The way to a man's heart: gender roles, domestic ideology, and cookbooks in the 1950s

Journal of Social History, Spring, 1999 by Jessamyn Neuhaus

Why shell peas or squeeze oranges, asks the housewife in increasing numbers, when prepared frozen peas, orange juice - practically anything you can name - are so readily available? Cook Boston baked beans for six hours when you can buy a can for fifteen cents?

Manufacturers and advertisers touted processed foods as more healthful,(24) but more importantly, as convenient. Recipes from the postwar years emphasized ease in preparation, and relied heavily on brand-name products and prepackaged foods. In several books, virtually every soup recipe consisted entirely of adding extra ingredients to canned soup.(25) The Food Favorites cookbook, published by the Kraft company in conjunction with their televised cooking show, relied heavily on the easy meltability of Velvetta.(26) Numerous recipe pamphlets and advertisements/recipes in magazines such as Life and Ladies Home Journal were published by food manufacturers(27) and featured processed and prepackaged foods.(28) The most famous of these brand-name cookery books was General Mills' Betty Crocker's Picture Cookbook,(29) which remains one of the most popular cookbooks of the twentieth century.(30) Freezer, blender, mixer, cutlery, and electric range companies also printed hundreds of recipe booklets, to help convey the convenience of their products.(31)

But 1950s cookbooks, as a whole, imposed certain limitations on convenience and speedy meal preparation. As the Carnation company's promotional booklet cautioned, the new shortcuts were but a drop of relief in women's bucket of culinary duties:

Then there are always sips and snacks, for TV-watching means "munching time." Growing children are never filled up, and they do have a way of raiding your refrigerator. Entertaining guests means a constant supply of "show off" meals. Truly, a woman's work is never done! Shorten your cooking hours. Take advantage of the many new convenience products and kitchen short-cuts.(32)

Moreover, women were expected to "be creative" with processed foods.(33) Serving your family food straight from the can or the package seemed to indicate an unwomanly interest in providing for your family; hence a proliferation of recipes which "doctored up" processed foods and which required additional kitchen work in order to serve the very foods that were supposed to be more convenient. Marling argues that during the 1950s, "even convenience foods [had to] be slaved over to show love."(34) In 1955, one cookbook author reminded housewives that even given the wide availability of processed foods, "there must be an individual touch to produce good meals."(35) While cookbooks relied on canned and packaged foods, they also directed women toward elaborate ruses to cover up the fact that they were using those convenience foods.

On 1950s food, the Sterns write: "To the suburban cook, food is never enough. Parties need themes; meals, accents."(36) While everyday meals were, theoretically, simpler and easier to prepare, cookbooks encouraged women to throw "Hawaiian company dinners" or "country style" meals when "Everyone on the block is dressed for the hoe-down."(37) The General Food's Kitchens Cookbook(38) had complete menus for parties with themes such as "Come to the Mardi Gras," "Old South Open House," and "Alpine Fondue Party."(39) The 1950s was the era of what Roland Barthes termed "ornamental cookery." Barthes argued that the shaping of certain foods to look like other food was another aspect of the bourgeois domination of culture. He described ornamental cookery as