Word: irma
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...prove monstrously profitable, as well as an idea whose time has come. Actually doing so proved monstrously tricky. For aside from its encyclopedic thoroughness, much of the cookbook's perennial appeal has stemmed from the distinctive, comforting, we're-all-in-this-together voices of two women: Irma Rombauer, who wrote and self-published the original Joy in 1931, and her daughter Marion Rombauer Becker, who first served as her mother's helper and later assumed full custodianship of the ongoing endeavor. Dying of cancer, Marion concluded her acknowledgments to the 1975 edition in a valedictory manner...
...self-puffery but a simple statement of fact. A Joy of Cooking without a Rombauer or Becker at the helm seemed inconceivable, like Johnson's Dictionary without Dr. Samuel Johnson. For what mother and daughter remarkably accomplished was to filter a vast array of information through a personal style. Irma Rombauer's subtitle for the original 1931 Joy was A Compilation of Reliable Recipes with a Casual Culinary Chat. Her text justified this advertisement. Here was the author on serving alcohol to guests: "Most cocktails containing liquor are made today with gin and ingenuity. In brief, take an ample supply...
...rewritten Joy could realistically hope to capture the characteristic Rombauer-Becker tone. But neither could it be published at all without the permission and involvement of a family member, namely Ethan Becker, 52, Irma's grandson and Marion's son. As an owner of the copyright, he could authenticate a sequel with his imprimatur...
...earlier, smaller-fry publisher of Joy--was how to get Ethan Becker on board for the new project. An advance payment of more than a million dollars provided a satisfactory answer for all the parties involved. Ethan is hence listed on the cover and title page along with Irma and Marion as the author of the Joy of Cooking. But how many verses, people in publishing and in the intensely competitive world of chefs and cookbook writers wondered, often loudly, did Ethan really sing for his supper...
...cookbook, in short, has come a long way from St. Louis, Mo., where the newly widowed Irma Rombauer, in the teeth of the Great Depression, assembled her recipes and those of her largely German-American friends. Whether the new Joy will win minds and hearts the way the old ones did remains a matter of intense interest to those involved. A lot is riding on this project, and as Irma's friends might have said, the proof is in the pudding. --Reported by Andrea Sachs/Cincinnati