While seated in prayer last week prior to the start of the annual confession and reconciliation services at our tiny All Saints Catholic Church in San Pierre, I was reading through the 2023 “Little Blue Book” of Advent devotions and reflections provided by our priest.
These handy palm-size booklets also include “black cover” editions in the spring for Lenten devotions, and are printed and published by the Diocese of Saginaw, as based on the writings and research of the late Bishop Ken Untener who died in 2004. Today, his writings and publications are continued by editor Catherine Haven and Sister Nancy Ayotee.
On page 12 of this newest edition of the Advent booklet, I was surprised to find a few paragraphs dedicated to unlikely author and kitchen icon Irma Rombauer, the author of the culinary and recipe bible “Joy of Cooking” first published in 1931.
There have been nine editions of “Joy of Cooking,” and so just imagine on this Christmas Eve 2023, how many of these beloved kitchen keepsake instructional guides have found their way under Christmas trees in the past nine decades, considering there have been than 20 million copies sold over the years!
As for why Irma’s name and cookbook mention found their way into a Catholic Advent prayer and devotions booklet?
The page entry explains how the recently widowed St. Louis wife and mother Irma (who initially didn’t really cook much since their family employed a cook) learned much of her kitchen know-how from gathering her favorite recipes while helping at church socials and bazaars. She even conducted a cooking class as a benefit for her Unitarian church in St. Louis.
At the urging of her grown children and family to help her escape the grief of her husband’s suicide, Irma retreated to a secluded inn in Charlevoix, Michigan to spend her summer of 1930 writing and compiling her favorite recipes into a cookbook.
She used insurance money from her husband’s death to invest $3,000 to have 3,000 copies of her self-published book “The Joy of Cooking: A Compilation of Reliable Recipes with Casual Culinary Chat” printed by local printer A.C. Clayton Company of St. Louis. This printer had never printed a book before, mostly devoting its operations to printing labels for shoe company boxes, and bottle labels for Listerine mouthwash.
Irma sold her new cookbook around St. Louis, as well as in Chicago and in Michigan, and it sold very well.
It was an unusual cookbook in format, content and design, including the original cover featuring a colorful illustration of St. Martha of Bethany, sister of Mary and Lazarus. Depicted in silhouette, arm outstretched holding what appears to be a mop, St. Martha was shown slaying “the tarasque,” a mythical dragon, used in this case to represent “kitchen drudgery.” St. Martha (described biblically as “a complainer”) is considered the patron saint of cooks.
Recipes inside the vast cookbook range from everyday recipe needs such as cakes, soups, entrees and salads to unusual offerings like “how to pluck a chicken,” how best to prepare “varmint” (such as raccoon “and other critters”) and even how to stew a turtle.
Because Irma had no knowledge of the publishing world, and with only her daughter Marion to help advise, when she found her book was a success, regrettably, she did not seek the advice of a lawyer or literary agent to craft the agreement she reached with her next publisher, Bobbs-Merrill Company of Indianapolis, who realized the cookbook had the makings of a bestselling franchise to rival the most popular selling recipe reference cookbook of the day “The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book” written by Fannie Farmer and first published in 1896 with multiple editions later.
In our own farm pantry, we never had any copies of “Joy of Cooking.” Instead, our family always depended on our well-worn “Fannie Farmer’s Cookbook,” the latter of which became the more widely adopted title of the “Boston Cooking-School Cook Book” in later years, including the 13th edition released by Knopf Publishing in 1990.
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By the late 1950s, Irma Rombauer was able to enjoy her celebrity status as a cookbook and kitchen icon, including a trip to Europe with her grandson Mark Becker, which resulted in an arranged meeting in Paris with “a fan,” a lady destined to soon to enjoy equal kitchen acclaim: Julia Child.
The meeting of the two culinary and cookbook legends is chronicled in the 2009 Columbia Pictures film “Julie & Julia,” in a hotel suite scene which featured actress Frances Sternhagen (who died at age 93 last month) as Irma, lamenting to Julia Child how Irma’s book publisher “swindled her” out of the rights to her now famous cookbook. Further shock registers on the face of Julia Child (played by Meryl Streep) when Irma reveals she never first tested out all of the recipes included in her cookbook because “there were simply so many of them!”
Irma Rombauer died at age 84 in 1962, just as Julia Child’s career was launching on television after the publishing of Child’s own cookbook masterpiece “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” in 1961.
Today, Irma’s great-grandson John Becker and his wife Megan Scott have resurrected Irma’s legacy. In 2019, John and Megan reunited with publisher Scribner and edited and revised what became the 1,200-page hardcover ninth edition of “Joy of Cooking” featuring 600 new recipes, joining the more than 4,000 classics.
Of all those cherished recipes, there is one recipe which has been included in all nine of the “Joy of Cooking” editions. It is for a basic chocolate cake Irma liked to make for holidays and special occasions, frosted with a 7-minute egg-white meringue-type vanilla icing.
Columnist Philip Potempa has published four cookbooks and is the director of marketing at Theatre at the Center. He can be reached at pmpotempa @comhs.org or mail your questions: From the Farm, PO Box 68, San Pierre, Ind. 46374.
Makes 14 servings
Cake:
2 ounces or 2 squares baking chocolate
5 tablespoons boiling water
1 1/2 cups sugar, sifted
1/2 cup butter
4 egg yolks
1 3/4 cup cake flour
3 tablespoons baking powder
1/2 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
4 egg whites
1/8 teaspoon salt
7-Minute White Icing:
2 unbeaten egg whites
1 1/2 cup granulated white sugar
5 tablespoons cold water
1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar
1 1/2 teaspoons light corn syrup
Directions:
1. To make cake, in a double-boiler melt chocolate and add 5 tablespoons boiling water. Remove from heat and cool slightly.
2. In a mixing bowl, sift 1 1/2 cups of sugar, set aside.
3. Beat 1/2 cup of butter until soft and gradually fold into the sifted sugar, mixing and creaming to combine.
4. Add to the sugar and butter mixture the egg yolks, one at a time, beating in to incorporate before adding the chocolate mixture.
5. In another mixing bowl sift enough cake flour to yield 1 3/4 cups and then resift again with 3 tablespoons of baking powder to combine.
6. Add the dry flour ingredients to the creamed butter and sugar chocolate mixture in three parts, alternating with one-third splashes of the 1/2 cup of milk and beat the completed cake batter until smooth after each addition, before finishing with 1 teaspoon of vanilla.
7. In another mixing bowl, whip together 4 egg whites, 1/8 teaspoon salt and fold into the cake batter.
8. Pour batter into a 9-inch-by-13-inch pan and bake in moderate heat oven at 350 degrees 25-35 minutes or until center of cake tests done.
9. To make icing, use a double-boiler to combine all ingredients and cook over rapidly boiling water, stirring constantly and then beat with an electric hand mixer constantly for 7 minutes or until light and fluffy for spreading consistency.
10. Once cake is removed from oven and cools, frost generously and serve.
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2023-12-22 20:45:00Z
CBMifWh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmNoaWNhZ290cmlidW5lLmNvbS9zdWJ1cmJzL3Bvc3QtdHJpYnVuZS9jdC1wdGItcG90ZW1wYS1jb2wtc3QtMTIyNC0yMDIzMTIyMi1yY2hjbW5pbXpuYTNmYnc3N2VsZDdrZ3BjaS1zdG9yeS5odG1s0gEA
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