Writer epitomized American food
HOME-COOKING CHAMPION, best known for her two revisions of the classic Fannie Farmer cookbook, was also a car enthusiast
SAN FRANCISCO – Marion Cunningham, who has died at age 90, was a home-cooking champion whose legacy can be found in the food-spattered pages of Fannie Farmer cookbooks in kitchens across the United States.
Cunningham, who had been ill for some years, died July 11 of complications from Alzheimer’s disease at a hospital in Walnut Creek, Calif.
Best known for her revisions of the classic The Fannie Farmer Cookbook, in 1979 and again in 1990, Cunningham also wrote several other books, including The Breakfast Book, Cooking with Children, and Lost Recipes.
She also hosted a television series, Cunningham & Company, that aired on the Food Network.
Though she moved in rarefied circles that included culinary luminaries such as James Beard and Alice Waters, Cunningham resisted trendiness.
She was an ardent supporter of the humble iceberg lettuce and specialized in simple, straightforward recipes.
Along with that approach went a deep concern about the disappearance of the home-cooked meal eaten en famille.
“Home cooking is a catalyst that brings people together,” she wrote in the forward to Lost Recipes.
“We are losing the daily ritual of sitting down around the table (without the intrusion of television), of having the opportunity to interact, to share our experiences and concerns, to listen to others.”
Waters, a long-time friend and the force behind the groundbreaking Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, Calif., said Cunningham preached the value of food quality and home cooking long before it was fashionable, and in doing so became the nucleus of what grew into the modern food movement.
“She had so much humour and charm and earnestness and passion and all of that, everybody listened up,” Waters said.
“And she was always championing the people around the country who really expressed that, those feelings about the table and simplicity. In that sense, she almost sewn together the movement.”
Born in Southern Califor- nia, Cunningham married her high school sweetheart, Robert Cunningham.
The couple, who had two children, later moved to Walnut Creek, east of San Francisco. Robert Cunningham, a lawyer, died in the late ’80s.
A self-taught cook, Cunningham didn’t take her first steps toward a cookbook career until her mid-’40s when she travelled to Oregon to take a class that Beard, then a chef and food writer, was teaching.
“It was just a magic gathering,” she said in a 1983 New York Times story.
“To have someone come right out of the pages at you. That’s really what changed things for me.”
Beard subsequently in- vited her to be his assistant and, later, recommended her for the job when publisher Alfred A. Knopf was looking for someone to update the classic Fannie Farmer cookbook.
“Marion Cunningham epitomized good American food,” legendary Knopf cookbook editor Judith Jones said last week.
“She was someone who had an ability to take a dish, savour it in her mouth and give it new life. At a time when Americans were embracing all kinds of foreign cuisine, Marion Cunningham’s love and respect for American food helped The Fannie Farmer Cookbook once again earn a place in kitchens across America.”
Cunningham also was a bit of a car enthusiast – she ran a gas station for two years during the Second World War – and a Jaguar was her main indulgence once she became successful. She regularly drove into San Francisco to have dinner with friends.
More recently she had been too ill to go out, though she was still a presence in food circles, toasted at dinners held in honour of her birthday at restaurants such as Chez Panisse and San Francisco’s Foreign Cinema.
In 1993, she received the Grand Dame award from Les Dames d’Escoffier, an organization of women leaders in food, beverage and hospitality, in recognition of her achievement and contribution to the culinary arts, and in 1994 she was named scholar-in-residence by the International Association of Culinary Professionals.