BETTY CROCKER
Combined, the “Betty Crocker Cookbook” has sold more than 75 million copies in the last 72 years. At one time, the tome was second only to the Bible in sales, says Cathy Swanson Wheaton, executive editor of cookbooks for General Mills, which owns the brand. That’s some serious devotion to a cook who was never even a real person.
Since that best-selling start, the Betty Crocker cookbook series has published more than 300 titles on subjects ranging from boys and girls, Christmas cookies, entertaining and diabetes to Indian and Mexican home cooking and cooking with
Bisquick. For the most devoted fans, and those interested in exploring retro dishes such as Welsh Rarebit or Olive-Cheese Balls, 2017 brought a collection of vintage “lost” recipes.
That Betty continues to resonate with modern cooks, Wheaton says, is hardly surprising.
“She has always been a helper in the kitchen and out of the kitchen since she was born,” she notes, first as a knowledgeable and trusted voice answering cooking questions on the radio in 1924 and later as the namesake of General Mills’ test kitchen in downtown Minneapolis. “And because she trends with time, she helps new generations of cooks no matter what gender to get food on the table, create memories and provide nutrition. We’re not just stuck in the recipes of yesteryear.”
Fun fact about the woman in that iconic red jacket with the perfectly coiffed, stylish hairdo: Betty was born in 1921 in a boardroom as a promotion in the Saturday Evening Post for Gold Medal Flour. The Washburn Crosby Co. (now General Mills) had sponsored a contest calling on home cooks to solve a jigsaw puzzle, and along with the answer, the 30,000 entries came with hundreds of baking and cooking questions and recipe requests.
Seeing a need for education – and no doubt an opportunity for a little marketing – Washburn’s mostly male advertising department created Betty Crocker to add a personalized touch to the queries.
According to the company website, “’Crocker’ was chosen in honor of a popular company director, and ‘Betty’ was selected because … well, she sounded friendly.”
Betty soon became a household name, with the brand developing low-cost dishes to feed the nation with rations during World War II and adding her name and likeness to soup and cake mixes in the 1940s. Her iconic red spoon appeared on packaging in 1954 and is now associated with more than 200 products.
“Betty Crocker’s Picture Cookbook” was groundbreaking in 1950 because, as the name implies, it featured photos demonstrating certain techniques, “and it was so helpful to consumers to see what you were supposed to be doing while they were reading about it,” says Wheaton. Photography to make food look as appetizing as possible wasn’t a thing at the time; cookbooks were simply about how to get a meal on the table with available ingredients.
Each new edition since then has captured the next big shift in eating, both in available ingredients and what cooks are using to prepare them. “Each is like a snapshot in time,” she says, adding that a large part of her job is to watch food trends at restaurants and grocery
stores “and what my friends are making.”
This latest edition, which took four years to produce, is “radically refreshed” with busy families in mind. Dozens of easy, five-ingredient recipes are sprinkled among its 704 pages, each accompanied with a picture of the ingredients along with the final dish. Even though no one initially knew that the coming pandemic would make food so expensive, it also includes a host of budget-friendly, “use it up” recipes aimed at leftover ingredients lurking in your fridge or pantry.
A new “veggie-forward” chapter gives the biggest plate real estate to veggies and whole grains with protein, along with recipes for spirit-free cocktails. In addition, cooks will find ways to use new-to-them ingredients such as harissa, tempeh, miso and coconut milk in a variety of globally inspired foods and learn how to give heritage recipes a new twist. A classic zucchini bread, for instance, gets updated with chocolate and hazelnuts.
“People have so much more access to ingredients than even in the last edition
[in 2018],” says Wheaton, adding that they always shoot for items that can be found at local grocery stores.
Another plus: The book’s lay-flat, larger book format means the cookbook will actually stay open to the selected page on your kitchen counter. In a nod to today’s more consciously healthful eating, every recipe also includes full nutritional information, along with food yields and equivalents. Users will further appreciate not one but two indexes – one that lists recipes by category (gluten free, calorie smart, fast, etc.) and another alphabetically by name.
This edition also includes tips on entertaining, food storage guidelines, pictorials on various cooking techniques and a glossary of cooking terms – useful information for nervous novices looking to gain confidence in the kitchen.
That said, the cookbook includes a few aspirational recipes for more seasoned cooks. “We appeal to the masses. We want it to be accessible, but enjoyable,” she says.
Because Wheaton’s team had only completed
the first round of recipe development before the pandemic shutdown, much of its meticulous recipe testing – which included preparing every dish with both gas and electric stovetops and ovens – took place in staff members’ homes instead of General Mills’ test kitchen in Minneapolis. Like the rest of America, they had trouble finding some ingredients on store shelves, and at times had to trade equipment back and forth. She recalls when one baker got sick with COVID-19 (but had no symptoms), he had to bring his desserts to the test kitchen and put them on the trunk of his car so his mask-wearing colleagues could collect them for photos.
Even with that added wrinkle, being able to continue Betty’s legacy of being a friend in the kitchen and helpful to consumers, Wheaton says, was as fun as it was gratifying.
“Everyone struggles with what to make for dinner,” she says, “but food has so much more power to create memories and connect us to one another along with fueling our bodies.”