ABSTRACT
The 1960s could be a stressful time for the home cook. Even before Julia Child changed the landscape with her Mastering the Art of French Cooking, there were envoys like M.F.K. Fisher and Elizabeth David from more sophisticated shores, insisting on the accessibility of regional cuisines. In her memoir, My Kitchen Wars, Betty Fussell wrote of how American women were swept up by the “demanding sport” of gourmet projects “that consumed infinite time and energy and passion in the one-upmanship of friends” (153). Standing firm against the wave of soufflés, pâtés en croûte and hard-to-find herbs was mid-Western journalist Peg Bracken whose slender volume the I Hate to Cook Book published in 1960 was a runaway best-seller. The book was illustrated by Hilary Knight, whose work in Eloise had revolutionized children’s literature just five years earlier, and there is much of Eloise’s irreverent spirit in Bracken’s lively writing. She identifies her audience as “those of us who want to fold our big dishwater hands around a dry Martini instead of a wet flounder, come the end of a long day” (vii), and proceeds to offer a range of cooking hacks, shortcuts, and innovations. Throughout the book, her acerbic, often conspiratorial voice comes through loud and clear. The note introducing one of her “30 Day-by-Day Entrees” cautions: “Don’t recoil from the odd-sounding combination of the ingredients here, because it’s actually very good. Just shut your eyes and go on opening those cans” (14). Her introduction says that the book was inspired by
Throughout the book, she continues to create a community of fellow cooks, describing the pressure of last-minute event preparation in terms both comic and down to earth, reassuring her audience that she has experienced every aspect of their pre-dinner panic:
In addition to skewering French-based flourishes, Bracken also has very little patience for the strange concoctions that housekeeping magazines breathlessly touted; her seventh chapter, “Luncheon for the Girls” is sub-titled “or Wait Till You Taste Maybelle’s Peanut Butter Aspic.” Presaging Betty Friedan’s Feminine Mystique by three years, Peg Bracken’s book encourages women to re-think their role as homemakers, avoiding the social pressure to compete, and instead joining the community of women who eat well, drink heartily and see the kitchen as “a good place for cooking, ruminating, standing, and staring, for remembering, gossiping, laughing and moping” (Window 12).
