How 1971 Changed the Way We Eat Forever

We dove into the archives, flipped through moldy magazines, and watched way too many Hamburger Helper commercials to bring you a sampling of 1971's biggest moments. —Alex Beggs See article.

In 1971 the iconic chef finished writing her first book, The Edna Lewis Cookbook. Here, friends and proteges reflect on her lasting impact.

"As a chef, I was relying on cooking as a way to get somewhere else, but what Edna Lewis showed me was that I had no reason to apologize for where I already was. In her written accounts of the people, recipes, rituals, and landscape of her early childhood in Freetown, Virginia—a small settlement founded at the end of the Civil War by her formerly enslaved grandfather—she found no shame or need to escape. Only integrity, dignity, and value in humble rural culture. It is thanks to her and our decades-long friendship that I have dedicated my career to the food of the American South." —Scott Peacock, chef and restaurateur. Read the full essay here »

“What Edna Lewis gave me were clear principles. Because of her philosophy I was able to articulate my own: one of excellence and respect, of honoring the traditions you come from and the ancestors you represent. She brought cooking into a learned space and talked about it like the Europeans did, but in an American vernacular coming out of the African American farming experience. It wasn’t presented as “ethnic.” It wasn’t dumbed down. She laid a real foundation, a consciousness for the American chef. I mean, if you can’t build on that platform, maybe you need to go into computer science.” —Alexander Smalls, chef and restaurateur. Read the full essay here »

So yes this is a love poem of the highest order because the next best cook in the world, my grandmother being the best, just had a birthday and all the asparagus and wild greens and quail and tomatoes on the vines and little peas in spring and half runners in early summer and all the wonderful musty things that come from the ground said EDNA LEWIS is having a birthday and all of us who love all of you who love food wish her a happy birthday because we who are really smart know that chefs make the best lovers . . . especially when they serve it with oysters on the half shell. —Nikki Giovanni, an excerpt from the 1997 poem, “The Only True Lovers Are Chefs or Happy Birthday Edna Lewis”

Nothing says spring like a huge hunk of beef slathered in chicken liver pâté, draped in bacon, and wrapped in puff pastry—according to the March-April 1971 issue of Bon Appétit. “Beef Wellington was like an unevolved dinosaur,” says our current test kitchen director, Chris Morocco, who kept the bacon but added mushrooms and a touch of soy sauce. “Here it’s still lumbering around, its bad Jurassic self.” See recipe.

The book Diet for a Small Planet was more than a hippie by-product. It was a revolution. Jonathan Kauffman reflects on its enduring legacy and echoing implications for the plant-based food movement. See article.

Fifty years after Chicago restaurant R.J. Grunts popularized the salad bar, Samantha Irby ponders its deepest questions. For example: Does three pounds of croutons with organic ranch poured over them count as a salad? See article.

Vernon, California, 1971: Jose-Luis Saavedra was having a hard run selling his spicy bottled Cuervo Sauce. Then Jose Cuervo (yes, that one), despite being a distant relation of Saavedra’s wife, sent a cease and desist letter. The run was done. But in between working two jobs, a determined Saavedra rebranded as “Charro,” replacing the cuervo (crow) on the logo with a traditional central Mexican horseman in a wide-brimmed sombrero. New name, new look, same peppery hot sauce. Things were looking good (10,000 labels printed!) until the poor man was sued again for copyright infringement.

But Saavedra would not accept defeat; he rebranded once more to “Tapatío,” a nickname for folks from the city of Guadalajara, where his children were born. The combination of the new new name with the dignified charro image—as opposed to the kinds of stereotype-laden caricatures so often seen on food packaging at the time—was a genius marketing move for connecting with Mexican and Mexican American communities, and brought Tapatío into the hot sauce “mainstream.” Today the effects of Saavedra’s success are clear, in a Fortune 500 kind of way: Tapatío is distributed by the Kraft Heinz Company. —Steven Alvarez

After selling baggies filled with homemade herb blends out of a van, as one does in the late sixties, the founders of tea company Celestial Seasonings opened up headquarters in Boulder, Colorado, in 1971. Its Red Zinger tea is the inspiration for this Jell-Ospiked poke cake by Victoria Granof, with fresh raspberry juice, hibiscus flowers, and marshmallow whipped cream frosting. See recipe.

Alice Waters opened Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California, in August 1971, making simple food with local ingredients. Though “farm to table” is now so common it’s a cliché, at the time a restaurant like this was novel, and so was her way of running it: paying farmers a premium for their best produce, changing the menu daily, giving employees higher than usual wages—and vacation time—and encouraging them to trust their intuition. The impact of working at this one little restaurant has been huge. Alums went on to chart their own path with that same ingredient-driven, community-focused spirit. Here is just a small wedge of the Chez Panisse universe, showing the chefs, authors, bakers, and more who have in turn shaped a new generation of food industry leaders. —Elyse Inamine, restaurant editor See article.

The 1971 kitchen was full of appliances that were slowly improving, one feature at a time. Ice machines were popping up in refrigerators, microwaves were becoming portable for some reason, and the color avocado reigned supreme. Senior staff writer Alex Beggs breaks down how far we've come—and where we've fallen short. See article.

Carl Sontheimer, retired physicist and amateur gourmand, discovered a device called the Magimix at a houseware show in Paris. After months of tinkering, he later unveiled a new version that has become a household name—the Cuisinart food processor. —John Birdsall See article.

The Black Panthers' Free Breakfast Program fed schoolchildren at no cost—and laid the groundwork for modern activism. —Valerie Boyd See article.

Fondue was the subject of many, many magazine stories in 1971. A spread in Essence showed actor Diana Sands entertaining friends on her shag carpeting around a fondue pot. To keep Victoria Granof's modern goat cheese and Bel Paese version warm, our creative director Michele Outland bought this “poppy”- colored Oster electric fondue pot on Poshmark. It came with recipes for “hot cheese dunk” and “mini-frank fondue.” See recipe.