The Joy of Cooking
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| Author | Irma S. Rombauer |
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| Genre(s) | Cookbook |
| Publisher | Bobbs-Merrill Company, Simon and Schuster |
| Released | 1931 |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-02-604570-2 |
The Joy of Cooking is one of the United States' most-published cookbooks, having been in print continuously since 1936 and with more than 18 million copies sold. It was privately published in 1931 by Irma S. Rombauer, a homemaker in St. Louis, Missouri who was struggling emotionally and financially after her husband's suicide the previous year. The book was illustrated by Rombauer's daughter Marion Rombauer Becker, an art teacher at John Burroughs School. Irma Rombauer had 3,000 copies printed by A.C. Clayton, a company which had printed labels for fancy St. Louis shoe companies and for Listerine, but never a book. In 1936, the book was picked up by a commercial printing house, the Bobbs-Merrill Company. While Joy is considered a bit daunting for beginning cooks, it is the backbone of many home cooks' libraries (and is commonly found in commercial kitchens as well).
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[edit] First Edition (1931)
In 1931, Rombauer, a recent widow needing a way to support her family, self-published the "The Joy of Cooking: A Compilation of Reliable Recipes with a Casual Culinary Chat." Daughter Marion designed the cover, which depicted St. Martha of Bethany, the patron saint of cooking, slaying a dragon. She also produced silhouette cutouts to illustrate the rest of the book.
Much slimmer and more conversational than later editions, the original Depression-era edition included sections on canning, pickling, and instructions on how to use meat such as squirrel, oppossum and raccoon.
[edit] 1962-1964 Editions
In 1962, a revised edition of Joy was published, the first since Irma's death. The edition was released without Becker's consent. Subsequent releases of the book in 1963 and 1964 were essentially massive corrections, and Becker was known to swap copies of the 1962 edition for later corrected versions.
This edition was published in paperback format (most notably, a two-volume mass market paperback edition) until sometime after the release of the 1997 edition, when it was superseded by the 1975 edition. It is still widely available in used bookstores.
[edit] 1975 Edition
The 1975 edition was the last to be edited by Becker, and remains the most popular. More than 1,000 pages long, it became a staple in kitchens throughout the country. Though many of the sections may feel dated to the contemporary American palate, many home chefs still find it a useful reference and it is still widely used. The forward to this edition explains that Becker's favorite recipes include "Cockaigne" in the name, (e.g., "Fruit Cake Cockaigne"), after the name of her country home in Anderson Township, near Cincinnati, Ohio. [1]
The 1975 edition remained in print, primarily in various inexpensive paperback editions, until 2006 and the arrival of the 75th Anniversary edition.
In early 1997, the environmentalist group Sea Turtle Survival League complained that the 1975 edition contained a recipe for cooking Green Sea Turtle, an endangered species by the 1990s. The 1997 edition did not contain the recipe; the 2006 edition does contain a turtle soup recipe, but specifies the use of non-threatened freshwater species.
[edit] 1997 Edition
After the 1975 edition, the project lay unchanged for about twenty years. In the mid-1990s, Simon and Schuster (owner of the Joy copyrights) hired influential cookbook editor Maria Guarnaschelli who, under the supervision of Rombauer's grandson Ethan Becker, oversaw the creation of the controversial 1997 edition, which dropped the conversational first-person narration of the original. Though it kept the concise style of its predecessors, much of the book was ghostwritten by teams of expert chefs instead of the dedicated amateur that Irma Rombauer had been when she created the book. The 1997 version is fairly comprehensive, covering a great deal of detail that is not traditionally part of American cooking. Both editions still remain in print, as does a facsimile of the original edition; the 1964 edition is also still widely available in used-book stores.
[edit] 75th Anniversary Edition
In 2006, a 75th Anniversary edition was published, containing 4,500 recipes and returning Rombauer's original voice to the book. The new version removes some of the professionalism of the 1997 edition and returns many simpler recipes and recipes assisted by ready-made products such as cream of mushroom soup and store-bought wontons. The 2006 edition also reinstates the cocktail section and the frozen desserts section.
Though mostly a return to the 1975 edition, the new version will include a new index section called "Joy Classics" that contains 35 recipes from 1931-1975 and a new nutrition section written by Harvard Professor of Public Health Walter Willett.
[edit] Other Special Editions and Printings
In 1995, a hardbound edition illustrated by Ginnie Hofmann and Ikki Matsumoto was briefly released.
In 1998, a reproduction, described as "a perfect facsimile of that original 1931 edition," was released.
[edit] Notes
- ^ See articles in Cincinnati Enquirer, October 25, 2006,[1] and on CBS News website, November 1, 2006.[2]
[edit] External links
- Official site
- Publication history
- A blog about trying to cook every recipe in the Joy of Cooking
- A blog about reading and doing the entire Joy of Cooking, and other things food
- Biography by Author Irma Rombauer's daughter. Part of a series of Notable American Unitarian biographies
