The 100 Greatest Home Cooks of All Time
Animation by Cartuna1/94J. Kenji López-Alt
The most influential cook on the internet is a mad scientist who owns eight immersion circulators and uses softball pitching machines to hurl cooked hamburger patties at a wall at 45 mph. His Serious Eats column reaches millions, and his 960-page manifesto had thousands of cooks approaching pizza and pie crust with science. But Kenji López-Alt is just getting started.
2/94Wally “Famous” Amos
He wasn’t always famous, of course. Back when he was 12, Wally Amos was just a kid from Florida sent to New York City to live with his Aunt Della after his parents’ separation. He learned to love cooking in her kitchen and soon mastered his aunt’s recipe for pecan–chocolate chip cookies. The recipe came in handy years later when he was a talent agent at William Morris Agency—he mailed packages of the cookies to performers like Diana Ross and Simon & Garfunkel, hoping to lure them into meetings. With financial support from celebs like Marvin Gaye, Amos launched Famous Amos Cookies in 1975. And the cookies were a hit, so much so that he sold the company in 1988 and moved to Hawaii—taking the cookie’s secret recipe with him.—Khalid Salaam
3/94Theodora Smafield
Fifty-odd years before no-knead bread ascended to top-flight status in the American baking pantheon, there was Theodora Smafield and her “no-knead water-rising twists,” the winning entry in the first-ever Pillsbury Bake-Off, held in 1949. The Bake-Off was initially held at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York, and in its heyday it received tens of thousands of submissions, as America’s cooks—often but not always women—emerged from their humble home kitchens to compete in a contest that glorified their creations. Theodora’s was particularly inspired: She wrapped her cinnamon-flavored dough in tea towels and put them in warm water to rise. She won $50,000 for her invention, though she was referred to in the contest booklet as “Mrs. Ralph A. Smafield.” Theodora, consider the record corrected.—Sam Worley
4/94Pableaux Johnson
The power of feeding people in one’s own home: that’s what Johnson’s weekly Monday night dinners are all about. The Louisiana-born photographer and food writer sticks with New Orleans tradition at these meals, serving Camellia red beans over Louisiana brown rice with cornbread on the side. But his dinners are more about the strangers he assembles—people who mingle late into the night and don’t leave until they’re no longer strangers. Johnson now takes his dinner parties on the road, but if he’s taught us anything, it’s that it’s better to stay at home, cook simply, and invite over a few people you don’t really know.—David Tamarkin
5/94Marion Cunningham
She was the ultimate late bloomer. Born in 1922, Cunningham overcame the phobias and addiction that plagued much of the first half of her life to become a staunch advocate of unassuming, satisfying American home cooking—foods like cream biscuits, pot roast, salmon loaf, and rhubarb Betty. At the age of 50, she was discovered by James Beard after enrolling in a class of his (her first travel outside of California); eventually she became a writer and cooking teacher in her own right, authoring cookbooks such as the revision of the iconic The Fannie Farmer Cookbook and The Breakfast Book. The latter is where Cunningham made perhaps her most important contribution to home cooking: her inimitable yeasted waffles.—Tim Mazurek
Animation by Cartuna6/94Joan Didion
Somewhere among reinventing journalism, crafting cult essay collections, and padding her pocketbook writing screenplays in Hollywood, Didion managed to become a quietly legendary cook and a master dinner party host. If she’s ever known for anything other than her writing, it may be for her curly parsley salad, a Didion original that serves between 35 and 40 literary-luminary friends.
7/94Helen Nearing
In her introduction to Simple Food for the Good Life: An Alternative Cookbook, Helen Nearing insists that she isn’t a good cook and couldn’t care less. Yet so much of what she preached then has become the current-day rallying cry of people who couldn’t care about food more. She preached vegetarianism (long before it was mainstream). She believed in whole grains. She encouraged people to eat seasonally and organically. She could be a bit of a crank about cooking—“Eat applesauce or a raw apple instead of an apple pie amalgamation,” she wrote—but her tough love taught an entire generation of hippies how to farm, cook, and eat well. And besides, she was ultimately a softie; when she encountered people who didn’t want to listen to her claims, she always fed them anyway.—Anna Stockwell
Picasa8/94Betty Rosbottom
Outside of the Midwest, she’s not a celebrity. But ask a home cook in Columbus, Ohio, who taught them how to cook, and somewhere on their list will be Rosbottom, who opened one of the most influential American cooking schools, La Belle Pomme, in Columbus in 1976. For the American home cooks who couldn’t take Rosbottom’s classes (or the special sessions taught by the likes of Jacques Pépin and Marcella Hazan), Rosbottom writes books and publishes recipes in magazines. One of those recipes, her Chocolate Ribbon Cake, is the only recipe to run on the cover of Bon Appétit twice.—Joe Sevier
9/94Nathalie Dupree
No matter where in the country you lived, Dupree made it possible to throw a party as if you were hosting from one of the brightly colored and palatial houses on the Charleston riverfront. A founding member of the Southern Foodways Alliance, Dupree wrote a series of Southern home-cooking books, all told with a voice ringing with hospitality. Some, like Southern Biscuits, are definitive single-subject texts on Southern staples. Others, like Nathalie’s Southern Memories, feature everything from pit barbecue to a proper ladies’ luncheon. So it doesn’t matter if you want to throw a backyard bash or a million-dollar wedding; with Dupree, you can always make it Southern.—Tommy Werner
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Gentl and Hyers10/94Julia Turshen
When people talk about Turshen’s 2016 cookbook Small Victories (and they talk about it a lot), they might mention her raspberry jam buns or maybe her turkey meatballs. But usually they talk about the lists at the back of the book: Seven Things to Do with a Can of Chickpeas, Seven Things to Do with Ground Meat, etc. These lists are where Turshen’s expertise and personality meet, the place where she gets to make seemingly off-the-cuff suggestions that—shhh—are calculated inspirations to get people who might be intimidated by recipes into the kitchen. Lists like this aren’t anything new, but the cookbook author who understands their power is.—DT
Animation by Cartuna11/94Ina Garten
The enviable walk-in pantry. The perfectly tailored shirts. The barn that was built solely for entertaining. So much of Ina’s butter-drenched Hamptons life is unattainable—except, of course, her recipes, which are always down-to-earth enough to feel achievable and impeccably tested so as to never, ever fail.
12/94Ruth Graves Wakefield
Innkeeper Ruth Graves Wakefield chopped up a semisweet bar of chocolate and folded the pieces into cookie batter sometime in the 1930s, creating in the process an iconic American pastry: the Toll House chocolate chip cookie, named after the tourist lodge that she owned with her husband. When the cookies caught fire, she sold the recipe rights to the Nestlé, which printed her formula on its packages of chocolate chips. But like many women of her time (and ours), she never received proper credit or compensation for her work—her payment was a lifetime supply of chocolate.—SW
13/94Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale
In 1982, Robert Fizdale, who for 40 years had been performing in a piano duo with Arthur Gold, was diagnosed with a pianist’s worst fear: arthritis. That forced Gold and Fizdale the musicians into retirement, but Gold and Fizdale the writers, socialites, and inimitable cooks marched on. “The Boys,” as they were widely known, were already the food columnists for Vogue, and they put their words into practice by feeding what appears to be every musician, dancer, and poet then living in New York. Marianne Moore, Frank O’Hara, Elizabeth Bishop, James Schuyler, Jerome Robbins, and George Balanchine—especially George Balanchine—were regular beneficiaries of G&F’s simple but just-elegant-enough meals; 1984’s The Gold and Fizdale Cookbook made it so the rest of us could pull off casual elegance just like them.—DT
14/94Marian Burros
If you celebrate Rosh Hashanah, you’ve likely had Burros’ rich, cakelike plum torte, The New York Times’ most-requested recipe of all time and a staple at so many Jewish new year parties that it may as well be written into the Torah. Requiring just eight ingredients, it may be the simplest thing Burros published during her 27-year career at the Times; it is certainly the most influential.—Becky Hughes
15/94Rachael Ray
Time and money have always been top of mind for Ray, but those aren’t the only numbers that matter. Another set—27 seasons of 30 Minute Meals; 27 cookbooks; three Emmy wins—proves that Ray’s encouraging enthusiasm and no-judgment personality has had an impact that goes beyond Tuesday night dinner. Plenty of tables will be graced with a 30-minute meal tonight; where Ray has really won is the feeling of accomplishment she’s given to the cooks who made them.—BH
Animation by Cartuna16/94Zephyr Wright
The personal chef to Lyndon and Lady Bird Johnson traveled with them all the way to the White House, where she kept the couple fed with homey Southern food like Texas chili. But Wright’s biggest influence on America had nothing to do with food and a lot to do with policy. When she refused to travel with the couple due to the indignities of segregation, LBJ took notice. And then he took action.
17/94Stanley Tucci
No, it’s not just about Big Night. Sure, Tucci looms large in the kitchen in the classic 1996 movie about two Italian brothers preparing a legendary feast. But offscreen, he’s not so different: he’s a wine-guzzling kitchen hound who comes from a long line of Italian home cooks. Tucci’s maternal grandmother canned fruit and brewed beer at the Tucci homestead in upstate New York. Following a stroke, she used pizzamaking as a form of rehabilitation (it’s good for the arms). Tucci absorbed all that kitchen wisdom and turned it into two books, The Tucci Table and The Tucci Cookbook, both of which inspire people to cook Italian (timpano, anyone?) just as effectively as any movie could.—SW
18/94Sheila Lukins and Julee Rosso
The Silver Palate started as a New York City specialty food shop that grew into a series of cookbooks. But the shop and its proprietors, Lukins and Rosso, are most famous for launching the now-iconic Chicken Marbella, a sweet, salty, briny recipe that let every cook in America throw parties that felt like they were catered. The fact that Marbella could feed ten and be kept at room temperature may have been the original enticement to many cooks than the actual flavor profile of the dish, which combines prunes, capers, and olives. But after one taste, home cooks of the ’80s were hooked on its Mediterranean charm. (Home cooks of today are just as smitten, but most prepare it now not wearing shoulder pads.)—BH
19/94Tamar Adler
An Everlasting Meal, the 2012 debut of writer and former Chez Panisse cook Tamar Adler, is an homage to the controversial fridge dweller known as leftovers. Written in quiet but precise prose, the book sets out an economical and inspired approach to daily cooking that advocates for using the tail end or discards of a past meal to start the next one (sautéing broccoli stems in olive oil to spread on toast or turning a heel of bread into garlicky breadcrumbs to sprinkle on pasta). Adler’s premise is simple but powerful and it helped convince a generation of cooks that really—no, really—there’s something to eat in your kitchen. With Adler’s help, you can find it.—Anya Hoffman
20/94Paula Wolfert
“There is a misapprehension about spices in our country—the idea that they are used by people in poor nations to cover up the bad taste of corrupted food,” Wolfert wrote in 1973’s Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco. That book (and eight others) not only corrected that line of thinking, but also introduced American cooks to preserved lemons, clay pots, and everything else that makes Mediterranean food—especially Moroccan—so fabulous. Today, Wolfert is still teaching American cooks new things, but she’s moved on from the Mediterranean; now, after her 2013 Alzheimer’s diagnosis, she’s focused on foods that are good for the mind.—DT
Animation by Cartuna21/94Martin Yan
“All eyes are on China,” Yan said in 2008. He was perhaps a little before his time in saying so; a more accurate statement is that all eyes are, and have been, on Yan. Since 1978, Yan has been America’s professor of Chinese cooking, hosting his PBS series Yan Can Cook and writing more than two dozen cookbooks. In that time he has demystified one of the world’s great cuisines and shown a country that fumbles with chopsticks how to prepare it for dinner.
Guy Mendes22/94Wendell Berry
An inspiration to sustainable-food folks like Mark Bittman and Michael Pollan, the writer and farmer Wendell Berry did more than just famously proclaim that “eating is an agricultural act.” On his Kentucky farmstead, in his poetry, novels, and essays, and through his activism, he continues to fight to humanize industrial agriculture, showing how the food we put on our plates can change the planet.—Adina Steiman
23/94Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor
Smart-Grosvenor called herself a “culinary griot” and spent her days writing and talking about the cooking of the South Carolina Lowcountry, where she was born. “I don’t like fancy food,” she wrote in Vibration Cooking: Or, the Travel Notes of a Geechee Girl. Instead, she preferred food that was cooked like the title of her book suggests—intuitively and resourcefully prepared based on the ingredients that are available and the mood in the kitchen. “It is very easy to do special things. Like a cake you only make on your first cousin by your mother’s second marriage’s birthday. Or a ham you make for Sam’s wedding anniversary every other February 29,” Grosvenor wrote. “I’m talking about being able to turn the daily ritual of cooking for your family into a beautiful everyday happening.”—DT
24/94Lynne Rossetto Kasper
We all know the sound of her voice. It comes at us on weekend afternoons, probably when we’re in the car on our way home from the farmers’ market, a tote bag on the seat next to us emblazoned with the logo for the public radio station we’re listening to. If she’s introducing a segment or conducting an interview, fine. But if Lynne Rossetto Kasper is at the part of The Splendid Table where she answers listener’s cooking questions—well, that’s the time to turn up the volume. With a singular combination of cooking knowledge and Midwestern kindness, Kasper has talked American cooks through graduation dinners, layer cakes, and first attempts at duck confit. Get your questions in now—she’ll only be on the air until the end of year.—DT
25/94Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Perhaps better known as the author of The Yearling, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings was also a self-professed home cook. Her memoir, Cross Creek, even inspired a follow-up when fans begged for the recipes she described so well in those pages. The cookbook, Cross Creek Cookery, includes recipes that highlight Florida’s fresh seafood, as well as quaintly named Southern dishes like Backwoods Biscuits, Aunt Effie’s Custard Johnny Cake, and Mother’s Jellied Chicken. Several recipes are credited to Idella Parker, Rawlings’ maid of ten years, but the descriptions of the food are all Rawlings. (The real trick to her simple Tangerine Sherbet? “Having one’s own tangerine trees.”) These days we see recipes as something for the masses; Rawlings’ writings remind us of a time when they were proud emblems of one particular life.—JS
Animation by Cartuna26/94Martha Stewart
Don’t let Martha‘s relentless pursuit of perfection in cooking, crafting, gardening, decorating, and cleaning bully you into making canapés (or giving up and ordering takeout). See her for what she is: a badass food-obsessed businesswoman who wasn’t afraid to follow her hobbies to their most extreme conclusion—and drag an entire culture along with her.
27/94Mary Harriman Rumsey
By all accounts, Rumsey was not an accomplished cook. Born into a wealthy Manhattan family in 1881, she had the resources to let others do the work, and besides, she was busy: By the age of 19, she’d already founded the all-female volunteer group that would grow into The Junior League. But without her work, at least 200 community cookbooks—a list that includes some of the country’s most respected regional cooking guides—wouldn’t exist. Since 1943, when the Minneapolis chapter of the group raised $3,000 by printing and selling member recipes, publishing cookbooks has been one of the League’s most noteworthy fundraising efforts. Along the way, they’ve captured the essence of home cooking around the country—witness 1950’s Charleston Receipts; 1979’s Nutbread and Nostalgia from South Bend, Indiana; Honolulu’s A Taste of Aloha (1983); and Louisiana’s Talk About Good! Le Livre de la Cuisine de Lafayette. —Rachel Wharton
28/94Leela Punyaratabandhu
Thai-style fried chicken, marinated in garlic, coriander, cilantro root, and oyster sauce; dipped in a rice-flour batter; and garnished with fried shallots. If this were the only recipe Punyaratabandhu posted to her Thai-cooking blog, SheSimmers, it would still be indispensable to Thai food–loving home cooks. Luckily, there’s much more. Trained in linguistics and philology—the study of language through historical texts—Bangkok-born, Chicago-based Punyaratabandhu brings to her work an attraction to historical influence and anecdote, not to mention a truckload of great recipes and valuable cooking advice. So if fried chicken isn’t your thing, no worries—Punyaratabandhu has a book about simple Thai cooking, a book of recipes from Bangkok, and a five-part series on how to make authentic pad Thai.—SW
29/94MFK Fisher
“There in Dijon, the cauliflowers were very small and succulent, grown in that ancient soil. I separated the flowerlets and dropped them in boiling water for just a few minutes. Then I drained them and put them in a wide shallow casserole, and covered them with heavy cream, and a thick sprinkling of freshly grated Gruyère, the nice rubbery kind that didn’t come from Switzerland at all, but from the Jura. It was called râpé in the market, and was grated while you watched, in a soft cloudy pile, onto your piece of paper.” If this snippet from The Gastronomical Me gives you conflicting desires, you’re not alone. In her many books and articles, Mary Francis Kennedy conjures in American cooks the urge to stay put and keep reading, yet also to put the book down, run to the market, and start cooking.—DT
30/94Rose Levy Beranbaum
Was she being presumptuous when she titled her 1988 breakout book The Cake Bible? Not really. Anybody who has baked—or even just tasted—Beranbaum’s “Downy Yellow Butter Cake” knows that it inspires religious-like devotion. And her other Bibles (on bread, pie and pastry, and baking, respectively) are no different. Beranbaum’s recipes (including ones for tricky things like sourdough) work—always, every time—thanks to her exactitude. She tests maniacally and writes meticulously, ending up with recipes that help home cooks approach birthday cakes and Easter brunches with the confidence of the gods.—DT
Animation by Cartuna31/94Chrissy Teigen
Teigen loves Lawry’s Seasoning Salt on her crispy deep-fried chicken wings and puts mayo in her creamy Caesar salad dressing. She coined the term delushious and is helping redefine the term clean eating. All of which is to say that her contagious enthusiasm and uncanny instinct for flavor has taught the universe (or, fine, maybe just the Twitterverse) that we shouldn’t feel ashamed about the food we crave, either.
32/94“Ma” from Little House on the Prairie
Two mothers helped inspire my love of cooking: my own and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Ma” from the Little House books. Within the first few pages of Little House in the Big Woods, Ma (portrayed on television by Karen Grassle, pictured) is rendering lard, smoking venison, and churning butter. She could make anything—without a grocery store or any modern appliances—and everything she cooked, I wanted to cook, too. Thanks to Ma, I spent my childhood (and countless other children did too) playing old-fashioned house, daydreaming of baking over an open fire and pouring circles of boiled syrup over pans of snow to make holiday candies. I still wish I could live in the attic where Ma hung the cured meats and dried onions and herbs in the winter, and to this day, her admirable industriousness and resourcefulness inspires me to keep busy in the kitchen.—Anna Stockwell
33/94Marcella Hazan
Jesus might have turned water into wine, but only Marcella could have transformed canned tomatoes, a halved onion, and a knob of butter into pasta sauce merely by simmering them together in a pot. A born teacher with supreme confidence in her own palate and prejudices, Marcella stripped down tomato sauce—and so many other Italian recipes—to their fundamentals with laser-clear instruction. Once you learned how to cook onions her way (always start them in a cold pan so they have a chance to turn tender before they begin to brown) or deploy garlic with her skill (a smashed clove for a gentle fragrance; minced for intensity), those lessons rung in your ears no matter what you cooked. Marcella may no longer be with us, but all we have to do is go back to those lessons—or one of her impeccable cookbooks—to visit (and cook) with her again.—AS
34/94Matt Lee and Ted Lee
Two brothers who grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, Matt and Ted Lee went away to school in the Northeast and got homesick. So they started The Lee Bros. Boiled Peanuts Catalogue, a mail-order concern that offered nostalgists and others a way to score their grits. It was the first step in establishing the Lee Bros. as thoughtful, modern advocates for Southern food in general; as lovers of Charleston cuisine in particular; and as a couple of skinny nerds who really know how to throw a garden party. Their first cookbook, The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook, was pan-Southern, highlighting the diversity of the region; their second focused on fresh weeknight fare. But it’s their third—The Lee Bros. Charleston Kitchen—that is their real baby. In it, the Lees emphasize the deep, sprawling roots of Charleston’s food culture. Do they know that, at this point, they aren’t just chroniclers of that culture but a crucial component?—SW
Michael Ventura35/94Pati Jinich
There are a lot of folks out there spreading the gospel of Mexican food but none with the charm, warmth, and perspective of Pati. Born in Mexico City and based in Washington, D.C., Jinich cooks in an inclusive style—her recipes are rooted in Mexico and influenced by the U.S., which means that when you catch her on PBS’s Pati’s Mexican Table, you’re just as likely to see her cooking a classic posole rojo as you are her Thanksgiving cinnamon rolls (filled with cajeta, of course). “You know how some dishes just have some inherent meaning?” she asks when making carnitas. If you can’t answer that question in the affirmative, just keep watching—soon enough, you’ll know exactly what she means.—DT
Animation by Cartuna36/94James Beard
We might all still be eating Jell-O salad and crepes suzette if not for James Beard, the bow-tied guiding light of good, honest cooking who liberated generations of Americans from post-War fake food and snobby Continental cuisine. Today, he’s a symbol more than anything else, but we still have a lot to learn from him (case in point: his inimitable onion sandwiches).
Amy Dickerson37/94Melissa Clark
She’s written almost 40 cookbooks and has a long-running column in the New York Times, but let’s be real—America’s in this for her videos. Chipper and spastic and as much about the dreamy kitchen as they are about the food, Clark’s weekly how-tos are some of the most singable food videos on the internet. And yes, sure, it helps that Clark develops recipes that nail the landing every time, recipes that hit the mark where decadent and doable meet. But lots of food writers can do that; it takes a charismatic cook like Clark to actually get America to cook them.—DT
38/94Philomelia Hardin
The author of Every Body’s Cook and Receipt Book, the first cookbook published west of the Alleghenies, boasted a subtitle Harden filled with the same down-to-earth thoroughness as her writing: “But More Particularly Designed for Buckeyes (Ohio), Hoosiers (Indiana), Wolverines (Michigan), Corncrackers (Kentucky), Suckers (Illinois), and All Epicures Who Wish to Live with the Present Times.” It’s due to her setting down recipes for Wolverine Junket and Buckeye Dumplings that we know that regional cooking has always had a place in America.—SW
Kyle Johnson39/94Molly Wizenberg
Wizenberg was an early hero of the food blogosphere, landing book deals and magazine gigs and then a cult following among readers who love her recipes for the personal, oftentimes emotional stories behind their conception. Wizenberg is now a restaurateur, mother, podcaster, and—increasingly—a model of how to live a beautifully queer life, but her most powerful acts are still on her blog Orangette, where she’s proof that everybody has valid stories to tell, and cooking is often the best way to tell them.—BH
TOP/Tate Carlson 200840/94Raghavan Iyer
American cooks have always needed a guiding force when it comes to Indian cooking, and in Iyer we’ve found one of the best. It’s a little ironic, then, that when Iyer left Mumbai to live in the United States, he didn’t know how to cook Indian food at all. Luckily for us, he‘s done a 180—now he’s one of the most respected writers of Indian cookbooks. See his Indian home-cooking guide on behalf of Betty Crocker; his intimate collection of recipes and memories, The Turmeric Trail; and 660 Curries, an absurdly generous collection of dishes that display just how vast the world of curry can be. Furthermore, he’s one of the country’s most valued cooking teachers.—DT
Animation by Cartuna41/94Andrea Nguyen
When Nguyen’s family fled Vietnam in 1975 and moved to Southern California, they found plenty of fellow immigrants hawking banh mi, the savory, spicy, crunchy, and completely addictive sandwich of their homeland. But there was a problem: These banh mi weren’t particularly good. So Nguyen’s mother insisted they start making them on their own. The Nguyens could have stopped there, keeping their delicious banh mi recipe to themselves, but Andrea grew up and spread the gospel with a series of cookbooks (on tofu, dumplings, pho, and, yes, banh mi). There may still be bad banh mi being made in America—but now, thanks to Nguyen, there’s no excuse.
Roger Proulx42/94Steven Raichlen
Steven Raichlen’s the guy who reminds us that home cooking doesn’t just take place in the kitchen. It’s also a worthy pursuit on the back porch, the patio, the driveway—basically, wherever you can safely fit a grill or a smoker. And that’s not his only lesson. Raichlen reminds us that barbecuing is an ageless technique of home cooks around the world—his 2010 book Planet Barbecue! was an exploration of the form that took the author to 60 countries, from Kenya to Laos, and his latest, Barbecue Sauces, includes recipes that range from Beer-Butter Beef Injector Sauce to the Puerto Rico’s ajilimojili. Not long ago, Raichlen observed in an interview that American cooks have become “incredibly sophisticated” about grilling in the 21st century; surely he’s one of the reasons for that.—SW
43/94Malitta Jensen and Mildred Day
If there’s a more ingenious dessert hack than the Rice Krispies Treat, we’d like to hear about it. Until then, we’ll keep bowing down to Kellogg’s employees Malitta Jensen and Mildred Day (pictured) for the creation that’s been blowing minds since 1939. The no-bake treat was originally created as a promotional stunt, but it caught on quickly for obvious reasons—it’s just three cheap ingredients that get heated up, mixed together, and then cooled and cut. Of course, you could buy these at a store (Kellogg’s began commercial production in the ’90s), but that would be almost blasphemous—if you have a heat source, some cereal, and 15 minutes, you have an inarguably excellent dessert.—BH
Amanda Marsalis44/94Alice Waters
You could call Alice Waters one of the country’s greatest home cooks simply on the evidence that she opened her famous restaurant, Chez Panisse, in what had formerly been a house. In fact, by the time she opened the place, Waters had spent years cooking meals for young Berkeley activists caught up in the political ferment of the ’60s and ’70s and had written a cooking column in a San Francisco underground newspaper. Waters brought her radical politics into her radical food, which she then, somehow miraculously, brought into the kitchens of American cooks. Her ideas are everywhere now: in her evocative, cookbooks, in the locavore trend, in the explosive growth of farmers’ markets. She even takes credit for the ubiquity of mixed-green salads, albeit somewhat ruefully: “I’m sure I have contributed to the awful demise of the concept of mesclun,” Waters said a few years back. Maybe so, but even that is a gift home cooks wouldn’t have had without her.—SW
Derek Blanks45/94Patti LaBelle
Some folks might only know Ms. LaBelle for her sweet potato pie, which went viral in 2015 after a certain very enthusiastic review on YouTube. But the music legend has been known for her cooking since 1999, when she released LaBelle Cuisine—a cookbook that essentially created a genre of cooking all its own. Three things the uninitiated should know about cooking LaBelle: (1) it’s a little bit decadent; (2) it’s a lot Southern; and (3) America’s mac-and-cheese game wouldn’t be nearly as strong without it.—DT
Animation by Cartuna46/94Ruth Reichl
For decades, Ruth has been queen, benevolently surveying, analyzing, and guiding the food world as a restaurant critic (at the New York Times), editor (for dearly departed Gourmet magazine), and writer (of best sellers like Tender at the Bone). So, are we still not quite cooking the way she’d like us to?
Culture Club47/94Alice Toklas
Though she’d long wanted to, it was only after her lover Gertrude Stein’s death that Toklas got around to writing The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook. Though the combination memoir-cookbook could be lauded as a culinary-literary achievement (or simply as more interesting than 99 percent of the cookbooks published before or since), it is chiefly known for the inclusion of hashish fudge, a recipe that is in fact not fudge at all, and that Toklas didn’t really know very well. The recipe caused a stir (it was originally banned from the American edition), and without meaning to, Toklas became a pioneer of edibles. A new strain of cookbooks—and cooking—may not be here without her.—DT
Rick Diamond/Getty Images for JCPenney48/94Trisha Yearwood
Sure, Yearwood found fame with hits like “She’s in Love With the Boy” and “XXX’s and OOO’s (An American Girl).” But we’re way more impressed with her recipes. Her first book, Georgia Cooking in an Oklahoma Kitchen, is no celebrity vanity project—not with family recipes like warm and cheesy Black-Eyed Pea Dip served in a Crock-Pot and Grandma Yearwood’s Sweet Iceberg Pickles, cured with old-fashioned pickling lime rather than salt or vinegar. With any luck, Yearwood can keep the hits—and the cookbooks—coming.—AS
49/94Chris Kimball
Armed with an iconic bow tie and a born skeptic’s cocked eyebrow, Chris Kimball built America’s Test Kitchen, Cook’s Illustrated, Cook’s Country (and now his new venture, Milk Street) with a healthy dose of New England pragmatism and an unabashed love of American food. As the leader of an elite squad of talented recipe doctors, Kimball tossed aside inherited cooking truisms in favor of insights (cook pasta in a pot of mushroom sauce, macerate the rhubarb for pie before baking) earned through countless hours clocked in the, yep, test kitchen. The payoff for us lazy, mortal home cooks? Not just better recipes, but an arsenal of dinner party cooking trivia.—AS
50/94Heidi Swanson
Everyone we know is obsessed with this lady’s baked oatmeal. And her ideas for topping rice cake thins. And her homemade strawberry almond milk. And her samosa shepherd’s pie. Swanson’s vegetarian recipes (and her head-spinningly lovely photography) manage to straddle the healthy/indulgent line with Cali-style effortlessness. And unlike some other allegedly health-minded writers, Swanson’s spot-on flavor instincts and skillful use of on-trend ingredients mean that we can trust her never, ever to throw ashwagandha into our minestrone.—AS
Animation by Cartuna51/94Laurie Colwin
Don’t we all secretly wish we were Laurie Colwin? Confident enough to pursue our own idiosyncratic tastes, weird enough to relish our cooking failures, and wise enough to lure people into our orbit by serving them mustard chicken and buttermilk cocoa cake?
52/94Irving Naxon’s Grandmother
On a Friday afternoon nearly one hundred years ago, the Lithuanian grandmother of Irving Naxon (pictured here) would assemble a pot of cholent, a traditional Jewish stew made from onions, barley, potatoes, random vegetables, and cheap cuts of beef better suited for leatherwork than human consumption. Since Grandma Nachumsohn was an observant Jew who couldn’t work, cook, or use electricity during her observance of the Jewish Sabbath, she would carry her pot of cholent to the local bakery, where the stew would cook gently for a full day in the still-warm bread ovens until services were over on Saturday afternoon. Then—and only then—could the family enjoy warm bowls of the unctuous, incredibly tender dinner. It must have been one hell of a stew, because years later in 1938, inspired by his grandmother’s cholent, Naxon invented the Naxon Beanery All-Purpose Cooker. Eight decades later, we know the appliance by a different name: the Crock-Pot.—Eric Gillin
53/94Richard Olney
Richard Olney might have been born in Iowa, but he died in his true homeland France, where he spent his career crafting cookbooks, including the often not-simple-at-all Simple French Food. In his work, he both inspired Alice Waters’ California cuisine while challenging home cooks with meticulous deep-cut recipes such as country terrine and stuffed saddle of rabbit. Olney was prickly and persnickety in personality and his recipes were the same way—which, of course, is what ultimately made them effective.—SW
Johnny Miller54/94Jenny Rosenstrach
The genius of the blog Dinner: A Love Story, which Rosenstrach, a former food editor, runs with her husband, book editor Andy Ward, is how it manages to be both enormously helpful and deeply relatable all at once. The mother of two young daughters, Rosenstrach writes from the perspective of someone deeply experienced in the dinnertime trenches: She knows what a thankless struggle it can be for parents to get food on the table every day. On the blog and in her cookbooks, Rosenstrach shares honest, funny takes on the challenges of feeding children (and oneself) while offering genius strategies for cooking and serving (see the deconstructed dinner concept and her stress-reducing meal prep and entertaining ideas) and simple, delicious recipes that will inspire any parent to stay committed to family dinner.—AH
55/94Jim Lahey
Until 2006, home cooks had a hurdle that few tried to jump: baking bread. The idea alone seemed to cause even accomplished bakers of cakes and pies to shake with uncertainty. But then came Jim Lahey’s no-knead bread, which ran in Mark Bittman’s New York Times column (and caused not a little bit of confusion—many people still attribute the recipe to Bittman). An immediate hit, the recipe had people running to their Dutch ovens to make (and improvise upon) the crusty loaves; soon the recipe took on a life of its own as evidenced by the number of blogs and cookbooks it now appears in. No-knead bread is no longer a recipe but an entire genre—a philosophy—of breadmaking, one that is unabashedly home cook–friendly.—BH
Animation by Cartuna56/94Jessica B. Harris
“Culinary historian” is way too bland and limiting a term to describe Harris’ role in documenting, representing, and contextualizing the foods of Africa and the African diaspora. She’s also a teacher, a cookbook writer (see Iron Pots & Wooden Spoons and High on the Hog), and, as her new memoir My Soul Looks Back details, a product of a period in New York when a wise-beyond-her-years kid could move to the West Village, rub elbows with James Baldwin and Maya Angelou, and make the life she wanted.
57/94Judith Jones
Chances are you own at least one book touched by the legendary JJ—because as a cookbook editor at Knopf for nearly half a century, she’s helmed the creation of paradigm-shifting, consciousness-expanding cookbooks that changed how Americans eat (Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Madhur Jaffrey’s An Invitation to Indian Cooking, Claudia Roden’s A Book of Middle Eastern Food, Edna Lewis’ The Taste of Country Cooking, to name a few). If you happen to know her for her own cookbooks, that’s fine, too—her recipes almost rival those of her authors.—AS
58/94Judy Walker
Walker was only a year into her job as food editor at the New Orleans Times-Picayune when Hurricane Katrina hit. The storm wiped out homes, forced lengthy evacuations, and separated cooks from their kitchens—and recipes. So as Thanksgiving and Christmas 2005 approached, she sent out an appeal. The recipes that readers sent in eventually became Cooking Up A Storm: Recipes Lost and Found from The Times-Picayune of New Orleans*, co-written by Walker and food journalist Marcelle Bienvenu. The book is a gift from one passionate home cook to a city full of them—a collection of recipes, yes, but more than that, a collection of memories and traditions that were almost lost.—Micheline Maynard
59/94Abby Mandel
Like her idol Julia Child, Mandel didn’t discover her calling as a cook until middle age—but then she become a cooking machine. Trained in Paris but still loyal to her hometown of Chicago, she changed the way her city cooked by opening the Green City Market—the area’s only sustainable farmers’ market—in 1999. And for decades, she wrote columns in the Tribune and Bon Appétit, many of them evangelizing that other cooking machine: the food processor.—AS
60/94Ali Maffucci
Ali Maffucci didn’t invent the spiralizer, but she did turn the rarely praised kitchen tool into a nationwide obsession. It started when Maffucci decided to ditch corporate America and pursue the dream of full-time blogging. Her spiralized zucchini “zoodles” were an immediate hit; meal plans and a cookbook soon followed. And along the way, Maffucci relieved some of the anxiety of healthy home cooking, proving that, yes, sometimes things can be fast and good for you at the same time.—SW
Animation by Cartuna61/94Mark Bittman
The minimalist man who simplified 4-star chef recipes, flirted with veganism, and taught us How to Cook Everything while stripping away unnecessary ingredients and fussy techniques stopped writing for the New York Times in 2015 to tackle a new task: how to cook everything ethically.
62/94Alma Lach
Friends say she could have been another Julia Child. Although Alma Lach studied French cuisine at Le Cordon Bleu in the ’50s just as Julia did, she instead used her French culinary training for something less expected. She used cookbooks and a television show to instill a love of cooking in kids. (Some of those kids may have grown up to use her French cookbooks for adults.)—SW
Richard Drew63/94Craig Claiborne
As food editor of The New York Times, Craig Claiborne changed the way that food is talked about in the United States, broadening the scope and the depth of the paper’s coverage while introducing readers to recipes from cultures beyond France and Italy. “He was very specific about cooking and explaining and tasting,” his friend Jacques Pépin remembers. “He’d stop cooking and then sit down, put his glasses on, and ask you a question about what you were doing—how hot was the oven, what did you do, how much did you measure. He went into so many areas of cooking I didn’t know anything about. At that time I cooked strictly French cooking; Craig opened my eyes.” —SW
64/94Danny Kaye
In the 1940s, Danny Kaye was one of Hollywood’s most beloved stars, with killer timing, a gift for physical comedy, and a relentless need to entertain the masses. And as Ruth Reichl pointed out in her remembrance of Kaye, the strawberry-blond star deployed all of those skills in his other, more secret life as an obsessive home cook. The guy who made Gene Kelly dance to his tomato sauce recipe and played the Swedish Chef’s uncle built a second “Chinese” kitchen in his home with three built-in wok burners and custom low-boy refrigerators, all to cook food to the absurd standards that he set for himself. And though he craved the approval of the French chefs who dined at his table, it’s his passion for a then-unfashionable cuisine from a completely foreign culture that we love him for most.—AS
65/94Deborah Madison
Back when Deborah Madison founded Greens, the breakout vegetarian restaurant, in 1979, America was in the lentil-loaf Dark Ages. But Madison’s cooking didn’t focus on faking meat—it instead celebrated vegetables. When Madison published the groundbreaking Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone in 1997, she brought this ethos out of the restaurants and into the kitchens of home cooks. And we embraced it, whether we were vegetarian or not.—GG
Animation by Cartuna66/94Tammy Wynette
When Wynette wasn’t on stage exhorting ladies to “Stand By Your Man” and confiding about the trials and tribulations of D-I-V-O-R-C-E, the First Lady of Country Music was at the back of the tour bus cooking the same spicy pinto beans and cornbread she grew up with. Thankfully, her backup band was on hand to do the dishes.
67/94Harold McGee
Doesn’t matter if you’re a chef in a fancy restaurant or a curious home cook—everyone converges around Harold McGee. His On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen doesn’t just hold insights into why stew meat gets tender as it simmers or how egg whites turn opaque as the protein denatures; it reminds you just how fascinating, historical, and strange our daily bread really is.—SW
Gabriela Herman68/94Joan Nathan
In 10 cookbooks over the course of 40 years, Joan Nathan has painted a complex (and delicious) portrait of Jewish cooking and culinary traditions—with burekas from Israel, pletzels from France, and fluffy matzo balls just the way they like them in America. And as her latest, King Solomon’s Table, proves, her hunger to preserve heritage and uncover the stories behind these recipes remains as ferocious as ever.—AS
69/94Julia Child
What to even say about Julia Child? American cooking would look starkly different without her—Child popularized French cuisine, sure, but because we saw her try, fail, fumble, succeed, and savor on our television screens, she also brought to American kitchens the conviction that even the fanciest food should be fun.—SW
70/94Amelia Simmons
The author of America’s first cookbook written by an American is something of a mystery, but we do know this: That 1796 cookbook, American Cookery, is full of cooking techniques borrowed from France and Britain but applied to distinctly American ingredients like corn, turkey, squash, and cranberries. So in addition to writing the first American cookbook, it seems that Simmons also was the first to define American cuisine. We’ve been cooking it ever since.—SW
Animation by Cartuna71/94Sandor Katz
In the early 1990s, Katz, seeking a slower way of life, moved to one of the queer communes of Tennessee. It was there that he tried a batch of homemade miso that put him forever on the fermentation path. Today you might call Katz the Faerie Godmother of Fermentation: he’s the source American cooks turn to to learn the slow joys of kimchi and pickles.
Elena Seibert72/94Deb Perelman
To understand the appeal of the OG food blogger (her blog, Smitten Kitchen, started, no joke, in 2003), start with her 2012 recipe for lasagna Bolognese—“my culinary Mount Everest,” she writes. It took Perelman many attempts over five years to master the 20-layer meal. And as always, she read widely to get it right, adapting Anne Burrell’s ragu recipe and learning from Italian cooking blogs a salient fact about ricotta: It’s not necessary! Whoever Perelman’s dinner guests were for that particular meal were the beneficiaries of all her work—but, as always, so were her readers, who find in Smitten Kitchen (and the 2012 book of the same name) a personable, infectiously joyful home-cooking voice they can trust.—SW
73/94Irma Rombauer and Marion Rombauer
They weren’t naturally gifted cooks themselves, but they got by just fine, and thanks to their hefty slab of a cookbook—originally published by Irma in 1931 as The Joy of Cooking: A Compilation of Reliable Recipes with a Casual Culinary Chat—so have millions of American cooks. Both starter manual and all-purpose reference, Joy had a groundbreaking conversational voice, unpretentious illustrations, time-saving tips, and a condensed recipe format, making it indispensable for thousands of home cooks from markedly different eras. Its influence is obvious in its ubiquity—what other cookbook can be found simultaneously in every bookstore, every kitchen, and every yard sale?—RW
Joan Garvin74/94Mitchell Davis
In the tradition of all the fabulous grandmas that came before him, Davis, the executive vice president of the James Beard Foundation, is out there to convince the world that everybody—even you, boychick!—can have a special touch in the kitchen. “There aren’t that many things you cannot make at home better than anything you can buy,” he writes in his 528-page manifesto Kitchen Sense, and he backs that claim up by sharing wisdom that home cooks can bring to any recipe. His tip for the perfect muffin? “Cut in the butter, the way you do for biscuits or pie crust.” His secret weapon for mac and cheese? Cream cheese. Absorb one tip or absorb them all; once Mitchell gives you the knowledge, he wants it to be yours.—GG
Huger Foote75/94Eugenia Bone
You might know Eugenia Bone as the canning queen. Her freezing, jarring, curing masterwork, Well-Preserved, came out during the peak of America’s DIY renaissance, with useful reminders of how easy preserving can be (just salt and Meyer lemons and put them in a jar!), how inexpensive (buh-bye, $11 kosher dills), and how it can be done without, um, poisoning anyone. But Bone’s not some hipster pickler. Thrifty ingenuity is a leitmotif in all of her work. The Italian household where she grew up is her culinary muse, and she passes the wisdom of seasonal, frugal, and ingredient-focused eating to her readers. In her book The Kitchen Ecosystem, Bone created a sort of off-the-grid culinary lifestyle that encourages home cooks to eat and preserve what’s at its peak, and wean themselves off processed pantry staples by making their own. This, says Bone, was exactly how her nonna ran the kitchen. American cooks would be smart to follow.—GG
76/94Dori Sanders
A fourth-generation South Carolina farmer, Sanders grows peaches that are nearly as nuanced and sweet as her novels and cookbooks. The joys of the “make-do” cooking that she grew up with only intensify when you try them out in your kitchen, connecting you to the scarcity and abundance that drove the creation of many of the world’s most delicious recipes.
77/94Melissa Hamilton and Christopher Hirsheimer
A few years ago I spent a week on a photo shoot with Hamilton and Hirsheimer, the pair behind the Canal House cookbooks. Hamilton styled the food, Hirsheimer photographed it. One day they arrived at the shoot with tomatoes, onions, pasta, beef. Surprise! They were going to make Bolognese for lunch. As we watched them cook, one of my co-workers mentioned that she uses red wine in her Bolognese—not, as Italian tradition would have it, white. Hirsheimer put a finger in the air and said, in sort of a jolly way, “That is not correct!” I laughed, but Hirsheimer was quite serious. At Canal House, there is a very specific way of doing things: carefully, lovingly, and above all, very, very simply. I rolled my eyes a bit when I heard the Canal House ladies being dictatorial about Bolognese, but as I have become hopelessly addicted to their books and recipes, I’ve changed my tune. In fact, I now know that it’s a great lesson I’ve learned from these women: When a recipe works, only fools mess with it.—DT
Alan Richardson78/94Dorie Greenspan
In 2006, Greenspan made something like a career U-turn. She’d spent a few years working on books with exacting French chefs Daniel Boulud and Pierre Hermé, but now she was going back to writing about baking and cooking at home. She started with a hulking collection of recipes under the straightforward title Baking, a now-classic that is intentionally homey but also revolutionary. In Baking, American bakers have everything they need: recipes for any cookie, cake, or pie they could want, and Dorie’s powerfully empathetic voice of encouragement. Baking was the first of a string of similar books by Greenspan, each of them packed with triple the amount of recipes of most other cookbooks, and many of them subtitled with a sentiment that should be taken seriously, earnestly, with true kindness: “From my home to yours.”—DT
Frank Barratt79/94Vincent Price
To get a sense of the gastronomic charms of Vincent Price—yes, we do mean the late actor and villain ne plus ultra—you could start with a copy of A Treasury of Great Recipes, the cult cookbook he wrote with his wife, Mary, in 1965, or maybe his 1971 TV show Cooking Price-wise with Vincent Price. But to really understand his appeal, go straight to YouTube and stream a few tracks from the International Cooking Course, a 12-tape audio set released in 1977 (with an aspirational bonus tape called Wine is Elegance). You’ll be treated to that velvety voice, helping you through the making of curry, pasta, pickled mushrooms (“they are subtle and tend to be wasted on coarse palates”), and roast pork with prunes. “I take a pound of pitted prunes and two onions peeled and cut into eighths, and stir them into the pan drippings with a cup of red wine,” you’ll hear Price say. “Somehow the kitchen starts to smell like some powerful magic is taking place”—he says, taking a mischievously long pause—“and believe me, it is.”—RW
Martin Mills80/94Dean Martin
In 1966’s The Celebrity Cookbook, compiled by legendary singer Dinah Shore, Dean Martin outlined the greatest hamburger recipe ever told. Besides its obvious cleverness, the recipe outlines some solid burger advice: salting the pan instead of the patty for an even coating of seasoning, not overhandling the meat, and—maybe most important—how to be effortlessly cool while getting dinner on the table.—JS
Animation by Cartuna81/94John Thorne
Thorne ain’t no gunslinger, but he called one of his most beloved collections of food writing Outlaw Cook—and for good reason. From a modest New England kitchen, John Thorne (along with his wife, Matt Lewis Thorne) dives into the secret histories of foods, shunning food trends and turning recipes into superhero origin stories.
R. Gates82/94Pearl Bailey
Our chef- and ’gram-obsessed food culture was 30 years away, but Pearl Bailey was already over it. “People don’t think they’re eating unless they have hors d’oeuvres, salads, etcetera,” she told The New York Times in 1973. “You know when they’ll eat simple? When they’ve got no more money in their pockets.” Bailey’s cookbook, Pearl’s Kitchen: An Extraordinary Cookbook, is full of such wisdom—in fact, the text, already packed with quotable advice, is annotated with even more advice, as if Bailey went over the text at the last minute and added quips she forgot the first time around. With the cool charm of a performer, Bailey, a Tony award-winning singer and actress, promoted a kind of cooking that was casual and cost-effective. It works for a Broadway star, her book seems to say. Shouldn’t it work for you?—DT
Ilona Lieberman83/94Nora Ephron
Book people remember Nora Ephron for Heartburn. Film people remember her for When Harry Met Sally, or Julie & Julia, or, uh, Heartburn. But food people know Ephron as the author of the rule of four. The idea, something she picked up from her friend Lee Bailey, is that while most home cooks serve three dishes at a dinner party (meat, side, veg), the great home cooks serve a fourth—something random or decadent or surprising. In Ephron’s case, the fourth dish wouldn’t be fancy. She cooked the way she made movies, with no goal other than to induce broad, populist pleasure. That meant meatloaf, potatoes, and pies (with store-bought crusts), because, frankly, those were the dishes that got butts in seats—and left them wanting a sequel.—DT
Andy Anderson84/94Jim Harrison
Jim Harrison, who died last year, was chiefly famous for two things: his writing and his appetite. As to the former, he’s remembered for his poetry and fiction, including Legends of the Fall. As to the latter, we find evidence in a dinner Harrison once shared with Orson Welles, which started with “a half-pound of beluga” and ended with “desserts, cheeses, ports,” as well as, Harrison’s obituary in the Times notes, “a chaser of cocaine.” But for all his legendary dining out, Harrison preferred eating at home. As he wrote in his food memoir The Raw and the Cooked, “I’m afraid that eating in restaurants reflects one’s experiences with movies, art galleries, novels, music—that is, characterized by mild amusement but with an overall sense of stupidity and shame. Better to cook for yourself.” His overarching food philosophy? “The idea is to eat well and not die from it, for the simple reason that that would be the end of your eating.” On this score—especially given his appetite for meat, liquor, cigarettes, and drugs—he didn't do too terribly.—SW
85/94Abby Fisher
Fisher was born a slave, went to San Francisco after the Civil War, and with her husband opened a business selling pickles and preserves—both of which earned medals at the 1880 San Francisco Mechanic’s Institute Fair. In 1881, at the request of some “lady friends and patrons,” Fisher dictated (she and her husband were illiterate) a book of recipes, What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking. (Until 2001, the book was thought to be the first cookbook written by an African-American. Now that honor goes to Malinda Russell’s 1866 booklet A Domestic Cook Book.) Certainly Fisher was not the only accomplished African-American cook of her time. But she was the one who ensured African-American cooks got on the record.—DT
87/94Julie Sahni
“I’ve eaten with Julie Sahni, I've cooked with Julie Sahni and, most important, I learned how to cook Indian food from Julie Sahni, especially her two first books, Classic Indian Cooking and the incomparable Classic Indian Vegetarian and Grain Cooking. I don’t suppose she would mind if I called her the Marcella Hazan of Indian food and, for me at least, that’s a perfect description.”—Mark Bittman. Bittman isn’t alone—thousands of American cooks have Sahni to thank for opening their eyes—and palates—to Indian cooking.
88/94Harry Baker
We’ve got the felicitously named Harry Baker—a secretive former insurance agent who sold his pastries to Hollywood stars in the 1920s—to thank for the chiffon cake, which, by being neither an angel food cake nor a “butter cake” but rather something in-between, represented a bold step forward in American baking. Mr. Baker’s face might be lost to history, but thanks to Betty Crocker, which bought the rights to chiffon from Baker in 1947, the recipe will always be an open secret.—SW
Bettmann89/94Fannie Farmer
Originally published in 1896 as The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, what became known as The Fannie Farmer Cookbook was a true wealth of information. Trained in “domestic science,” Farmer offered not just recipes but wisdom on health, nutrition, and the science of food—and in a quirky, inimitable voice. The book was revised for the modern era by Marion Cunningham.
Animation by Cartuna90/94Grace Young
In a world where recipes can feel like disposable commodities pulled from a million anonymous sources and ranked by Google algorithms, Young’s way of writing recipes stands out. In books like The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen and The Breath of a Wok, she chronicled family recipes before they were lost to her parents’ fading memories and captured the spirit of cooking in an often-misunderstood pan. Thanks to Grace, we remember that the best recipes have the deepest roots.
91/94Barbara Kafka
Some cookbook writers merely share recipes. Others have teaching in their bones. In her books, James Beard Cookbook Hall of Famer Barbara Kafka meticulously illuminates techniques from soup to roasting to microwave cooking, creating classics that belong on every home cook’s shelf.—SW
92/94Pam Anderson
In How to Cook Without a Book, Anderson reminded us that we don’t need a recipe once we understand the fundamentals behind a dish—an approach that many food writers, including Epicurious food editor Anna Stockwell, find particularly inspiring. Ironic, then, that this former Cook’s Illustrated executive editor is also a master at creating never-fail recipes, too.—SW
93/94Beatrice Ojakangas
Scandinavian food was, at one point, a complete mystery to American home cooks. That isn’t to say it’s widespread today, but Minnesota-born Beatrice Ojakangas built her career on bringing Scandinavian pastry to the States, mainly to home cooks who may have been intimidated by specialty desserts of countries they’d never seen. Luckily, there’s absolutely nothing intimidating about Ojakangas’ recipes—after all, if she managed to write over a dozen cookbooks while traveling and raising two children, pretty much anything is possible.—SW
Animation by Cartuna94/94Edna Lewis
For her Featherlight Yeast Rolls. For her Blackberry Cobbler. For her book that told a story about African-American cooking that went well beyond soul food. For all this and more, America is lucky to have had a cook like Ms. Lewis.