Irma S. Rombauer's Great-Grandson and His Southern Wife Update Joy of Cooking for a New Generation
After 90 years in print, America’s most iconic cookbook is getting a new lease on life.
A fresh edition of Irma S. Rombauer’s Joy of Cooking will be published tomorrow, November 12. Updated and rewritten by Irma Rombauer’s great-grandson John Becker and his wife, Megan Scott, the 2019 edition ($40; available for Amazon pre-order now) is the book’s the first revision since its 75th anniversary in 2006.
And, thanks to Scott’s North Carolina upbringing, one of the most popular and trusted cookbooks in the country has a Southern author on the title page.
Becker and Scott devoted the past nine years to modernizing Joy of Cooking, developing new recipes and testing thousands of recipes from the six previous editions. With more than 600 new dishes and thousands of tried-and-true favorites, their revised version honors the cookbook’s extraordinary history, while updating it for today’s audience, and keeping it all in the family.
In the 2019 edition of Joy of Cooking, readers will find many new international, vegan, vegetarian, and gluten-free recipes as well as the first appearance of several American classics including buckeyes, gooey butter cake, Cajun dirty rice, hot-smoked salmon, babka, Chicago-style deep-dish pizza, and Utica greens. These recipes are joined by contemporary dishes, suggestions for cooking ahead, and tips for streamlining meal preparation, and an entire section on fermenting. And thanks to Scott, readers will also find recipes for pimento cheese, chicken and dumplings, fried apple pies, stewed cranberry beans, and cheddar scallion biscuits, inspired by the meals she grew up eating.
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“Our strategy for revising this edition was the same Irma and Marion employed for the first six editions of Joy: vet, research, and improve our coverage of legacy recipes and culinary subjects, while introducing new dishes, modern cooking techniques, and comprehensive information on newly-available ingredients our readers may encounter at farmers’ markets and grocery stores,” Becker said in a news release. “While writing this edition, we have kept the needs of the home cook foremost in our minds. The result is both a solid collection of delicious, thoroughly-tested recipes and an indispensable kitchen reference that will give curious novices the answers they need and provide a useful refresher for seasoned cooks.”
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