
original credits her mother as the author and herself as
the illustrator. So these are her mother's recipes, definitely passed
to her directly from her mother. And you know, who
knows exactly how she recorded them, if she was standing
next to her in the kitchen trying to write it
down as this she could, or if her mother told
her from her head, but most likely her mother didn't
(19:21):
fit and meticulously measure things out, and so, um, you know,
these recipes. Some of them hold up just as a
set of instructions. Others really don't. And so my first
challenge was just to make them work, you know, so
that you could follow one to three and at the end,
you'd have the thing that you thought you were going
to get. And then the second challenge, the bigger challenge,
was to say, okay, you know, how do we make
(19:42):
these feel a little bit more modern? How do we
make sure the ingredients are ingredients that people are using
right now? Um? You know there are things in they're
like partially route which I had never used or seen,
although I was able to find it. But um, you know,
I didn't want to include ingredients that would be really
unusual in supermarkets today. UM. And then I didn't want
(20:02):
to make them so modern that they departed from the tradition.
So UM. I worked with a recipe development assistant who
is a sou chef here at Zoony Cafe, which is
very you know, modern temvery California food. So he he had,
you know, we would both kind of try the original
and then come together in brainstorm about what we could
do with it. And he would be further out along
(20:24):
the spectrum of making it more modern and edgy and
kind of bringing in ingredients from lots of other places
and um, and then we'd try to find a middle
ground where where it still felt true to what it
had been. And I think for the most part. We
did that and they very you know, some of them
are really close to the original, like the chicken soup
I thought was fantastic, almost exactly as she had it um.
(20:45):
And then some of the other ones, like the lambs too,
you know, kind of invite like Moroccan flavors, because that's
something you find a lot now with lamb, which she
wouldn't have done, but um makes it taste great. Well
for our listeners, if you haven't checked out, leave me
a own with the recipes by CP Panelli's, go out
and buy a copy today. It's definitely a book that
belongs on more bookshelves. But Sarah Ridge, thanks so much
(21:07):
for joining us today on Part Time Genius. Thanks for
having me. Welcome to Part Time Genius. We're talking about
cookbooks now. I know we were going to be talking
(21:27):
about some of the great American books, but before we do,
let's look for a couple of minutes maybe about celebrity
chefs and just how they crank out so many books. Yeah,
I'm curious about this. Well, if you look at the
big chefs with publishing empires and the publishing schedules there on,
some of them have magazine columns, with thousands of recipes.
Some of them put out a new book every year.
(21:48):
It's just impossible for most people to produce at that volume.
And that's where the cookbook ghost writer comes in. I mean,
it makes sense to me that some celebrities wouldn't write
their own cookbooks, right, Like, I don't expect Barbara Cartland
have experimented with that much in the kitchen. But if
these are big TV chefs, I feel kind of cheated. Yeah,
I know, but you know, as The New York Times
(22:08):
did a story on it, and as one ghost writer
for Rachel Ray put it, how many times can one
person invent a new quick pasta dish? Which makes sense. Plus,
you know, where chefs could work on one volume of
beautiful text once upon a time and that could be
their life's work. Now, the pressure on celebrity chefs is
completely different. I mean, they're all supposed to have special
degrees and make appearances on cruises and on talk shows
(22:32):
and have their own weekly shows, all while operating a kitchen,
and it's actually just impossible. So so often these ghostwriters
are really creative cooks who understand how to distill someone's
style and philosophy into these delicious recipes, but can also
write and and the stories are kind of funny. So
there was there was one writer that said the number
of times they've seen chefs tear up reading the introductions
(22:53):
to their own books, that that was how they marked
their success. And another commenty that while these books often
started a labor of love from the chef, they don't
have time and quote dissolution is part of the job.
And every book there's a point where you just can't
stand the sight of each other. So it isn't always pleasant,
and it can be like dating, like you you want
to see that you fit before you commit to anything
(23:14):
long term. But it actually does pay pretty well. That's
pretty funny, you know, now that you mentioned it. I
met this entrepreneur who had a candy company. It was
this taffy that that was supposed to be better for
your teeth, and his wife was a dentist. But the
interesting thing to me was I asked him how do
you make a candy and he told me that you
can strike deals with chefs to come up with food
recipes for you. Like he found this junior chef from
(23:37):
a big deal restaurant in New York and and asked
him to play with the sugar substitute he had, and
he wrote him three or four recipes for not that
much money. But speaking of unsung cookbook authors, let's get
into some of the biggies in American history. Yeah, let's
do it. So let let's do a little quiz here.
What do you think is the best selling cookbook in
the US? Uh? I don't know. Maybe The Joy of Cooking? Yeah,
(23:59):
that that would have my guest too, And it's in
the top three. It's sold about eighteen million copies. Al Right, Well,
what about what's the Julia Child one? Cause that the
the Art of French Cooking? Is that what it's called? Yeah,
it's Mastering the Art of French Cooking? But that isn't either,
got alright, so I give up? What what is it? Yeah,
it's actually Betty Crocker's cookbook, which is sold approximately sixty
(24:21):
five million copies. I mean, it came out in nineteen
fifty and sales actually rivaled those of the Bible. According
to The Daily Meal, it's sold two million copies in
its first two years. And of course Betty Crocker is
this fictional marketing character, so it's a little strange that
America trusted her instincts. But before we talk about that,
I do want to talk about the book that's sold
(24:42):
the second best in the US, and this preceded the
Betty Crocker book by about twenty years, and that's the
Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook, which came out in
ninety that's sold about forty million copies. And it was
revolutionary for a few reasons. Nothern law is going to
be so disappointed in me because we actually have two copies. Escal. Yeah, So,
(25:02):
so why was it so revolutionary? Well, one of the
really simple reasons was that it was one of the
first cookbooks with ring binding, Like the major advantage was
that you could lay it out flat on your countertops.
And at the time, this was a totally new technology,
so it felt kind of modern. And also, the book
had these little tab dividers, so when it was closed,
it looked like a little filing cabinet of recipes, and
(25:24):
there were blank pages at the back for notes and
so you can make your comments on your recipes, like
none of this have been done before. It was all
these gimmicks that emphasized its usefulness. I miss an age
where tab dividers were revolutionary. That's and and but the
thing is, like, the recipes are really good, Yeah they are,
and and the Better Homes cookbook was one of the
first to emphasize that they had actually tested thousands of
(25:46):
recipes in the test kitchen and they were only bringing
you the creme de la creme. Plus it was really instructional. So,
according to Better Homes own site quote, in many books
at the time, a recipe for a current pie might
have read something like this at one cup of raspberries
to three cups of ripe currents and bacon, two crusts,
serve plane or with whipped cream. So most writers assumed
(26:08):
that you know how to prepare the fruit, how to
make a crust, how long to bake the thing, how
to add three fourth cup of sugar to sweeten the filling,
or like a little flour to thick in it. So
this was way more instructive and really taught you how
to cook. Oh yeah that yeah, that's definitely interesting. And
you know, just to be clear, Better Homes wasn't the
first one to use more accurate measurements like French chefs
(26:28):
had been working to codify French cuisine since the late
eighteen hundreds and early nineteen hundreds. And uh. This woman,
Fanny Farmer, she headed the Boston Cooking School. She did
the same for the US and the eighteen nineties. Apparently
she was like super finicky about ingredients, and she claimed
that currents could only be picked between June twenty and
July three, but not when it's raining. And uh. On
(26:50):
the other hand, she wrote with the precision of like
chemistry experiments. And she's the reason we use like proper
measurements instead of saying things like a slab of butter,
the size of the net, a level tea cup of sugar. Now,
I know The Joy of Cooking came out around the
same time as the Better Homes book. But before we
talk about the Joy of Cooking, why don't we talk
about the Betty Crocker book that you mentioned. So, so,
(27:11):
why was it America's top selling cookbook? Yeah, Joy of
Cooking could have been its own episode, but we can
chat about that a little later. The Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook.
It's baffling to me how it got so popular. I
didn't really know the origin of Betty Crocker. Apparently it
all started in when this flower company. It's called gold
Metal Flower. They put out a puzzle and had customers
(27:33):
fill it out and mail it back for like a
free pin cushion. And the company didn't think of pincushion
prize would be that popular, especially since it was just
shaped like a tiny bag of gold metal flower. But
you know, the puzzles poured in. Apparently thirty thousand completed
puzzles came in. And even more surprising than all these
entries was the fact that they were accompanied by so
(27:53):
many letters, all asking bacon questions and listing out like
their concerns, and at the time, it was all up
to this all male advertising department to respond to the queries.
So did they have the answers. No, I mean, that's
part of what's so weird is they had right back responses,
but they'd have to ask the female staff who worked
there for answers. And because none of them felt comfortable
(28:15):
writing their names, they invented this woman, Betty Crocker. Wow.
So so Betty Crocker became sort of like the Dear
Abbey of cooking problems exactly. And so, according to the
Chicago Tribune quote, before Betty Crocker was synonymous with boxed cake,
mix and canned frosting. She was a kitchen confidant and
a maternal and guiding presents and kitchens across America. She
(28:36):
was the woman people could trust with their most frustrating
kitchen woes. And as that relationship built up from nineteen fifty,
people really came to trust her. So everyone just accepted
she was real. Yeah, I mean it was more than that.
So so you have to remember that this book outsold
the Bible, and that's partially because it really spoke to housewives.
(28:57):
So women used to make trips to the flour mill
just to try to neat and thank her. And while
the croquettes and that's what these women who worked the
company called themselves. When they couldn't talk around why Betty
wasn't in that day, there was just this box of
tissues ready for the weeping that would results, I know,
so traumatic. It's like learning that pro wrestling isn't real
(29:17):
and what can you trust here? But but but the
cookbook was it wasn't any good, yeah, I mean the
advice was practical and the recipes were reliable, and it
apparently helps standardize more things in the kitchen, like the
size of oven trays and pans, But the real value
in the book seemed to be and how Betty Crocker
spoke to women, and the book understood the tremendous burden
on housewives. And I'm going to quote the Tribune here again,
(29:39):
but this is some of what's in the cookbook. Quote.
She dispensed good cheer and sympathy. When the cook needed
what Betty terms special helps, Betty suggested she might try.
And then this is quoting Betty a few minutes rest
on the kitchen floor, harboring pleasant thoughts, pursuing a hobby,
wearing comfortable shoes, altern eating, sitting and standing tasks, and
(30:02):
taking time to notice humorous instance such as the kidden
getting stuck in a tree, all to narrated at dinner time.
I mean, it all sounds so quaint and kind of
ridiculous at the same time. But you know, but clearly
cooking and maintaining a house is frustrating, and it must
have been nice, you know, to get that reminder that
you're not alone in these struggles. Definitely, and and people
must have needed it. I mean, books, Yeah, that's a
(30:24):
crazy number. But why don't we take a quick break
and then chat briefly about a few more important books.
So they go, there are obviously two big books that
we haven't talked about yet. Yeah, that's right, Joy of
(30:44):
Cooking and mastering the Art of French Cooking. Well, and
like we said before, both of these books could be
their own show. And in fact, if you want to
learn more about Julia Child, you can check out our
sister show, Food Stuff, And they just did an episode
on her not so long ago, and you know, then
you've got the Joy of Cooking in That book has
gone through so many editions and is definitely the best
known American cookbook. But let's just do the quick version. Yeah.
(31:07):
So the story is incredible in you know, the stock
market crashed and Erma Rombauer, who's the woman who wrote
the book, her husband had been depressed on and off,
but the crash just ruined him and and he took
his own life. But Irma decided to pour all of
her efforts into a cookbook. And the truth is she
wasn't that great a cook, but she was this incredible
(31:28):
hostess and she could really pull a party together really quickly.
And her book kind of reads like the flip side
of the Betty Crocker book, where everyone's trying to be
the perfect housewife. I mean Erma narrates her book from
like imperfection. She cared more about providing cocktail recipes that
loosened the tongue than about any of the fancy spreads.
And she advises to serve the drinks the sooner the better.
And when she does talk about stirring things like soups
(31:50):
for an hour, she acknowledges no real person has that
sort of time. So she comes across this this wonderful,
practical German Midwestern woman who just loves life. There's real
joy and the joy of cooking. It's real. And and
she used all her money to publish the slim volume.
And as the volumes expanded, it kept pace with the times.
So there's things like how to cook a squirrel in
(32:11):
leaner times, to how to make granola or lemonade recipes
for a hundred people. That's really interesting. And you know,
there are people who love certain volumes that her daughter made,
maybe versus her originals and camps who think certain editions
are soulless versus those that have Irma's true spirit. And
I guess what struck me as is how vocal the
fans are about these certain editions, But why don't we
(32:34):
talk quickly about Julia Child too, Because mastering the Art
was definitely also a very big deal. But but why
was it so revolutionary? Well, basically, it brought French cuisine
to America. I mean, French cuisine had been unapproachable and
it was the fanciest food out there. But I didn't
realize her book isn't easy. I mean, the steps are complicated.
(32:54):
I guess that's a subplot of Julia and Julia. But
it was basically the book that pulled the curtain from
these French magicians and revealed the tricks to everyday Americans.
You know, I was watching this American Masters on Jacques
Popin and he's so fascinating. But but the thing that
I thought was most interesting was he actually turned down
cooking at the Kennedy White House to take a job
(33:16):
at Howard Johnson's the hotel chain. Isn't that weird? Like, basically,
it took a very standard restaurant food and for ten
years worked on improving it at scale to make the
food as delicious as it could be, which I guess
is a kid to win. Top chefs worked with like
airlines to make the food better. Yeah, it's exactly like that,
all right. So I know we raised through a ton
of books and and we didn't get enough time with
(33:38):
any of them. But it really is fascinating how you
can look at cookbooks and understand a certain time through them.
There was one I was reading about, a sixteenth century
Russian book called the Mastroy and it tells you how
to cook turn ups but also discloses the best way
to punish wayward servants, which it seems so strange, but
you know, cookbooks were for the wealthy back then, and
(33:58):
it really shows that. I know. And when you look
at books like Cooking under Rations from World War One,
it's really heartbreaking to see meals like brown rice prepared
with drippings if you have them, or stock, or like
a little salt and pepper. It's it's not that they
can't be tasty, but you can just feel the hopelessness
of the times and the recipe. But on the other hand,
you can look at a book like Cooking with Coolio
(34:20):
and his kitchen Pimp recipes like finger licken, rib stick
and fall off the bone and into your mouth chicken
makes me hungry, I know, And you realize we've lived
through some pretty outlandish times too, write write, I have
no idea what future historians are gonna learn from that,
But you know one thing historians will remember the mango
the p GG fact off. Well, probably not, but either way,
(34:41):
let's go back and forth on some great cookbooks. Did
you know one of my heroes, Roger Ebert, had a
cookbook up. It's called The Pot and How to Use
It and it's basically a guy for writers on how
to eat all using meals made in rice cookers. It's
(35:02):
kind of a set it and forget it recipe book. Um,
I mean until you're hungry. I mean I did not
know that existed. Well, have you heard of the Eat
Your Feelings book. It's subtitled Recipes for Self Loathing and
they're very very specific, so it'll show you how to
make everything from worst d eight Ever, nutty cheeseballs too,
Baby Won't Stop Crying, Nachos Supreme. It sounds very cheese forward,
(35:26):
very cheese heavy. Here's one from another favorite writer of mine,
Roll Dolls, Revolting Recipes. You know it's it's it's strange
because I've read most of roll dolls books, including his
kid in adult stories. But I've actually never picked up
this cookbook. But according to the Food Network, it features
recipes like quote, an edible crocodile made from a spinach
covered baghett with almond teeth, all of eyes, gherkin toes,
(35:50):
and a slice of ham for a ton. It's like
funny revolting head. Yes, I was actually going to tell
you about the Twinkies cookbook, but instead I think I'm
gonna go with a different fact. I feel like I
need to clench this fact off. There's one called the
Manifold Destiny Cookbook, so I don't get it. Is it
filled with recipes from that time period or like about
recipes gone West? No? No, no, it's way better than that.
(36:12):
So I learned about this from Bone Appetite and the
subtitle is though one the Only Guy to Cooking on
your car engine. It's a book made in nineteen eight nine.
But but it's basically about how to use your car
and the engine to cook snacks and meals while driving.
I guess maybe West. But apparently it includes recipes like
thru way thighs, you know, so you don't need to
(36:33):
pull off at KFC just to satisfy those cravings. That's amazing. Well,
you know how I love those life hacks where you
learn to make soup and coffee pots or broil fish
and dishwashers. So I'm all about this. You definitely win
this week's cookbook challenge. All right, well, thanks so much now,
but before we go, I actually wanted to read a
letter from from one of our readers named Lauren Paka.
(36:54):
She emailed us after hearing the episode that we did
on the US Postal system, And remember the neumatic two
was that we were talking about where people actually ordered
a sandwich and had it sent from one borough of
New York to another. And we thought that was so interesting,
And so she wrote to us and this is related
to food, which is why I decided to read it here.
And she said, um, I just finished why we don't
use rockets to send mail anymore. At one point, you
(37:16):
guys mentioned wishing you could get a sandwich through pneumatic tube,
and I thought i'd tell you that I have before.
In Adena, Minnesota, they once had a pneumatic McDonald's drive through.
As a matter of fact, on the recipes, they boasted
they were the world's onlyneumatic McDonald's. I looked it up
and apparently it closed in two thousand eleven, so I'm sorry, guys,
(37:37):
noneumatic sandwiches anymore. I think there's a YouTube video of it. However,
an employee stood in a little outbuilding where they also
had a soda machine, not a great idea to send
through a tube, and took your order. The sandwiches were
made in a strip ball nearby and sent to the
outbuilding through the tube. Kind of neat. Thanks to the podcast, guys.
I'll admit I'm pretty jealous of your job, but that's awesome,
(37:58):
So Lauren Packer, thank you so much for h for
that note. You guys know we love hearing from you anytime.
You can always call us on our seven fact hot
line that's one eight four four pt Genius, or hit
us up on our Facebook or Twitter. You can also
email us part Time Genius at how stuff works dot com.
Thanks so much for listening. Thanks again for listening. Part
(38:31):
Time Genius is a production of How Stuff Works and
wouldn't be possible without several brilliant people who do the
important things we couldn't even begin to understand. Tristan McNeil
does the editing thing. Noel Brown made the theme song
and does the mixy mixy sound thing. Jerry Roland does
the exact producer thing. Gay Bluesier is our lead researcher,
with support from the Research Army including Austin Thompson, Nolan
Brown and Lucas Adams and Eve. Jeff Cook gets the
(38:53):
show to your ears. Good job, Eves. If you like
what you heard, we hope you'll subscribe, And if you
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