Joy of Cooking, often known as "The Joy of Cooking", is one of the United States' most-published cookbooks. It has been in print continuously since 1936 and has sold more than 20 million copies. It was published privately during 1931 by Irma S. Rombauer (1877–1962), a homemaker in St. Louis, Missouri, after her husband's suicide the previous year. Rombauer had 3,000 copies printed by A.C. Clayton, a company that had printed labels for fancy St. Louis shoe companies and for Listerine mouthwash, but never a book. Beginning in 1936, the book was published by a commercial printing house, the Bobbs-Merrill Company. With nine editions, Joy of Cooking is considered the most popular American cookbook. encouraged her to compile her recipes and thoughts on cooking to help her cope with her loss. Rombauer spent much of the summer of 1930 in Michigan, creating the first drafts that would later become Joy of Cooking. With the help of her late husband's secretary, Mazie Whyte, Rombauer began writing and editing recipes and commentaries while searching for more recipes in St. Louis. During the autumn of 1930, Rombauer went to the A.C. Clayton Printing Company, a printer for the St. Louis shoe manufacturers. She paid them $3,000 to print 3,000 copies of The Joy of Cooking: A Compilation of Reliable Recipes with a Casual Culinary Chat in November 1931.

Editions

First edition (1931)

In 1931 Rombauer self-published The Joy of Cooking: A Compilation of Reliable Recipes with a Casual Culinary Chat with more than 500 tested recipes and related commentaries.

The book was illustrated by Rombauer's daughter, Marion Rombauer Becker, who directed the art department at John Burroughs School. Working weekends during the winter of 1930–31, Marion designed the cover, which depicted Saint Martha of Bethany, the patron saint of cooking, subduing a tarasque. She also produced silhouette cutouts to illustrate chapter headings. By 1932, a majority of the 3,000 copies printed by A.C. Clayton were sold. The company had limited experience with publishing cookbooks, and Rombauer, similarly inexperienced in dealing with publishers, performed the negotiations herself without an agent or lawyer. The resulting contract, in which Bobbs-Merrill was granted the copyright not only for the 1936 edition but also for the original 1931 version, resulted in many years of conflict between the author and the publisher.

The 1936 edition differed from other commercial cookbooks of the era by its retention of the author's folksy comments and anecdotes, and its layout of the recipes. These innovations, along with an aggressive marketing effort by Bobbs-Merrill, resulted in good sales. By the end of 1942, the second edition had had six printings, and 52,151 copies had been sold. Sales of this edition were phenomenal: from 1943 through 1946 a total of 617,782 copies were sold, surpassing sales of Joy of Cooking's principal competitor, Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking-School Cook Book.

This edition was also published in paperback format (most notably, a two-volume mass market paperback edition); it is still widely available in used bookstores. The 1962 edition was also released as a single-volume comb-ring bound paperback mass-market edition starting in November 1973 and continuing into the early 1990s.

Sixth edition (1975)

The 1975 edition was the last to be edited by Becker and remains the most popular, with more than 6 million copies sold.

Seventh edition (1997)

After the 1975 edition, the project was unchanged for about 20 years. During the mid-1990s, publisher Simon & Schuster, which owns the Joy of Cookings copyrights (gained from its acquisition of Macmillan Inc. which had previously acquired Bobbs-Merrill catalog)., hired cookbook editor Maria Guarnaschelli, formerly of William Morrow, and editor of works by Jeff Smith and others. Guarnaschelli, supervised by Rombauer's grandson Ethan Becker, managed the creation of the 1997 edition, published by Simon & Schuster's Charles Scribner's Sons division. The new edition kept the concise style of its predecessors, but it eliminated the conversational first-person narration. Much of the edition was ghostwritten by teams of expert chefs instead of the single dedicated amateur Irma Rombauer had been when she created the book. The 1997 version is fairly comprehensive; however, it no longer contains much information about ingredients or frozen desserts.

Upon its publication during January 1997, the edition was titled The All-New, All-Purpose Joy of Cooking; during November of that same year, it was reissued with the title The 1997 Joy of Cooking.

Other special editions and printings

In 1995, a hardbound edition illustrated by Ginnie Hofmann and Ikki Matsumoto was released.

In 1998, a reproduction, described as "A Facsimile of the First Edition", was released.

Eighth edition (2006): 75th anniversary edition

In 2006, Scribner published a 75th anniversary edition, containing 4,500 recipes, that reproduced much of Rombauer's original style. 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, and restores much of the information that was omitted for the 1997 edition.

The new version includes a new index section named "Joy Classics" that contains 35 recipes from 1931 to 1975 and a new nutrition section. It was still edited and written by the Rombauer-Becker family.

Reception

Joy of Cooking became a bestseller originally due to its readability for the middle classes and Rombauer's unique style. Her recipes were designed specifically for middle-class people doing most of their own cooking for their family. She specifically tested and practiced the recipes to ensure they could be produced easily in a relatively brief period of time without much complication. Once she combined her witty comments on the cooking and serving with the action method, her cookbook became readily readable by the average cook in America. Moreover, Rombauer paired the conversational style of the recipes with casual discussions of etiquette and hosting. Her methods were distinct from the other cookbooks of the time, which featured many complex recipes, while her style was simple and conversational. By providing an interesting and easy to read cookbook for the middle class, Joy of Cooking became the main reference book for many mid-century American cooks.

Legacy

The Joy of Cooking is considered the most popular American cookbook.

Julia Child learned to cook from The Joy of Cooking and Gourmet magazine. She enjoyed "Mrs. Joy's Book" and believed it taught her the basic principles of cooking.

The book popularized the title formula "The Joy of..." used to indicate an accessible, popular overview of a topic, such as The Joy of Painting (1983), The Joy of Sex (1972), The Joy of Art (2020), The Joy of X: A Guided Tour of Mathematics (2012), The Joy of Living (2007), The Joy of Accounting (2020), and even The Joy of Uncircumcising (1992).

See also

  • Books in the United States

References

  • Biography by author Irma Rombauer's daughter , part of a series of Notable American Unitarian biographies