Food & Drink

Sharing the 'Joy'

Cookbook's 75th anniversary stirs Austinites' memories of recipes made through the years

By Kitty Crider
AMERICAN-STATESMAN FOOD EDITOR
Tuesday, October 31, 2006

As the "Joy of Cooking," which has sold 15.5 million volumes, celebrates its 75th anniversary this season, local cooks talk about what this practical tome has meant to them. For 84-year-old Mary Moneysmith, born and raised in Pennsylvania, it remains the only cookbook she has ever owned. For Tom Seekatz, University of Texas class of '58, the book turned him from a noncook to a passionate one. For Rebecca Wallace Ford, founder and former owner of Word of Mouth catering, it was the inspiration for a popular bar cookie for 20 years. Dozens of other readers who responded to the American-Statesman's request for "Joy" memories or influences told how the book has enlightened, provided humor (see the small-game section), sealed romances and served as historical looks into the food scene of the past, including how to deal with hard times. After all, the first edition of "The Joy of Cooking" was self-published in 1931 by Irma Rombauer after her husband committed suicide. During the Great Depression, many society wives suddenly found themselves without money to pay their kitchen staffs and began cooking for themselves, with Rombauer's guiding words. For the second edition, her daughter, Marion, joined the byline. (After the fourth edition, "The" was dropped from the title.) Both Irma and Marion are deceased now. Marion's son Ethan, who attended Le Cordon Bleu in Paris but learned to cook from his mom, has picked up the mantle for this latest edition, the seventh. (An outdoorsman, he also sells survival knives under his own name.)

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Tom Seekatz

In September 1958, as a 21-year-old ensign in the Navy, I was transferred to Pascagoula, Miss., to be assigned to a Navy destroyer at the Ingalls Shipbuilding Co.. The day that I signed a lease for an apartment, I called my mother, Elizabeth Seekatz, in Austin and asked for some cooking ware. Shortly thereafter, a care package arrived. It included an electric skillet, two saucepans, a 1943 edition of Irma S. Rombauer's "Joy of Cooking" and a case of 14-ounce Ranch Style Beans. (Ranch Style Beans were not available in Mississippi.)

As a young ensign, making $220.30 per month salary and $360 per month living allowance, I soon learned that using the "Joy of Cooking" was the only way that I could survive. I discovered an employee of a fishing boat that would sell me a mason quart jar of shucked oysters for 50 cents if I brought the jar. I loved those pages in the book from 111 to 117 and ate creamed oysters, sautéed oysters, scalloped oysters, oysters Rockefeller and raw oysters almost every day.

On the other days, I cooked the rice, tuna fish and cheese sauce on page 120 of the old book. (That recipe is not present in later editions.)

The experience transformed me from a noncook to a passionate one. I am now a retired CPA with over 600 cookbooks. I read at least one of them every day.

My four sons all grew up on that tuna, rice and cheese casserole and occasionally still ask for it when they visit. As each boy has grown up, ages 44, 41, 31 and 22, I have given them a copy of "Joy of Cooking." They all cook and regularly call home to ask Dad about how to cook certain items. Looking back, the "Joy of Cooking" is one of the things that has changed my life. It is not the oldest cookbook that I own, but the most coveted.

Rice, Tuna Fish and Cheese Sauce

6 servings.
Boil, then rinse:
2/3 cup rice (should be 2 cupfuls cooked).
Drain the contents of:
7-oz. can tuna fish
Break it into pieces with fork.
Melt in saucepan:
2 Tbsp. butter
Stir in until blended:
4 Tbsp. flour
Stir in slowly:
2 cups milk
Add:
1/2 tsp. salt or more
1/2 tsp. paprika
A few grains red pepper
Reduce heat to low flame.
Stir in until melted:
2 cups grated American cheese
Place in baking dish:

Alternate layers of rice, fish and sauce.The top may be covered with bread crumbs dotted with butter. Place dish in hot oven 400 degrees or under broiler until crumbs are brown.
- 1943 edition of 'The Joy of Cooking'

* Portions of rice and fish may be varied. Sautéed mushrooms are a delicious addition. Increase amount of rice or decrease amount of tuna or make up any combination you like. Use about half as much cream sauce as you do of the other main ingredients. If preferred, bake ingredients in ring, invert and serve it with center filled with sautéed mushrooms.

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Rebecca Wallace Ford

I couldn't resist sharing my "Joy" stories:

No. 1: In the late '60s, I found myself in Charlottesville, Va., looking for direction in life after a year or so in (Washington) D.C. I was lucky enough to stay with a wonderful, encouraging woman named Mrs. Dickey in her 200-year-old home on the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains. She scarcely knew me, but the first morning as she left for work, she handed me a copy of the "Joy of Cooking" (which I had never encountered in Mart, Texas) and said, "I have everything you need to make the Chicken Marengo and an Orange Meringue Pie. Doesn't that sound delicious? I hear you're a good cook. We'll be home at 5:30!" And out the door she went.

I made both and they were delicious. The main thing I remember from that day was the pleasure of being left alone in her lovely home and the warmth and confidence I felt knowing she trusted me to produce a great dinner using "Joy." She even brought a guest home to share it.

No. 2: My first husband, Robert, made wonderful Hollandaise sauce from "Joy." We always loved the quote that accompanies Never-Fail Hollandaise, "Our cook calls this 'holiday sauce' - isn't that a grand name for it?"

No. 3: Two recipes from "Joy" came together to produce one of the most popular bar cookie staples at Word of Mouth Catering. I combined the short crust from the "Nut Bars" and coconut-pecan filling and lemon glaze from the "Pecan or Angel Slices" for our Angel Bars. These later morphed into Coconut-Macadamia Bars by substituting macadamia nuts for pecans in the filling and Key limes for lemons in the glaze. After serving them for 20 years, I still crave them sometimes.

Coconut-Macadamia Bars with Key Lime Glaze
Pastry dough for bottom crust:
1/2 cup butter
1/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1 1/4 cup sifted flour
1/8 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. vanilla

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. To make dough, cream butter and sugar until well-blended. Beat in egg. Combine flour and salt. Add dry ingredients in about 3 parts to the butter mixture, blending them well. Work in vanilla. Use an offset spatula to spread the dough evenly in an ungreased 9-inch-by-12-inch pan. Bake for about 15 minutes.

Filling:
2 large eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
2 Tbsp. flour
1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
3/4 cup flaked coconut
1 generous cup roasted salted macadamia nuts, coarsely chopped

Combine wet filling ingredients in medium bowl using a wire whisk. Mix together dry ingredients and add to wet. Stir in nuts and coconut. Spread filling mixture over baked bottom crust. Bake for about 25 minutes. Cool slightly and drizzle with glaze.

Glaze:
Stir together
1 1/2 cup sifted powdered sugar
Juice of six Key limes

(Persian lime juice can be substituted for Key lime juice. I just prefer the brighter taste of the Key limes.) Cool completely and cut in 1-inch-by-2-inch bars. Makes 4 dozen bars.

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Mary Moneysmith

I am 84 years old. Born and raised in Pennsylvania, I wanted to get away from my small mining town. So I worked in a defense plant but was allergic to the powder I weighed for detonators. I went to Baltimore and met Howard, a nice young man in the Merchant Marines. We married (after about a six-week courtship) and moved to Texas.

My mother-in-law gave me a "Joy of Cooking" (1943 edition), the only cookbook I ever had. I worked for the state while Howard went to the University of Texas. With limited money to live on, I was looking for recipes for hamburger, which was very cheap. My favorite was Porcupines, still a favorite of my two children when I cook. But that is seldom now.

Porcupines
6 servings

Combine:
1 lb. ground beef
1/2 cup bread crumbs
1 egg
1/4 cup chopped onion
2 Tbsp. chopped green peppers (optional)
3/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. paprika

Roll these ingredients into balls. Press them into flat cakes (or ovals, as Mary Moneysmith does.) Roll them in:
1/4 cup raw rice

Heat in a heavy pot:
1 (10 1/2-oz.) can condensed tomato soup
2 cups boiling water

Add:
6 small skinned onions
6 ribs of celery cut into inch lengths
1 tsp. chili powder

Add the meat cakes. Cover the pot. Simmer the meat for 45 minutes.

Thicken the sauce with flour if needed. Season it if needed with salt and paprika.

- 'The Joy of Cooking,' 1943

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What's in the new 'Joy'? More Texas flavors

The new 75th anniversary edition of the "Joy of Cooking" ($30, Scribner) is huge: 4,500 recipes in 1,150 pages. All of these were tested during 24 months by 31 cooks, who averaged a weight gain of seven pounds.

Five hundred of the recipes, reflecting the times, are new - for such things as sushi, slow-cooker meals, flavored vodkas, enchiladas, coffee rubs, smoothies, corn dogs, Texas caviar, baby-back ribs and green posole.

"My big claim to fame is I put the King Ranch Casserole in 'Joy,' " bragged Beth Wareham, vice president and director of cookbook and lifestyle publishing for Scribner and editor of the anniversary issue. In Austin last weekend for the Texas Book Festival, the Fort Worth native said, "I tried to speak for my people." What's also included is a recipe for smoked brisket.

In addition to the new recipes, back are chapters on pickles and relishes, jellies and preserves, canning, brunch and party drinks.

All this for only $30. What's missing are some recipes beloved by Austinites such as porcupine meat balls, tuna rice casserole, and the illustrations on how to skin a squirrel.

Unlike the last edition, which included contributions by hundreds of food professionals, the goal of this volume was to bring back the voice of the original author Irma Rombauer and her daughter Marion, the publisher says. Basically, the new book is an expanded revision of the 1975 edition of "Joy," the bestselling of the editions, co-authored by Irma's grandson Ethan Becker.

In the foreword of the new book, Becker writes, "Happy Anniversary, Granny Rom, Mom and Pop. I hope you are pleased. We've worked long and hard to put 'the joy back in "JOY." ' "

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'Joy,' how do readers love thee? In many ways – practical and quirky

For your knowledge of ingredients

As a reference book, 'Joy' taught us about spring ferns, shad roe and hazelnuts in Maryland. What to do with 350 pounds of apples we picked and stored in our Virginia basement? Seafood in Mississippi? Allergy substitutes? Equivalents and can sizes? It's all in there. My copy is now shabby and spaztter, but I wouldn't trade it for a new one. As we took it all over the world (with the Navy), it explained the world to us.
- Kay Broaddus

For your history of food

One of my favorite tidbits from the old "Joy" (28th reprinting, 1982) is on page 317, in the "About Potatoes" section: "Anyone who has visited Hirschhorn (Germany), in the sweetly romantic Neckar Valley, and who has climbed the hill to the partly ruined castle that dominates the little village, will remember being confronted by a monument dedicated piously, if unhistorically, "To God and Francis Drake, who brought to Europe for the everlasting benefit of the poor - the Potato." I love getting a literate history lesson (not sure if it's accurate) from my cookbook! This older version seems to be written in a more personal, folksy fashion, full of the kind of wisdom I'd hear from my mom when she was teaching me to cook. I miss that in the modern book.
- Brigid Shea

For your ancestral history

This book tells me what shopping, cooking and taking care of a family was like for my grandmother's generation. I love it for that. Now I teach my daughter that this is the book to turn to when you don't know what to do with what you have.
- Wendy Manuel of Hutto, who confesses she stole her copy of "Joy" from her ex's grad student apartment.

For your small-game section

Many is the night I sat at the kitchen table devoting myself to a glass of wine, while my husband (a wonderful cook) puttered about preparing a meal, and I read aloud the proper techniques for preparing such fare as opossum: "If possible, trap 'possum and feed it on milk and cereals for 10 days before killing." And such a relief that its preparation requires two or three changes of water! And raccoon: "Blanch." Is that the raccoon or the cook's reaction after having removed its glands as instructed? And muskrat: With its pesky musk glands, who would have thought! And woodchuck: ". . . watch out for those 7 to 9 kernellike glands under the forelegs." And even armadillo, which has a "light meat, porklike flavor."
- Viki Stockton Smith

For your unique squirrel-skinning diagrams

Thirty years ago when I was a new bride exploring my first copy of "Joy of Cooking," I just happened to flip to the game chapter and discovered the diagrams for skinning a squirrel. I was torn between amusement and horror - the archaic little shoes and gloves worn by the "cook" and the pitiful squirrel who looked more like he was having his pants pulled down than being skinned. When I received the updated 1997 edition for Christmas, I checked immediately to see whether the squirrel-skinning instructions were still there. Alas, they were gone. In their place ostrich and emu had been substituted. Mind you, I have never even once considered cooking a squirrel, much less skinning a squirrel. But those funny little diagrams had been a great conversation piece many times over the years.
- Susan Blount

For survival techniques

When I joined the Peace Corps in 1976 they recommended we bring along a basic cookbook and recommended "Joy of Cooking" or Fannie Farmer. I bought "Joy," and it not only comforted me through two challenging years in Tunisia, but it also changed the way I approach everything I do in the kitchen ever since. We had no refrigerator and only a gas bottle, a two-burner hot plate, and something ingenious called a Palestinian oven that looked like a Bundt pan with a lid that sat on an inverted funnel on the stove. My proudest achievement might be when I made "Joy's" lemon meringue pie in that thing! The pages that saw the most action are the ones that explain mayonnaise and vinaigrette. And I swear by their Blender Hollandaise. It's instantaneous, perfect and beautiful every time.
- Kathy Walz Duncan

For the romance

In 1990, when my husband and I were courting, we were both employed by the U.S. Department of State and stationed in what was then Yugoslavia - he in Zagreb, Croatia, and I in Belgrade, Serbia, about four hours away. Before I visited him in Zagreb for the first time, I asked him what he missed most about home. "Bagels," that New Yorker said, of course. I looked in my faithful copy of "Joy," and there it was. So I made them and took them to him. (Labor intensive, but not too difficult.) He was really touched. I think they "sealed the deal"! Thousands of "Joy" recipes, two kids and 15 years of marriage later, it's still my favorite story, and "Joy" is still my "old faithful" cookbook. (But I can buy bagels in the store now, and do!)
- Camille Pisk Donoghue

A neice's memory

An early experience with my Aunt Irma (Rombauer) was when she invited me (age 6) to walk up to the corner of our street on Flad and Spring avenues in south St. Louis where I was to have tea with her. She served me warm milk and dainty bread, butter and lettuce sandwiches. At that age I thought she had forgotten to add chicken, ham or cheese, but that was it. I've never had to alter the recipes from the original "Joy" or any of the autographed revised "Joys" that she and Marian sent me as each was published. I have too many memories of Aunt Irma and her family to write about here so I thought I'd send one of my early ones.
- Lydia Rombauer Brown of St. Louis, Mo.