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American Children's
Cookbooks of the 50s and 60s Textbooks of Technique or Consumerism? by T.W. Barritt Ask the question, and you are likely to get a nostalgic smile and an immediate recollection
of a favorite recipe. Most home cooks fondly recall, “My first cookbook,” and if they grew up in the 50s or 60s, it was probably a cookbook written especially
for children. Those early texts spawned a huge publishing segment with continued growth to this
day. While few specific sales numbers exist from the period, the 1950s
were the first time that children’s cookbooks were mass-marketed by large publishing organizations. The supermarket industry also experienced extraordinary growth and emerged as the primary source
of food products for the American family, and convenience food products were beginning to dominate American tables. Pre-packaged breads, cereals and snack products were marketed specifically with children in mind. Television was emerging as a powerful tool to target children and influence
buying patterns and marketers were just starting to recognize the potential opportunity.
Teaching a
child to cook can result in valuable kitchen skills, increased family time and healthier eating habits. Professional culinary texts offer thousands of cooking techniques, but basic methods common to all
include kitchen safety, knife skills, preparation of vegetables, eggs, stocks, sauces, doughs and batters, as well as methods
for cooking meat, fish and poultry. Culinary educator Anne Willan says successful
mastery of basic techniques is critical to proper execution of a recipe and the ability to create recipes of one’s own. Did children’s texts of this era educate, or where they a product of the food industry marketing boom
that was underway? Many children’s
texts are filled with convenience foods and short cuts of the period, often requiring no technique beyond stirring and heating
of pre-packaged products. In 1953,
the adult-oriented Better Homes and Garden’s New Cookbook promised,
“With this new Cook Book as your guide, you’ll be a wonderful cook!”Two years later, The Better Homes and Gardens Junior Cook Book makes no
such promise, but unabashedly states that “Cooking is great fun.” Did
these mass-marketed children’s cookbooks deliver on the perceived promise of teaching actual kitchen skills or did they
instead teach consumerism? (More below)
©2007 T.W. Barritt All
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