Joy of Cooking is one of the most published and best-known cookbooks in the United States. In print since 1936, it has sold more than 20 million copies across nine editions. It’s hard to overstate Joy of Cooking’s impact. It can safely be called America’s most popular cookbook. Julia Child said that JoyofCooking was how she learned to cook. The book was written by Irma Rombauer, born Irma Starkloff, the daughter of a German physician and teacher. Her family was active in politics, with her father serving at the consulate in Bremen, Germany, and her half-brother Max Starkloff being credited as introducing the principal of social distancing when he served as St. Louis Health Commissioner during the 1918 Spanish Influenza pandemic. As a young woman, Irma was courted by Pulitzer Prize winning author Booth Tarkington, but chose to marry Edgar Rombauer, a lawyer. The couple were married for thirty years, and Irma involved herself in civic and cultural work, and was known for her skills as a hostess.
Her life changed with the suicide of her husband in 1930, following a lifetime struggle with severe depression. Irma was both emotionally crushed, and left in a precarious financial position, with little savings and no job. To earn money, and as a way to move through her grief, she set about to write what would become the first edition of Joy of Cooking.
The first edition was self-published in 1931, under the title The Joy of Cooking: A Compilation of Reliable Recipes with a Casual Culinary Chat, with Rombauer’s daughter Marion Rombauer Becker providing illustrations. In 1936 Rombauer found a publisher, the Bobbs-Merrill Company, and published an expanded (640 pages) edition. This edition contained Irma’s commentary and cooking anecdotes, with the ingredients laid out within the recipe description, allowing the recipes to take on a narrative feel, known as “action method”. The book became a best-seller locally, and was mentioned in the New York Times.
The third edition came in 1943, with a new title—the straightforward Joy of Cooking. This edition featured information on rationing, and at this point became a national bestseller. By the fourth edition in 1951, Irma’s health was declining, and fearing for Joy’s legacy, negotiated a contract that made Marion Becker, her daughter, the sole successor as author for future editions. Marion was listed as a co-author on the fourth edition, and her embrace of healthy eating was seen in the recipes included.
Irma died in 1962, the year that Joy was revised for its fifth edition, the first to be published in paperback. In 1975 the sixth edition was published. It was the last edition to be published by Marion, and is to this day the most popular edition, having sold 6 million copies. This version contains more than 4,300 recipes, across over 1,000 pages, and went from being a best-seller to a national standard. If your kitchen contained cookbooks, there’s a good chance this edition was part of the collection.
Joy of Cooking went unchanged until 1997, when copyright owners Simon & Schuster hired a new cookbook editor, Maria Guarnaschelli, to revise Joy, under the oversight of Marion’s son Ethan. Ethan had studied at Cordon Bleu in Paris and was chosen by his mother to inherit the authorship of Joy upon her retirement. This version removed the “action method” first person narrative and commentary that Irma has honed. The narrative voice was brought back for the eighth edition in 2006, which marked the 75th anniversary of Joy. In 2019, a ninth edition was published, this time by Ethan’s son John Becker, and his wife Megan Scott.
