Rombauer-Becker (Family)

Irma von Starkloff Rombauer, cookbook author, was born in St. Louis Mo., on October 30, 1877, the daughter of Emma (Kuhlmann) von Starkloff and Max von Starkloff . She was raised on the German south side of St. Louis and spent the years from 1889 until 1894 in Bremen, Germany, where her father was American consul. She studied at Washington University's School of Fine Arts (1897) and married Edgar Rombauer , a lawyer, on October 14, 1899. They had two children, Marion, born on January 2, 1903, and Edgar Jr.("Put"), born on August 15, 1907.

ISR had deep roots among the German families of St. Louis and remained proud of her German heritage, but moved outside these circles to join the cultural Wednesday Club, and the Unitarian Women's Alliance . In 1925 the whole family travelled and lived in Europe; Put attended school in Lausanne and Marion studied movement and dance in Munich. Edgar Rombauer Sr., who was subject to depression all his life, recovered his equilibrium for a time, but committed suicide in 1930.

ISR was left emotionally shattered and financially impoverished. Although only a culinary amateur, she decided to use her legacy of $6000 to self-publish a cookbook: The Joy of Cooking: A Compilation of Reliable Recipes, with a Casual Culinary Chat (1931). It consisted of recipes collected from her German family and from friends, enlivened by a sprightly wit and convivial style. It sold well enough for her to interest a commercial publishing house, Bobbs-Merrill Company , in 1935, beginning what would prove a stormy relationship. She was to spend the rest of her life working on successive editions of Joy. In all there have been nine: the privately printed Joy of Cooking (1931), the first Bobbs-Merrill edition (1936), the best-selling wartime edition (1943), the first post-war edition (1946), the first Rombauer-Becker edition (1951), an unauthorized edition (1962), the first Marion (Rombauer) Becker edition (1963), MRB's last revision (1975), and Ethan Becker's edition (1997.)

The 1936 edition pioneered a revolutionary layout, with instructions in regular type and ingredients indented and in boldface. This became known as the "action method" of cookbook instruction. In 1939 ISR published Streamlined Cooking featuring shortcuts for the career woman (many of which were incorporated into the next edition of Joy) and in 1946, The Cookbook for Girls and Boys . By the 1940s she had become a national celebrity and Joy was outselling other favorite cookbooks such as Fannie Farmer and The Settlement Cook Book . ISR, unlike her daughter, both sought and flourished in the limelight, and she welcomed letters from a growing fan club. Estranged from her son, she took her daughter into partnership and from 1951 Joy was their joint production. The success of the cookbook brought ISR sufficent affluence so that she could travel to Europe in 1936, to Mexico in the 1950s, and to Europe in 1952 with her grandson, Mark Becker . She began an autobiography, "My Little World," which was unfinished when she suffered a stroke in 1955. She recovered sufficiently to accept an alumni award from Washington University (1956). A series of strokes gradually incapacitated her, and she died on October 14, 1962.

Marion (Rombauer) Becker (1903-1976), art director, horticultural expert, and cookbook writer, was educated at Mary Institute, St. Louis, and studied Fine Arts at Vassar College (A.B. 1925). She studied movement and dance in Munich, Germany (1925-26), learned about abstract expressonism, and travelled with her brother in France. On returning to St. Louis, she worked for a year in a department store, then was a columnist for Women's Wear Daily (1927-29). She taught art, wrote pageants, and directed plays at the progressive John Burroughs School in St. Louis (1929-32). She married her childhood sweetheart, the architect John William Becker, son of Adele Dittman and Philip Becker, on June 18, 1932, and they settled in Cincinnati. There she joined the Hillsdale School as head of the Art Department (1932-36).

Planning to start a family, MRB turned from teaching to intensive civic involvement. She was president of the Regional Planning Council of Cincinnati and Vicinity (1934-36), and of the Noonday Club, a women's cultural club (1935-36), and joined the Better Housing League (1935-63), the Cincinnati League of Women Voters, and the Citizens Development Committee. The Beckers' eldest son Mark was born on January 16, 1937, Ethan on August 6, 1945.

In 1942, some former pupils from Hillsdale School urged MRB to take over direction of the Cincinnati Modern Art Society . She served as director, 1942-47, and as board secretary and program chair, 1947-54, organizing two major and several minor shows each year. She contributed to the education of Cincinnati in modern art by exhibiting the works of Rousseau, Picasso, Klee, Calder, Giacometti, Lipchitz, Chagall, Magritte and others.

Gardening was another avocation. MRB was a member of the Town and Country Garden Club of Cincinnati and the Garden Club of America, and director of the GCA's Rare Plant Committee. She edited the Bulletin of the Cincinnati Garden Center, chaired the board of the Cincinnati Nature Center, and helped plan a medicinal herb garden at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, which was named for her after her death. At Cockaigne, the house outside Cincinnati designed by John Becker, the Beckers developed eight acres of woodland garden. Her enthusiasm for wild flowers and ecology are evident in Wild Wealth, (1971), a collaboration among ecologist Paul Sears, flower arranger Frances Jones Poetker, artist Janice Rebert Fosberg, and MRB. Wild Wealth, was named "Top Honor Book" at the Chicago Book Clinic exhibition in 1972.

Between 1932 and 1948, MRB was only sporadically involved in production of the Joy of Cooking . Her silhouettes had illustrated chapter headings of the early editions and she served as recipe tester and adviser. She became a full partner with the 1951 edition. Illustrated by Ginnie Hofmann's line drawings, this edition showed MRB's interest in nutrition, more pronounced than her mother's. (See #63 for MRB's assessment of her contribution to Joy.) With ISR increasingly incapacitated by strokes, MRB worked with her husband John Becker, secretary Jane Brueggermann, and testers Odessa Whitehead and Isabell Coleman over the succeeding years. An unauthorized edition published in 1962 was, after a sharp struggle with Bobbs-Merrill, recalled, reset, and republished in 1963. (For detailed publishing history and other legal cases involving Joy see Anne Mendelson's Stand Facing the Stove [1996].) MRB had put her own stamp on this edition: 80% of the material was new and Joy had evolved into a virtual encyclopedia of American cookery. Each new edition brought not only new fans but also some outrage from older users who could no longer find their favorite recipes. Little Acorn, a brief history of the cookbook, was published in 1966 to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the first Bobbs-Merrill edition.

MRB was first stricken with cancer in 1955. A radical mastectomy was followed by lymphedema and then a second radical mastectomy in 1966. In March 1974, JWB suddenly developed a brain tumor, of which he died in October. All through this, MRB continued to work on the next edition of Joy. Her co-workers included her son Ethan, his wife Joan, illustrator Ikki Matsumoto, typist Nancy Swats, and an old friend, Judy Israel. The revised edition was published in March 1975.

Sale of the paperback rights in 1973 and 1982 to New American Library raised sales to new heights: by 1996, 9.1 million in hard cover, 5 million in paperback. The latest edition, edited by Maria Guarneschelli in cooperation with Ethan Becker published by Scribners (1997), has continued the family connection with this "wonder book."

MRB was engaged in other writing projects, including "Links: The Life of a Family," a flower-arranging book, a translation of Ernst Kropp's "Wandlung der Form," and a second Junior Joy, none of which were completed. In February 1976 she received "the greatest living Cincinnatian award" from the Chamber of Commerce. She died on December 28, 1976.