The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Bringing ‘Joy’ to a new generation
After marrying into legendary cookbook family, North Carolina author adds Southern touch.
Megan Scott grew up in Walkertown, North Carolina. Her great-grandmother, Treva, made fried apple pies and old-fashioned chicken and dumplings. Every Sunday, until she was 97, the matriarch served her family a large lunch, then sent each of them home with a container of her pimento cheese.
John Becker grew up with his mother in Portland, Oregon, making regular visits to his father’s home in Cincinnati. His greatgrandmother on his father’s side was Irma S. Rombauer, author of “Joy of Cooking,” first published in 1931 and revised and updated by Rombauer’s descendants over the years.
Megan met John at the University of North Carolina-Asheville, where she was a French major and he was deep into James Joyce. She’d heard he was a member of the famous “Joy” family, and she sought him out at a coffee shop where he worked as a barista. “He sort of blushed,” Scott recalled in an interview. “He was like, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s my family.’”
She asked him out. They hit it off and eventually married. And since 2010, they have worked together on the 2019 edition of “Joy” (Scribner, $40). Out Nov. 12, the new “Joy” features more than 4,000 time-honored favorites and 600 new recipes from the husband-and-wife team.
So for the first time in its illustrious history, America’s most iconic cookbook (20 million copies in print) has a Southern author on the title page. Megan, alongside John, enters the pantheon that includes Midwesterners Rombauer; her daughter, Marion Rombauer Becker ( John’s grandmother); and Ethan Becker ( John’s father). Ethan Becker, who presided over the family legacy after the death of his mother in 1976, has officially handed the reins to a new generation. ( John is 40, and Megan is 31.)
Does this mean “Joy” has gone Southern? Half-Southern? Well, no.
It has always represented the monolith that is American cooking, and it is likely to continue to do so as time goes by.
John, who started out as an engineering major and later switched to literature, was moved to take over “the book” after reading a 1963 dedication by Marion, the grandmother he never met: “We look forward to a time when our two boys — and their wives — will continue to keep ‘The Joy’ a family affair, as well as an enterprise in which the authors owe no obligation to anyone but themselves — and you.”
He knew then he’d found his calling, and that he could call on his academic training in the process. “It was kind of a tender moment,” he said. Even though he grew up hearing “touching stories” about his grandmother and visiting the family home in Cincinnati, “I felt a connection there that I had never really felt before.”
It would likely please his grandmother that in this latest edition of “Joy” you can plainly see the influence of his wife. Megan grew up in a farm family, with a kitchen garden that produced corn, cranberry beans (or “October beans,” as her grandmother calls them), tomatoes, beets, sweet potatoes, crowder peas and green beans. Her family preserved food, and she became an
accomplished baker early on.
Thus in the new “Joy,” you’ll find Treva’s Pimiento Cheese, Chicken and Dumplings, and Fried Apple Pies; Megan’s grandmother Wanda’s Stewed Cranberry Beans; and Megan’s Southern Cornbread and Cheddar Scallion Biscuits.
Not to be left out, John says: “I’m not from the South, but I spent a lot of time there.” He lived about seven years in Asheville, then moved with Megan to Tennessee, where they did a three-year “Joy” apprenticeship with his father, who has a home in the Volunteer State. To prepare for their updated volume, they tested about 1,500 recipes during that time and virtually internalized the book line by line. They also created what they call “genealogies” of existing recipes, tracing their origins and changes over time.
Their goal has been to make the book more useful for time-pressed modern cooks. Anyone looking to prepare food at home on a regular basis will find helpful strategies, particularly in the new chapter “Streamlined Cooking,” which contains sections on repurposing leftovers (“Cook for a Day, Eat for a Week”); preventing waste and using scraps; and saving money.
“I feel like this is the first edition really since the 1975 that’s kind of progressing with the same strategy Marion would use and her mother before her,” John said. “Basically we are trying to build on something that is already pretty great, as opposed to rejecting it or rewriting it.”
Inevitably, some recipes had to go. (Bye, bye, Shrimp Wiggle, circa 1936, and Pesto Cheesecake, from the 1990s.)
And many others were added. (Hello, Nashville-style Hot Chicken, Megan’s Vegan Chili and Mimosa Pound Cake; John’s Frico Eggs with a crispy cheese crust; and the couple’s Beet, Fennel and Citrus Salad with Horseradish.)
At the end of it all, it was about finding the right balance of personal favorites and dishes that readers would want to see included. “I think that this is the first edition that has boiled peanuts in it,” John said, playing to his audience (i.e., a reporter from the nation’s No. 1 peanut-producing state).
Also new are Sweet Potato Pudding, Strawberry Sonker, Chatham Artillery Punch, Dirty Rice, Apple Stack Cake, Gumbo Z’Herbes, Milk Punch, Brunswick Stew — all Southern, of course.
‘I feel like this is the first edition really since the 1975 that’s kind of progressing with the same strategy Marion would use and her mother before her. Basically we are trying to build on something that is already pretty great, as opposed to rejecting it or rewriting it.’