‘Joy of Cooking’, the great American ‘bible’ of recipes, turns 90

In a scene from “Julie and Julia,” a 2009 film directed by Nora Ephron, cook Julia Child is having afternoon tea with a group of ladies: her two friends and partners on the book-writing project, and the author of a title already established, invited to the meeting precisely to give tips to new writers.

Irma S. Rombauer, a St. Louis, Missouri, housewife gained fame after, at age 52, she used $3,000 from her husband, who had committed suicide a few months earlier, life insurance to publish her ” Joy of Cooking”.

The cookbook was such a huge phenomenon in the United States that, in addition to selling millions of copies, it also influenced Julia Child to write, in 1961, her renowned “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”. That’s because, whether or not she had tea with Ira in real life, Julia understood, through her predecessor’s experience, that there was a path for publications of this kind in America at that time.

The first edition of “Joy of Cooking” completes, in 2021, 90 years of life. Since then, it has been edited another nine times, with updates, modernizations and additions to its already far from modest extension of the time in which it was written.

The book deserves the pantheon of cookbooks Americans not only for the undeniable quality —”Joy of Cooking” is to the gringos as much as “Dona Benta” (1940) is to the Brazilians—, but also for the impressive backstage stories that accompany it.

In addition to the tragic death of Edgar Rombauer, a lawyer who succumbed to the effects of the Great Depression and left Ira S. a widow, there are, for example, rumors that the 500 recipes listed in the inaugural edition were not all tested — a fact that, admitted by Fictional wrath in “Julie and Julia” leaves the ladies and their teacups perplexed.

The editors of “Joy of Cooking” also add quirks to the plot. The first, who received the so-called $3,000 to shoot the work, had never printed a book in her life, only labels for high-end shoe stores and the manufacturer of Listerine mouthwash.

The second, which released an augmented version in 1936, generated a legal quibble that dragged on for years: by signing the contract without the help of a lawyer or literary agent, the author ceded the copyright for both editions — the new and the first—to the Bobbs-Merrill Company.

The publisher’s marketing efforts, however, almost made up for the damage by generating impressive sales for the time. It was the beginning of the almost centenary glory of “Joy of Cooking”.