One of the things that I cherish most about cooking is the way we document and pass along recipes. To this day my mom's copy of the Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook is filled with scraps of paper, hand written notes and adjustments, and news paper clippings. While I keep a fairly elaborate library of cookbooks, more often than not I rely on a crumbled stack of printed scans of the cookbooks that I grew up with.
The Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook was and has been a big staple in our house. While it contains a lot of seemingly misguided staples from the past, such as etiquette instructions and plenty of gelatinous "salads", it also covers all the basic knowledge any beginner cook (or "homemaker", as the book says) would need to know. It explains everything from measurement conversions, to cuts of meat, to how to properly set a table.
So while this book was the tool that my mom relied on to teach herself everything she in turn taught me, I wasn't aware that its origins had a connection to radio until today. As per the Betty Crocker website, the collection of recipes themselves began on the radio:
"In 1924, the Washburn Crosby Company saved a local radio station from bankruptcy, changed the station’s name to its acronym, WCCO, and presented Betty Crocker on daytime radio’s first cooking show. “Betty Crocker Cooking School of the Air” was an immediate success, and the next year was expanded to 13 regional stations. “Graduates” of the program who completed reports and sent them to Betty Crocker for grading, numbered 238 the first year and ranged in age from 16 to 82.
Each station had its own Betty Crocker voice, reading scripts written at the Home Service Department in Minneapolis. In 1927, the cooking school became a program on the fledgling NBC network, continuing for 24 years with more than one million listeners enrolled.
In 1945, at the request of the U.S. Office of War Information, for four months Betty Crocker broadcast on NVC radio a program called “Our Nation’s Rations” to help homemakers make the most of rationed foods. Almost seven million copies of a Betty Crocker wartime booklet, Your Share, were distributed at this time. Another Betty Crocker publication, Thru Highway to Good Nutrition, won national recognition by the American Red Cross for outstanding service in the national interest.
Betty Crocker’s Picture Cook Book, first published in 1950, quickly became a national best-seller. The 11th edition, now titled Betty Crocker Cookbook, is one of the more than 250 Betty Crocker cookbooks published since 1950. And Betty Crocker’s monthly recipe magazine—available at grocery stores nationwide—has been published since the 1980s."
As you can see I have two copies, a first edition and a later edition from the 70s. Both have been well loved by their previous owners, as well as by myself. I like to think someday I, too, will fill the backs of these books with recipe clippings and write in my own notes and adjustments. It's just not quite as romantic keeping a browser book mark tab of recipes, is it?
Of all the recipes from the original 1950s edition of the book, the most beloved in our family are the recipes for the pecan pie and the apple crisp, the scans of which I've posted below. The apple crisp is what we traditionally eat on the Fourth of July, while the pecan pie always makes an appearance on Thanksgiving. Both are incredibly simple, essentially foolproof, and haven't changed in 65 years for good reason.
Sharing these recipes, however widely available they are to the public, feels like betraying some sort of long held family secret. When I asked my mom for tips on making the apple crisp, she said she always used Golden Delicious apples, add a little extra cinnamon, and serve immediately with vanilla ice cream. The crisp comes together quickly and is much preferred, in my family, to apple pie. The crumble topping is so simple and light and crispy, you could certainly use it on another type of fruit or to top off pie bars in the summer.
So there you have it, the reason I wanted to start this project and even a serendipitous, unexpected connection to radio to boot!