Hello and welcome to Cooking Issues. This is Dave Arnold, your host of Cooking Issues coming to you live from the heart of Manhattan and Rockefeller Center at New Stand Studios. Not joined. Nastasia the Hammer Lopez is off this week, but I do have John here with me. How you doing, John?
Doing great. Everything good? Yeah. Yeah? Good to be back.
Yeah? Yeah. Good to be here at Rock Center and not caught. Uh John was spent the last however long trapped in COVID quarantine in uh Seattle, Washington, and didn't get to have any fun Seattle stuff. In fact, you got you came down with the COVID before you could even go to any of the fun places in Seattle that you were supposed to go.
Yep. Came down with it within hours of arriving in Seattle. And then as soon as I tested negative on Sunday, I bought a ticket and got here yesterday after a miserable flight. Do you wish in retrospect that maybe you had gone out and at least gotten like something to eat or drink before you took that test? Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Would have been nice. I mean, it would have been bad from a uh a public policy standpoint. It would have been good from uh from a John standpoint.
But you know what I just have another reason to go back to Seattle. That's how I like to view that. Uh you didn't go to Seattle. That was just you you flew to a room. Yes, okay.
And stayed in a room and then flew out of the room back home. Yep. I mean, that's like the worst of all the scenarios. It's true. You know, I mean, um, anyway.
Uh we got uh Joe Hazen rocking the panels here in Rockefeller Center. How you doing? I'm doing great. Very excited for today's show. Yeah.
Anything uh anything interesting happened to you in the uh past week that uh food-wise or not? You know what? I have to be honest, I have not been doing a lot of cooking. Any cooking I have, uh I have a six-month-old son, so it's very quite it's still quite difficult for us to be in front of the uh the stove with all the scheduling that we have going on in the house. So yeah.
It's a lot of quick heating up of things. I remember that. It's hard to uh it's hard to find time to pee or take a shower. You know poop. Yeah.
Yeah. Oh no, pooping. You don't get to poop. Your poop becomes pee time. Anyway, uh, and uh, where are you, Jackie Molecules?
Where in the world is Jackie Molecules? You gotta start at Carmen San Diego for you. LA. LA? All right.
I'm in LA. I'm in LA. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Uh, we're not gonna have time.
We could talk about it later. But uh on the um over this past weekend, I went up to like way upstate New York, like Buffalo, Rochester, uh, all of those places, and a lot of interesting food stories. I'm gonna go ahead and say a lot of cool food stuff up there. Was hanging out at the cure bar with Donnie Clutterbook, had a good time in Rochester. Rochester, good place, good city.
I enjoyed it. I will say that their meat sauce, we can get into it later. I don't think we're gonna have time unless our guests want to talk about it. Meat sauce from the famous meat sauce place called Nick Tahoe, not spelled Tahoe, spelled like Tahoo, but like Nick Tahoe's, which started in 1918. They have this thing called a garbage plate.
And yeah, it's it's a bunch of stuff we can get into it. But they have a meat, they have a meat sauce that goes on top, like little granular pieces of meat in sauce goop, which is a uh like my wife was like, that looks unappetizing. That looks like it already got ate once. She hasn't talked like that. But uh I'm gonna say that portion of it, viciously undersalted, but then I was told that that's just because I'm a downstate weasel.
Then someone else was like, no, it's you gotta go get the other garbage plate. We could talk about it later. Uh what I'm super excited about. Oh, actually, before we get into it, John, what do we want to do promote the upcomings before we do what we're doing? Yes.
All right. Next week we got a doubleheader week. So on Tuesday, we've got Bob Florence for more of me show You out in Mystic. And then on Wednesday at 1 p.m., we've got the co-founders of Maiden Cookware, um, Chip and Jake, and then in July, end of July, we just confirmed Greg Baxstrom, which should be exciting. And then while I've got the mic here, I would also like to kind of shame the Patreon people.
Let's let's work on this Google maps that we're supposed to be editing. It's uh got some room for improvement. So I'll say that. Everyone start adding their stuff. Listen, John takes this whole sharing of information and like super granular detail about places like extremely seriously.
Like if any of you have you already put your Belgium. I'll do it literally right now. All right. When you see the level of detail that John goes into town by town, place by place and dish by dish in his in his Belgium uh document. You're gonna hang your heads in shame for not populating this map better.
And I'll also say this. I'm gonna do it, too. You gotta do it. Do it, man. You know what, Jack?
Put on, put like I don't know which maps we're doing, but go do Mexico City, put on Meat Bucket and put on uh put on Florida Calabaza lady. Come on, man. And and I will I will, I will. And for those of you that have no idea what we're talking about, you want to tell them how to what the Patreon is uh there, John? Patreon.com slash cooking issues.
Stand up. All right, all right, all right. Uh and are we gonna give him a discount on the show you or is that uh can we do that or we're not we're not to be determined. We will see. It's a good show you hopefully.
Yes, it's great. It's great. Even though it's from Connecticut, it's good show you. Uh hey, look, I love Connecticut. That wasn't a Connecticut dig.
I apologize. But now, all right, we're done with all the preliminaries. So today I'm super excited. This is also the first time we've had half of our guests in studio and half not in studio. So we'll see how this works.
But we have uh John Becker and Megan Scott, who together now are the let me say. So it's one, two, three, fourth generation fourth, fourth generation, fourth generation writer editors of like the all-time best selling, most important, longest lived cookbook ever. Like ever. Like puts a peace to shame because you know what? No one's actually read a pecious.
Okay. I mean, I've read it. I'm not saying I'm necessarily a better person for it. But uh so welcome, guys. Thanks for coming on.
Thanks for having us. And just just so you know, John, where are you right now? Um, I'm at at our home in Portland, Oregon. Portland, Oregon, Portland, Oregon. And Megan's here with us in the in the in the studio.
Uh all right. So, how do you how do you want to do this? I'm assuming that if you I'm assuming that if you are listening to this that you know what the joy of cooking is, but maybe not. Maybe you don't know. Uh for people who um listen to this show, I love um books that have gone through a bunch of editions over a bunch of time.
Uh, not just because that's an indication that the books themselves are important or like have some sort of ongoing meaning for a lot of people, which it also does, uh, but because they span a slice of time, especially American books, uh, that I can understand and look at how people and our culture has changed over time. And so this book, which started in 1931, is kind of the ure like addition chasing book that cookbook people I think go after. Wouldn't you guys agree or no? I think that's true. John, do you feel that?
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not I'm I'm not I'm not sure if we uh I mean you can definitely get an inkling of what uh you know how culinary c our c our culinary culture has changed over time. But uh you know I don't think that we're a perfect reflection definitely an imperfect reflection of what was going on.
Well, yeah, I mean, so it's not like for instance, like there are certain like nonfiction technical books, like I've brought it up a bunch of times, but uh Louise Pete's book, uh Household Equipment that went through, I think like, you know, 15 editions between like the early 30s and the 70s, like literally spanned a huge revolution in like electrification, refrigeration. But the thing is, so did Joy of Cooking. And it like so it's like the the way the recipes are presented and what people eat span that thing. So it's not as stark as, you know, oh yeah, you don't need to give um recipes anymore for, you know, how to economize your coal stove because ain't nobody cooking with a coal stove anymore. You know what I mean?
Uh or uh, you know, you don't have to explain electricity to people who've never seen a what used to be called a convenience socket. I'd like to see what an inconvenience socket is if the for those of you that don't know, like like what you just call us like a wall socket or a plug or whatever you call it, you know, whatever we incorrectly call it. The technical term for that is a convenience socket, because it used to be you hired someone to come in and wire your equipment into the mains. Uh so yeah, that those are convenience sockets. Wow.
Yeah. Don't you guys kind of wish, by the way, that we had 220 as our as our mains power so that we could run more power off of wall sockets in the kitchen without having to break such a sweat? I mean, we haven't really run into that as a problem because we're using really like home cook focused appliances, but I can I can see where you're coming from. Right, right, right. But what if, what if, I mean, what would our culture be like if the average consumer could pull like two and a half, three kilowatts out of their wall socket without without without trouble?
What would our lives be like? Maybe different. Yeah, probably different. I mean, I do feel like I do feel like home kitchens get sort of stuck in a time warp sometimes or just they aren't very well designed. A lot of I mean, I remember when we were looking for a house in Portland, we would walk in and be like, oh, this is a great house, and the kitchen is tiny and dark and hasn't been updated since the 70s.
And it was kind of like, what is happening? Wow. I want to be in I want to enjoy being in the kitchen when I'm there. So you rip that sucker out? No.
You can't. I mean, we found a decent a decent kitchen. Okay. Okay. That was a deal breaker.
Now, do you but like do you have to have so that so so okay? We're skipping forward to what you guys do now. Maybe we should do that. I don't know. I've we have so much to get through, I don't know how to do it.
So uh do you have like three separate kitchens? Like, do you test stuff on an induction, like on a garbage stove, on a gas stove? Like, do you like purposely throw your equipment out of whack to see how bulletproof your recipes are? Like, what's the what's the first of all? Okay, let's just start from the end and we'll go back to the beginning later.
So people don't know, right? What happened was is the most popular edition, the one that everyone in my generation grew up in was the one from I believe it was what, 75. That's the one that was in my house. It came out when I was four, and obviously my mom had a copy, right? Because everybody did.
Uh and it was that book was uh the kind of last one that you know the grandma worked on. But also, I heard uh uh John that your dad, Ethan, was helped on that book, but didn't get his name on the spine. In fact, he didn't get his name on the spine until the 1997 edition. So this this book had been selling a jillion copies. Well, let's go through the story now, right?
So in 1931, your great-grandma, uh uh Irma Rombauer, right? She uh the your great-grandfather dies. She has almost no money left, right? She's got uh and she's 50, like 50 something, 52. And she's like, I'm gonna write a cookbook.
Am I right so far? Yep, and in the initial Go ahead. Oh, yeah, the kids are you know, her kids are out of the house, and you know, she was left a modest sum, and yeah, she took half of it uh and privately privately printed the first edition. Well, to hear the story from your great uncle uh who you know wrote the preface to the facsimile edition, and he's like, Well, she kind of asked the kids, are you guys cool with this? And then they were like, Yeah, yeah, go ahead.
But what's weird is, and this is kind of interesting, is that by his account, she wasn't really a cook. Like she didn't grow up being being a cook. You know, she reads this uh book that I wanted to get a copy of, but I never did called and so if you want to see what the original Joy of Cooking was based on, it's a book that's really fallen by the wayside, folks. I guarantee none of you have heard of it. Choice Menus for Luncheons and Dinners by Gladys Tossig Lang, which uh if you want to try to find an original 1931 first edition of um of uh Joy of Cooking, you better take Out a mortgage.
Whereas uh you can get a copy of Choice Menus for Luncheons and Dinners for like five bucks. Yep, maybe ten. Uh this is because they didn't print that many of them. So she reads this book, she's like, I could do this. But what's hilarious about it in the preface to the book is she's like, you know what I really hate?
I'm paraphrasing here. She's like, you know what I really hate when people say they're a writer. She's like, I really freaking hate it when people say I'm a writer. She's like, anyone who can string two words together says they're a writer, and here I am writing a freaking book. The basically paraphrase, that was the right.
Yeah. Uh so anyway, so she comes out with this book, self-published, right? Then the publisher, the the printer, was like, I printed an extra 30 copies in case like something goes wrong. Hands her use 30 copies. She's like, What the hell am I gonna do with these?
So she sends one to her cousin. Am I still right so far? Um, you're getting all of this from uh from Edgar's preface, right? So you don't trust your great uncle is what I'm telling you? You know, what you're telling me?
Yeah, kind of that's pretty much what I'm telling you. Yeah. Um actually uh a food writer named Ann Mendelssohn uh put out a bio kind of a uh history of joy of cooking and a biography of uh Irma and Marianne's lives. And she doesn't really give any credence to those to this particular that particular uh those those details. All right.
But uh we won't promulgate them. Yeah, no, no, no. She uh she tried to shop around uh the manuscript, you know, like the uh she was you know, a proposal to publishers uh for several years. And that's eventually she managed to convince uh Bob Smerrell to uh come out with the the first, you know, actually published edition in 1936. And they had it all the way up to 75, right?
Yeah, that's right. Yeah. But to hear the story now that I'm not supposed to put credence in anymore, your great uncle, you know, apparently, I won't call him a liar, but you kind of called him a liar. Oh no, I mean it's all right guy rest may he may he rest in peace. Yeah, may he may he rest may he rest in his lies.
But the you know to to hear his side of the story, like it got really dicey there and it looked like it like she had a deal and Bob's Merrill was like, you know what, depression's getting worse than we thought. Ain't nobody buying cookbooks. Because another thing is that and I didn't get this from the from the preface, but it's like uh the blockbuster cookbook wasn't really a thing yet other than like Boston cooking school like, you know, uh Fannie Farmer kind of stuff. There wasn't this kind of concept of a non-technical or not not the way the Boston Cooking School was conceived as a technical kind of, you know, coming from the home ec environment mentality, there wasn't this notion of the blockbuster cookbook yet. And so they were like, yeah I don't know.
And then like it almost it almost died right there, right before 36 when the major first blockbuster came out. Is that is that part do you agree with? Oh yeah I think that that totally tracks with what I've what I've read. But uh yeah no it was it was definitely a hard sell that she had she had to do and you know she ended up conceding a lot in the uh in the on the contract to the point where you know Bob's Merrill actually had uh ownership of like half the copyright. That's pretty uh it was pretty tough negotiating going on.
Yeah well uh well so see whether this is accurate. Like what I one of the things that I thought was really interesting was that your great grandma, right? They're like, hey, listen, we're gonna do this, but we're actually not gonna pay you uh the royalties that you would normally expect because we're gonna put so much of this crap into promotion that you're gonna make it on the back end, and that people told your great grandmother, like, this is crazy, this is a fool's errand, you're nuts, and she was like, eh, okay. And then like that made that kind of made it. That was like boom.
Do you think that's an accurate story? Uh you know, I should have I've obviously I should have been studying studying up before this, but yeah, that that sounds sounds plausible to me. Yeah, yeah. So what's cool about this book, if you've never uh like seen kind of the old copies, first of all, you should get a facsimile of the 31 edition, but it's of it's a completely different book from the I don't have the 36, but I have the 46, okay. Uh not the one with the rationing in it, because you know, whatever.
I don't need that because, you know, let's be honest, I don't ration. Uh but um the book style kind of changed dramatically. So for you know, we're all kind of used to conversational writing now. Uh, but you know, the the first edition had in it the like it's it's like line by line, like innovations that we now take for granted come in at you know, piece by piece. So in the initial one, it's like this like she's telling stories.
Who what? Who tells stories? And then in the in the, you know, in the edition, the 36th edition, it's this new uh do you believe do you guys believe in this whole action method as a term or like what how do you like it's a different recipe writing style? Are you guys okay with that? I don't want to use your term.
We use that. That's fine. Yeah. Yeah, we we use the term all the time. Uh she did not uh come up with that term or or use that term to describe the style that's that recipe writing style that she came up with.
Right. That's why I didn't necessarily I don't know whether it's a term you guys approve of or whether it was one that's added on to you. And I know how I know how much I hate when people just apply terms to people without it's okay. So you're okay with that. Yeah.
So you want to describe what that is and why why that was different back in the day. I can take it if you'll take it. Yeah, I'll take it. Sure. Um so essentially in the in the 1931 edition, the recipes are written very much like you would see a recipe, most recipes written, which is that the in ingredients are broken out at the top, and then you have the instructions below.
Um in like a paragraph, she did like a paragraph format, not like one, two, three, four, five. Um, and then in 1936, her new innovation was that the ingredients and the instructions are interspersed. So you might say, melt in a saucepan two tablespoons butter, and the two tablespoons butter is bold in bold text and kind of indented a little to separate it out. So it's just like a more narrative format um where you sort of walk through the recipe with the ingredients embedded, which we really love because it's I mean, there's a lot of advantages, but you know, it you avoid that trap where you might forget, you know, the writer might forget to include an ingredient in the instructions that's called out in the um in ingredient list, or you know, if something's divided, you don't have to say divided, you just put it right in the recipe. So there's I feel like there's a little less opportunity for confusion, and it keeps the recipe writer a little more honest.
And while you and because you bold face it, you can still scan for your mees. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Right. Uh but no one wrote that way. But you should be actually the recipes.
You should be reading it anyway. Listen, people, I can't tell you how many times I tell Booker this. Uh and Dax, but Dax says do it. Just read the whole recipe. He's I'm like, he's like, I'm ready, Dad.
I'm like, you're not freaking ready, dude. I'm like, tell me all the steps. You're not freaking ready. It tell you, I'm not saying you don't refer to the book while you're reading if you while you're cooking if you need to. Although I don't cook with books in the kitchen.
I don't. I jot down the me's and I under uh but like I don't bring my books into the kitchen with me. But God, read the whole recipe. Oh, by the way, I feel uh remiss. If you're listening on Patreon, you can call your questions in 2917 410 1507.
That's 917 410 1507. Uh okay. So yeah, read the read the recipe, people. Yeah, just do it. Okay, can we can we go with this for a second?
What was the one you guys on Twitter where you just uh uh you wanted to have an eye bleeding emoji, I believe was the one because uh you're like, can't somebody make this eye bleeding emoji? Like because uh someone was going viral. It's gotta feel crazy. We'll get back to the history in a minute, but it's gotta feel crazy. Like you guys spend at least 10 10.
I'm not even counting, let's then not even count like the intermediate, like the big additions, right? It was more like you worked on it for 10 years, but like it had been 10 years since it had been uh kind of updated, right? So it's really like a 20-year wedge, and you're working on this thing, it's like, and then some knucklehead goes viral with poison. What was the thing that you guys were? It was a pastrami using celery juice instead of um nitrates or nitrates and a couple of problems.
Yeah, some problems. And it, yeah, it went viral, and it, you know, everyone, this is a person that a lot of people like, I guess. I don't know. And I'm like, Man we're trying to understand the original I'm trying to understand the original motivation for that. I guess he was just like attracted to the idea of a green brine.
Was it a St. Patty's Day related thing? You know what it is? You know what it is? It's this.
It's like I'm I I'm not busting on Whole Foods, but I am here, right? So like Whole Foods decides like you know a billion years ago that they're not going to have anything that is they want everything to say uncured. They don't want nitrites in it, right? So they're like, they put on except for this what naturally crazy celery. You know what I mean?
So what they do is is it somewhere, somewhere someone grows a bunch of celery that never sees never sees a salad, you know what I mean? And they chum up this celery in these giant vats and then they concentrate the ever loving crap out of it into nitrates and nitrites, which they then cure your freaking meat with. If your meat is pink, it has been cured people, if your meat is pink, it has been cured right now, it is true that uh nitrate free hams, if they're cured for a year or longer, uh, can undergo reactions where they're naturally pink without uh but bacon ain't that if your bacon is pink it's been cured. And so I think he m he this guy, I don't even remember who it is, so I'm not insulting them because I don't even know who it is was like it says it celery is fine. It's like naturally it's celery celery so then puts it in celery no but part of the part of what made me so angry is that I'm not even sure if he was genuinely doing this or if he was you know just kind of can I use curse words on this show?
Ish well I mean I mean family ish family ish show. Okay. Family is show. Or if he was just posting garbage trying to get attention, you know? I don't think so.
I think it's like he was trying to get attention. I think he genuinely. Well, obviously he's trying to get attention, right? That's what social media is. Yeah, yes.
But I mean, I think that the the the issue is is that do you guys all remember what it was like to start doing something and how little you knew, but how much you wanted to tell people what you knew, but how little you actually knew. I think it's like all of a sudden people who are in that area, right, have a much bigger megaphone. You know what I mean? And so, like, you know, maybe there's not a there's not some sort of inbred, like not in bred or but but some sort of learned disincentive that comes with having said the wrong thing so many times to prevent you from being like, uh no, that's terrible idea. Terrible.
All right. Yeah. Obviously not, because this is not, yeah, it's not the first time that he's done done something sketchy for his uh for his YouTube channel. So also there's a whole world to communicate with out there. I mean, like, on literally, I have like I have like five or seven or ten people like that I could go on my phone right now and be like, is this a good idea?
And they'd be like, no, dude. No. You know what I mean? Well, presumably this person has a crew of people helping him, assistance, researchers. I don't know.
I mean, I think he has a lot of resources. Because it was also now that it's coming back to me, it was for a nationally known magazine and their website. Yes. Yeah, yeah. Their YouTube.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No excuses. Uh all right, right.
Wait, so let's go back to history before we get to the present. Because I gotta get through it so people understand what's going on. All right, right. By the way, in that 46 edition, there are some doozies. First of all.
So, uh so by the time uh 46 uh comes out, it's uh see. It was wasn't your your grandma by that time was run was basically running the show, right? Or no, was it still your great grandma running the show at that time? So she started uh Marianne started working on the book uh a lot in the 50s, and like in the early late 40s, early 50s. So that's 51 edition, uh she did the entire the entire, I think the breads chapter.
Um and you know, it kind of shows like has her fingerprints all over it because she was very uh she really tried to do do the homework, I guess. Irma was more of a, you know, fly by the seat of the pants uh food writer, if you will. She really just kind of wanted to, you know, she was chatty, you know, had a had a lot of uh really snarky head notes. And oh yeah, you know, that was it was kind of like her as a writer, whereas Marian was much more, I guess, um, you know, scholarly in her own way, I guess. Well, I really like some of those weird chatty things.
So for instance, in the section on, you know, what's old is what's what's new is what's old, whatever, whatever we're supposed to go, right? So like you know how everyone's having a chicken washing debate? So in the in the 43 slash 46 edition of uh so everyone's like, should I wash the chicken? Should I not wash the chicken? The government's gotten in on this, by the way.
They're like, when you wash your chicken, micro droplets from the chicken will get all over everything. Everyone will die. Everyone will die from Salmonella with the washing of the chicken. And I don't wash chicken, I didn't grow up washing chicken. It's a cultural thing.
It's a it literally it's a cultural thing. Whether you wash a chicken's a cultural thing, not a food safety thing, in my opinion. And Harold McGee has gone through, you know, some next time we get on, I'll I can just I can just push a button that says chicken washing, and he can just take away the rest of the show. Um but but like you remember, like it's so in the 40s, like she's starting to write things like most of the time you by the time you get a chicken it's gonna be drawn i e it's gonna have its guts ripped out but maybe not so there's some instructions for on how to do that right and then it's like scrub that chicken inside and out if it's you know it's stinky at all you can rub it with baking soda scrub that chicken scrub the chicken and then an asterisk there's a new school that says don't wash the chicken and rub it with a lemon instead and that's it it's like this asterisk and I was like that's very strong that's very strong and also like uh you know things that I like uh like little things that are in there that only someone who's interested in things that have changed would be interesting. So for instance there in the I don't have a 36 so I don't know but in the in the in the 4346 edition she talks about the tendon remover for large birds and she's like well if you buy a bird that doesn't already have its legs uh you know broken off here's how to take the tendons off you make the cut you rip the leg off and the tendons come off with it which is true right so uh you know if you can buy a turkey people and you are strong or have some sort of like a desk you can do it on get get it with the feet on because butchers no longer have the tendon remover but it's right there in the 4346 uh and presumably in the 36 but I don't know uh yeah I'm not sure about that yeah I don't know I don't mean I don't have access to that the 36 is kind of pricey right compared to the Yeah it's it's just more there are fewer copies yeah it's a little more rare.
Um Dave you run into the head note where I think I think it's in the 40s editions but Irma says something like people seem to really like this recipe I don't recommend it. Well you know, like that's what's so awesome. Like if you look at it, it's so like very early, it was separated into like here's your meats, here's your here's your and for some reason, like up until like I don't I forget whether even into the current edition, but it's like cakes and then you go through cookies and everything else before you get to icing. Hell is that? What the hell is that?
Very very eclectic organization style. Yeah, yeah. And things move around. So like cocktails were in the beginning, then they were in the end, then they got deleted, then boom-boom. Okay.
Anyway. Uh no, I don't remember that head note, but I'll go look it out. So, but like there's a joy to read the well, it's uh it's a pleasure to read these kinds of uh asides because um presumably, and you guys can tell me, you know, she is uh because one of the funny things in all of these uh earlier editions is there was a lot of, and I guess you this is your grandma, a lot of scholarship of quote unquote what the authorities were. And so like she'll be like, some authorities say this, I don't really know. Um right.
So it's like it's kind of really funny. She was clearly like an aggregator, but also a cooker. So or you know, someone who was testing these recipes, but at the same time aggregating the state of the art of knowledge at the time, which I think is kind of fascinating, and you can pick up kind of the thought process in the thing. So I I don't know, I don't you guys think that's a fun thing to read when you're reading those older editions, or no? Oh yeah.
It's kind of an Easter end. Absolutely. I mean, that's yeah, when we first started working on the book, uh, you know, it was basically testing recipes, and we would try to trace them back through the editions and through through that, I you know, it's just I think we were both pretty obsessed just with the differences between the editions, how how they've changed. But yeah, Irma's voice and you know what she had to offer readers, very fun and you know, fascinating. Right.
So in my at least So the last edition that your great grandma had input into, and it was uh yeah, I I guess it was yeah, right. The 51 was the last one, right? Yeah. And but basically that was your grandma was made she had fully taken over the reins, and uh she was trained as an artist, right? She was trained trained art artist and she did uh I know she didn't end up doing the illustrations for some of the later editions, but she did the earlier uh editions illustrations, correct?
She did. She did um paper cuttings because apparently she could not, she was not good at drawing, but she was really good at cutting paper. Those silhouettes are cool, by the way. Yeah, they're really cool. If you go look at the facsimile of the 31 uh edition, they're cool.
Uh okay, so 51, everyone knows what the most important thing about the 1951 edition is. It's the squirrel. So, like so the the the Beckers uh are an out we'll get into this later. Huge outdoorsy kind of family, right? So uh, you know, we'll get into uh uh John, your dad in a sec, right?
But like so there's always like some game and whatnot in it. But in the 1951, and people might not know this, right? So 51 edition, I don't have a copy of the fifth edition, like you know, from the 60s. I have the 51 and I have the 75. And there are two different how to skin a squirrel drawings, but they are the same drawing.
But whoever did the 1975 edition was like, you know what? You know what? The boot that the person is wearing when they're skinning the squirrel, is a little too my three sons. It doesn't, it's a little too stylized for my taste. I'm gonna do a little more of a of a of a realistic line drawing of a boot stepping on a squirrel's tick.
Because the idea is is you cut through, so you cut through the skin on the back, and then you cut through the tail bone, like you would if you were gonna do uh e ikime on a on a fish, right? But you keep the skin attached. Got me, people? Then you cut a line so you can kind of open up where that they and then you step on, you step on the tail, you grab the body and foop, foop. Was that pretty much accurate?
Yeah, totally accurate. Yes. I mean, yeah. And I it's it's I don't know. I based on like our experience with rabbits, it's definitely not like we actually you don't agree.
Yeah, we're not gonna be. We don't recommend that method anymore. Yeah, um, is that why the squirrel drawing did not make it back in? Well, we haven't gotten to the carnage of the 97 yet, but the squirrel drawing, yeah. The squirrel drawing went away in 97 for many, many reasons.
Our publisher really does not like it at all. Um, we know people who have it tattooed on their bodies, so that's interesting. Um, but yeah, we don't recommend that as the way to skin a squirrel anymore. So we didn't put that back in. But if you go into the book, we do talk about how to skin a rabbit.
You basically skin a squirrel the same way. It's really easy. Do you do it? Do you do the rabbit the same way that you did in the drawing for the rabbit where you cut around the hind legs and you hang it and you pull down? No, we did the thing where you you make an incision in the back.
Yeah, and then you stick, you can just stick your fingers in and pull it off, pull all the skin off. I mean, the thing, okay, not to get gruesome, but the thing about the squirrel thing that seems to me to make sense and the boot is that this is and there's there's anti-tularemia, uh, like you know, wear gloves and all this, which is hilarious. I love it. It's like because it's in a cookbook, right? And uh, you know, you very rarely get that kind of stuff.
And that's the other thing I love. That's the other amazing thing about um the 75 edition is that it had just grown to such a size by 1975 that in it you'll have detailed instructions for how to how to rip the skin off of a squirrel, and then like, but like it's just so like encyclopedic yet still quirky. That's what's amazing about it, right? Which you've kept up, you know what I mean? But like that's what's kind of cool about it.
But the thing about the boot is it's very clearly like I just shot this squirrel, I need to get the skin off this thing now, and I'm gonna put it skinned already into my bag, right? Yeah, it's not going in the game bag until I get this thing off. I don't have anything to hang it on. What I what do I have? I have a knife and I have the ground and I have my boot, and I'm gonna rip the skin off this squirrel.
So it seems to me, if you're out there and you take a squirrel down, you want to get it into the bag, and you don't want all that fur all over everything. It's very pragmatic. Yeah, yeah. But the illustrations in the 75, those were done by someone named Iki Matsumoto, and he was a student of Charlie Harper. I don't know if you are familiar with Charlie Harper.
He does a lot of like he did a lot of bird, bird and animal drawings, they're really geometric and cool looking. Um, but yeah, so he did those and then the 60s and 50s, I think it was Jenny Hoffman. And those are like the we call those the Jetsons hands illustrations because they have that very like mid-century vibe. The boot does look cool in the 50s. The boots are really cool in the 50s.
Uh so people who have the tattoo, do they have the 50 or the 75? I think the person we know has the 75. I mean, if you're gonna get a tattoo, I would have gone for the 50s. Although the rabbit looks better in 75 because in the 50s, I don't know, for layout reasons, the rabbit is horizontal. Whereas in the 75 edition, the rabbit is hanging as it should be, and then says, you know, uh, my it's uh my god, you guys, you gotta read these recipes because it's like it's clearly written by a family that has some experience with game meat.
It's like, um, uh, you know, like the original pheasant recipes are like, I hope earlier editions, before Pheasant was something you could buy. They're like, we hope, we I I forget the exact quote, but we hope the breastbone of your pheasant is nice and pliant as a sign of quality. I'm like, I hope so too. Thank you. You know what I mean?
Or it's like if you're if your meat is of a certain age, you might want to hang it a couple of days. Like, so these are not things I think that people really specify anymore. You know, the hanging game. Anyway, all right. So 75 comes out, and it was kind of like it was like the book.
It went crazy. I don't know the numbers, but it sold like some ungodly number of copies, right? And uh, and again, uh, John, your dad worked on that. So Ethan Beck was this time to get into him, right? So, like, here's a crazy story, people.
Heathen uh Ethan Becker, born in 1945, same age as my dad, right? Uh so he's part of this joy of cooking thing, but then also like famous, like world famous knife designer. Sends, sends some like like knives that he made, kukri style, which is this like funny curved blade thing with some to give to his buddies to take over to Vietnam for a deployment. Comes back and is like, how'd they work? And they're like, Well, you could have changed this.
He's like, Okay, I will. And then he starts making these knives. He made what is apparently like the best tactical backpack of anyone in that era, right? Yeah. Never made a kitchen knife.
He did make a kitchen knife. Really? So but they're calling it kitchen knives. But um he didn't he didn't start making knives until like the early 80s. So yeah, the the whole I mean, I think, you know, he Ethan has had plenty has plenty of acquaintances who were in Vietnam, but I don't think that uh yeah, it wasn't like he sent them on deployment.
Well, no, I mean not like no, not the built ones, but he he made two, right? And sent them to his or at least they were in the military using them and they gave him feedback. This is what he says on this on the YouTube things. I've always been fascinated by this. But he made kitchen knives.
Why do you why does why did people not well he uh yeah, I don't know. I think the first time he tried to make uh he tried to make a line of kitchen knives. Um he got a whole bunch of prototypes made up. Um and I don't know, he just never found the right distribution deal and you know, never found the right um the right the right um people to collaborate with on it. I guess it's a harder it's a it's a harder industry that than he well it's maybe it's just he's not familiar with like the kitchen knife industry as much as he is with the outdoor knife industry.
Um we actually have been, you know, he's been thinking about um he's been definitely thinking about doing a kitchen knife project project, but more on like kind of the custom end of things rather than uh mass produced. Well, I guess you know, at this point in his life he do whatever net do whatever the hell he wants. Uh, you know, I mean, it would be fun from uh a consumer perspective to have one that was kind of obtainable. I know that like for instance Sean, does Sean still doing like is Sean still doing a big business in kitchen knives or no? I haven't shopped for kitchen knives in the world.
Mostly out of Williams Sonoma now. I think that's they were for a time they were making big plays. So like they were one of the early people pushing uh like VG 10 knives to the masses, and um they got another famous designer, Ken Onions, like 20 years ago or whatever, to do uh a knife, but it was kind of so wacky that I think you know it I don't think it got a lot of adoption. You know what I mean? The the Ken Onion cooking knife.
What's the famous one that your your dad did, the famous fixed blade uh like uh oh my god, what is it? The one that everyone still buys. Oh, what's it called? Uh well that's for me at least it's the machine, the the kukri style. But yeah, I well, you have a family obsession with kukries, my friend.
Like that like this this, but like the normal, the normal like uh like like seven-inch blade fixed guy with like the like the rugged as hell, comfortable, like can chop through uh uh can chop through a log and still come back and and do whatever you need. What the uh it's out of my head. It's like a hundred and it's like 110 bucks. Everyone loves it. So like the BK7 and the BK9 are both um, you know, kind of straight, straight bladed, not not Kukri style, uh have a clip point.
Yeah, they're they're really rugged. So I mean what is it with the family in Kukri's, by the way? I mean, what are they good for? What like okay, besides cutting into people's heads, like besides like being, you know, uh like a weapon of war, like are they like uh are they better machete style things for like going through brush? Like what is it what is it with the kukri?
Because I have one, but like you know those with K bar, right? They're good for going through Yeah, that's right. They're good for for going through brush, but primarily they're really just really, really great at chopping wood. Um so uh or you know, batoning through wood. Um so yeah, that's that's primarily what that's what I think of them as being the best for, especially the first um Kukri style blade that he made, the machs, because it was you know, fairly thick.
So, you know, just once you get it going in a you know, in a log or whatnot, it it really does help to kind of split it open. So when you go out in the woods, you're rocking the kukri. That's what I'm hearing. Yeah, I mean, we haven't been out in the woods for in like a kind of a field craft situation for quite a while. But yes, that's that's that's what I would choose.
Yeah, well it's I mean you have to, I mean it's in the blood, right? But also it's also some nostalgia because you know, yeah, he was made he started making knives out of his garage. And so, you know, that's kind of when I was, you know, whenever I would go to visit, uh, you know, just kind of get to see the machs that's being made. And it's like, oh, it's a cool, it's a cool knife. It's a cool name.
I like it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, so I haven't even made it to the real stuff. Hold a second. Okay, it's good.
Okay, ready. So here comes the bloodbath edition 97. So uh that okay, so as we all know, as I know, my editor, Maria Guarnicelli, was the one who took over editing, but your dad, Ethan, was still the he was by this point the name on on the book. By the way, funny that he went to the Cordon Blue cooking school and his contribution by name in the back of the book is uh his version of duck cells, where yes, he's like, I don't like to do uh use shallots, so he uses onions. Ba boom, right?
Like if an American's gonna go and do the duck cells, yeah, use onions because none of us like using shallots. They're such a pain in the butt. I totally agree with this. You know what I mean? Uh yeah.
He's he's a he's a practical man, very practical man. Yeah, he's like, why why skin a billion of these little suckers? Like they they taste like good. John, don't get me wrong. Shallots are good.
But it's like shallots are great. But like, you know, if I'm making duck cells, it's gonna be put into something else anyway. I'm gonna add all the and he puts porridge and stuff. We've got to put the stuff in and mushrooms, what the hell is shallots, please? Onions.
I thought that was a strong move. Uh so Maria though uh takes over this thing. It was kind of her ondoing at the at the publishing house. How much of a memory of this do you have, John, of the actual like bloodbath? I was, let's see.
When it was published, I was a senior in high school. So I mean, you know, I I definitely uh I met Maria a few times, and you know, she seemed like a really nice person to me. But uh yeah, uh as far as like the the aftermath of of the 97 goes, yeah, there was there was a lot of um, you know, we got a lot of pushback afterwards because you know, the 1997, it was just a huge undertaking, and she really did kind of not she didn't start from scratch, but let's just say it was a much more uh ground up revision that had had ever been done, even by Marion when she took over the book like for real in the 1960s. So, you know, it it was like the manuscript just went way over like the page limit that they had in mind. And so they ended up, you know, axing entire chapters.
So no preserving chapters, no cocktails, you know, there's there were a lot of casualties. Right. And she paid a lot of money to writers to ghost in chunks. And I, you know, I remember I spoke to her about someone that she had run afoul of during that. And he's a fa he's a famous like like food writer.
And I was like, yo, you know this person. And she's like, and this is literally what she says. She goes, Oh, I hope he's dead. Can someone please tell me that he's died? Oh my God.
And I was like, I was like, uh, sorry, sorry, Maria. He's he's he's still kicking. Because she had done like the classic, like uh creative person's move, which is basically she was so demanding uh of like the crew at that time. I mean, like the stories of like what she put everyone through on that are legend legendary, right? That he was like, I have the I have the manuscript, but you're gonna pay me more, hijacked it, ransomed it for more money.
And so, and she was already so strapped because she had gone so over budget on that sucker that uh, you know, anyway. Uh and it by the way, wow, the the 97 edition is a it's a good book, it's a great book, and what it brought, so like it's kind of like uh if you look at like uh on food and cooking, the first uh on food and cooking, which by the way, funny, she she didn't get to finish, but she signed up the second on food and cooking. But the second on food and cooking, like a lot of the lore has been taken out, and it's like you know, like much heavier on like kind of nitty-gritty and science. Uh uh and in the same way, like a lot of the personality of the book was removed, but a lot there are a lot of positives on the 97 in terms of beefing up and streamlining some of the more technical aspects, which I think when you guys took it over, I think you're you know, you're I think you're getting the best of both worlds. So, like, you know, you you start in 2010.
Now we get to the real world, right? So Megan, in 2010, this is the interesting thing. This is what I was telling you guys before we went on air. I had a tough time discerning on the internet. Turns out you guys are much like uh like I was with with my wife, so I'm like, I don't understand.
Like you started working on the book in 2010, but you also met in 2010, but you didn't so like you guys started going out in April, and by October you were already an item and already working on the book together. Is this accurate? Yes. Now so like I like like I say, I like people that make decisions quickly, right? Uh so I like it, love it.
You know what I mean? Um, and you know, they're like, you know what, I know what I want. Boom, good. Uh strong. So, and you're originally from uh North Carolina, right?
Right, okay. That's right. Uh right. So now, had you already been tasked when did your dad, John, say, why don't you guys do this? It's time.
I mean, I know I mean I've never but he doesn't sure he doesn't talk that way, but like uh like when did that happen? Was there like a was there like some sort of like you know, veto Corleone moment? Like how does how does that work? There was like an anti veto corleon moment, like a few of them where he kind of tried to dissuade me from going into the family business, uh, and was like, you know, you really need to look for something else because just because of the like the uh kind of uh just the relationship with the publisher over the years and what he had had to deal with, and uh I really I kind of came to it by myself. I mean it's weird to say that, but I obviously not in a vacuum.
But um, yeah, I don't know. Just felt at one point in my life, I just felt called to it, and I really wasn't sure what to do at that point at that juncture. Well, you had you had read something for me. You had read something your um your grandmother Marion had had written and it kind of changed your mind on on the book. Yeah, it was actually the four the let's see, the inscription or what what is it?
Dedication. The foreword to the 1963 edition. She just expressed like she had this very heartfelt um you know statement where she was like, you know, Irma passed this book along to me, and I hope that I hope my sons carry it on afterwards and their sons afterwards, and I don't know, it just hit me it hit me in a very special way, let's just say. Exactly. Yeah.
And you know, I had spent a lot I had spent a lot of time editing at that point already. Um like, you know, straight to library titles of literary criticism. The sad thing is that there are no more straight to library titles because libraries don't buy books anymore. They just died. Yeah, it was a the end of a golden age.
Yeah, yeah. All right. So so you start in 2010. So if it published in 2019, you were done with that edition in 2017 or 2018, right? Because it takes a year to get it out.
Twenty eight twenty eighteen. I mean, I feel like we were really pushing it. We really pushed the Yeah, we were. Well, I mean, there's something like six hundred. Yeah.
Yeah, we might have been still working on it early twenty nineteen. And it's a complete Oh Jesus, really? It was rough. And it's a c it's a complete revision. So like I look at something like this and I'm like, that's a billion hours of work.
Yes. So, like, did you like I'm sure you guys couldn't even eat out one time. Like you have to just only be cooking. Like how many people were working on you with this, like with recipe testing? Like, how does that work?
Like, how do you how does someone hand you this thing and you're like, well, everyone wants us to kind of bring it back into a family situation, less away from this. I'm not gonna say that Maria's version was more sanitized, but it's more it's more cooking school like. You know, it's less personal, it's less of a family cookbook. It just is, you know what I mean? Uh, which isn't to take anything away from it, but it just it it is.
Uh to take it back to a family, I mean, it's it's gotta be nuts, right? Like, like describe the process. Well, we started when we started working for the book in 2010, um, one of the first big projects we undertook was to test. Basically, we were tasked with testing all the recipes in the 2006 edition. Um, right, the anniversary the anniversary of the seven.
That that edition was very much the family's attempt to take the book back to what it had been like in the 70s, essentially. And in some ways it did a good job, and in other ways we think it reverted too much to that sense of nostalgia. Um, and we wanted to really actually, you know, we wanted to retain that that personality that the book has, but we also wanted to move it forward in a really intentional way. We didn't want it to be a museum piece. Right, because personality and nostalgia aren't the same.
Right. You can be modern and be a person. It turns out thank God the singularity hasn't happened yet. We're not, you know, pets to our uh to our computers yet. You know what I mean?
Uh yeah. Uh okay. So I mean, well, we'll we'll talk more about this in the 35 you know seconds we have left because I gotta get to some of these. But before I get to the questions that the Patreon people have, they will be mad if I don't get to them. Here's what I like.
If you buy goat, beware bandsawed goat with the bones because it contains small sharp bone fragments. This is good advice. But you guys are fans of goat, huh? These are the first, this is the first edition that's been like go goat. Go go goat.
Well, I actually worked on a goat dairy for a few years, and you also eat goats on a goat dairy, as it turns out, and uh they are delicious. Yeah, they are. I mean, rack of goat, you know, I'm like whatever. It's expensive. It used to be goat was cheap.
I think goat is expensive now. I mean, I think it's like not cheaper than lamb. It used to be almost free. Um, and baby goat tastes as good as baby lamb does. Like if you ever you ever used to do that Easter time, like baby, like milk, like really young.
We have not done that. Oh, it's so good. Oh, speaking of which, can I just mention this? Please someday bring back so in the 1975 edition, at the uh again again, yes, it's culturally not cool, right? But so like for festive recipes.
I mean, that's the other thing you like we'll we have to get into is that like there are a lot of things in the books that are of their time. Like descriptions of uh, you know, someone's cook in Mexico putting an apple in their mouth, which is not you can't do that, right? But it's of its time, whatever. We're not gonna talk about it. I mean, I just did, but you know what I'm saying.
Uh but in the 75 edition, in the front, you open it up and there's like little uh what's it called? Little uh symbols. Oh yeah. And the star symbol means Christmas. Okay.
Uh not not just any festivity, mind you, Christmas. And uh the recipe in there that's most interesting is it's so funny. It's like it in the game section, it goes, any lover of art loves even vicariously the chase, and then starts talking about killing wild boar, okay? And then says, the one thing we have left from this, which I've never seen in my life, is stuffed boar's head. And there's a recipe there, wow, which is very similar.
It's asterisk as a Christmas recipe. Very, very similar, but just the head. So I gotta do this recipe to the um Colombian, like outside of Bogota, where you st you take a whole pig and you turn it into like a Batman cape and then you stuff it with rice. It's very similar, but it's the head. So you boil the head, right?
Gotta try to keep that skin whole. If you do, if you try to sew it after, so you boil it until the skin gelatinizes, you cool it till it's cold, people. You wait till it's cold, please, right? Then you remove the skin slowly, cut around the eyes, keep it as as as a like a as a mask, as a Texas chainsaw massacre face mask of a pig, right? But gelatinized, all right?
You with me, people? Then you make a r you cut off all the meat and you make a rice mixture. So this is just like that Colombian dish, but it's like clearly like an American thing, and then you sew it into this back into the into the pig head, and then you crisp that sucker up in the oven, and I'm like, I would eat the hell out of that. Sounds delicious. Bring that back.
Bring it back. Okay. Uh bring it back. All right. Yeah, that's next next on our testing list.
Yeah, for sure. Let me know how it goes. If you need any help, I mean I'm never in Portland, but I would love to, you know, get invited to that to that dinner. All right, also before we have uh we'll get into it. We have we have six minutes.
Yeah, yeah. Okay. Come on, Megan, kale salad. Specifically, it's called out as you, you know uh kale salad. Do you actually like eating kale?
Now, look, honestly, you massage the hell out of it and then you pour a hot dressing over it. Why not just cook it then? Like, I mean, like, do you love kale salad? Do you wake up in the morning and you're like, you know what I want to eat? Kale in a salad form.
Do you mean you're from North Carolina? You like cooked greens, right? I do like really cooked greens. Yeah. But I also like kale salad.
Okay. With the papitas, it's really good. Okay. Have you tried it? No.
No, you don't like rock ale? Uh no, no. I mean, like, I like I'll eat it. They're like, if you slice it real thin, it's almost like a green that you could eat. I'm like, why don't you just use a green you can eat and cook the kale like God wants you to?
Uh I do appreciate your cornbread recipe with boiling water and no sugar at all. You want to talk about that recipe for a sec? Yeah, so I I wanted to um develop a cornbread recipe that used some of the coarser cornmeals, but I found that when I did that, um, it hurt your teeth. Um, so what I ended up doing is I can kind of create a soaker with two like uh fine and medium grind cornmeal, stone ground cornmeal and boiling water, and you just let that sit. So you start that in the morning, and then when you get home from work, you just add buttermilk and eggs and salt.
I think baking soda, and that's and you throw it in a hot skillet with some fat. Um it's super crispy and almost like has a custardy texture because of the boiling water, the soaker. Um, it's really but not custardy to a spoon bread cut because there's no leavened egg whitey stuff in it, although it's got powder and soda, right? Anyway, so uh all right, let's get to the Patreon questions and then I'll come back with my little my little questions of of uh of things if we have a second. All right.
Uh Smeagol Canival. I like that. It's a good name there. I get it. Uh question.
Uh, how have you suggested uh portion? How have suggested portion and serving sizes, caloric content, richness of the recipes changed over the decades? Oh wow. This might be a this might be a little bit of a trolling question. That's hard to hard to say.
We act there was a controversy uh over that. Um, you know, there was like this peacacking scandal up at Cornell University, and one of the professors that was involved, the professor that was involved with it, had done a like a comparative nutritional analysis of recipes over time through different editions of Joy. And uh it turns out that you know, we actually tried to do uh, you know, a you know, good faith, you know, nutritional analysis of the recipes that he uh that he chose, and it you know, it's basically just all bunk. Um but you know, what I can't do. All nutritional stuff is it's all bunk anyway, because it's all calculated from crazy values that have no meaning, right?
Well, yeah, bomb the bomb calorimeter is not not your stomach. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, none of it has actual mean meaning, you know. Yeah, it's a general idea of what something might have in it energy wise, but it's not super accurate. I mean, not to be gross, but take a look at the toilet.
You haven't fully used all that corn. You know what I'm saying? Like you didn't digest all that corn. Your toilet tells you so. You know what I'm saying?
Um, but how has it changed over the how how's the goal changed over the decades? So, like for instance, Madeline Kamen, like I didn't like the later editions of her books because she had to fake healthify it in the 90s. But you guys kind of skipped that because Maria hated that kind of crap. Well, there were some low fat recipes in the 97 um specific, but you know, it was like a handful. Right.
She's not an arbiter. And then in the earlier editions, even when margarine was really popular, you know, Joy was always like, You can use margarine, it exists, but it tastes bad. Right. So, like, even when other people were pushing margarine in the 70s, you know what I mean? Like the 75 edition is like margarine exists.
Hello. Uh, you know what I mean? But so I feel like a lot of people have asked us this question, and we didn't make a concerted effort to like make recipes healthier or do anything like that. We just wanted to make recipes that you know result in something that tastes good. Um and we, you know, when we thought about serving sizes, that's a huge can of worms, but we wanted to to have the recipes so that when you make them you can get a roughly predictable amount of food out of it.
So if you're feeding a family of four, you're not gonna actually end up with uh just enough food for two people because there's all these variables like who's eating it, how old are they, how what's their metabolism like? Are they exercising a lot? Like, I don't know. There's just so many things to take into account. So we try to be a little generous with serving sizes to err on the side of generosity.
Well, then also and also if somebody's making one of our recipes and it uh makes less than they expect, that's something we don't want. Whereas the opposite, people have leftovers. You know, uh it just it feels more practical to just, you know, assume that somebody is either has, you know, a high um nutritional requirements or okay, but uh, but okay, are the serving sizes golden corral size serving sizes? Or are they like I mean, I guess that's where we're going at like a no no no, all right. No, no, yeah, all right.
Uh Dale Vengroff, I mean, no, no offense, golden corral. I mean, although your food's terrible. Uh, I mean, I've eaten it many times. All right, Dale Venroff uh writes in how is the rise of social media as a source of recipes and an arbiter uh as an arbiter or a culinary trans affected how your audience uses Joy of Cooking, and uh, how do you approach your audience nowadays? And what, if anything, has remained constant despite all the new technology?
Um that's kind of a hard question. I I mean, I we are on social media. I have a very much kind of love, hate love relationship with it. Um I don't like to spend a lot of time on it because it feels like a time suck, which it is. Um, but we try to keep our content pretty pretty attainable and home cook focused, and we don't like to use a lot of um, we don't like to use a lot of uh very highly styled photography.
We we try to keep it like we're taking photos in our home kitchen of stuff we're eating for dinner. Um so that's our general approach. Cool. And uh John, you got your questions here? Yes.
So uh this one's from Jameson. What are your thoughts on adoption of new gear and techniques? How do you decide when to add recipes for newly adopted equipment? What do you anticipate adding in the future? Um we try to take a pretty balanced approach with that.
Yeah, that's that's tough also. Um, but we try to be balanced with that because we know things are cyclical and things fall in and out of style. Um so you know, for in the 2019 edition, for example, we wanted to talk about sous vide, but we didn't want to include a bunch of recipes that were just for making with you know an immersion circulator. So we included a chart of like things you might want to cook, most common things you might want to cook with times and temperatures and some notes about how to execute it. Um we included some instructions for using like a countertop uh pressure cooker in like the grains cooking chart because it makes sense to use that.
Um, but we didn't write we don't usually write recipes specifically for those things. Most people are gonna get specialty books for that stuff anyway. Yeah. Um all right. So, Megan, I'm assuming this is you.
Your red eye gravy has cream in it. First of all, the ham okay. For people is that's not me. Okay. I don't own that.
All right. Then John. Because like, okay, growing up ham slice, that was a ham slice, fry ham slice, soak it if you want beforehand, fry ham slice, water coffee in the pan. Yeah, that's on the ham slice. Yeah.
That's it. You guys kind of pan boil the slice, drain the water, add stuff back to the stuff hitting the bottom of the pan, and then add cream to your red eye gravy. Discuss how did this happen? It might be delicious. It may be delicious.
The boiling in the pan is just uh it's just another default. It's just, you know, to de-salt it a little bit. Just like the soaking was, except it's like, you know, happening a little bit faster. As far as the cream goes, I'm actually not I'm not quite sure. I think the red eye the red eye gravy part of that recipe actually is one of a hold of uh holdover from the 97.
Oh, it's in there? I didn't know that was in there. Yeah. Yeah, I definitely grew up with a masterplug on that one. I grew up with the just cook the ham in the pan and then you add coffee.
Maybe not even water, like you just add cock cold leftover coffee and then put that on biscuits and stuff. Yeah, I think my grandma had coffee and water, but she was probably using some bull crap instant coffee. You know what I mean? Like it was the 70s, you know what I mean? But like that's definitely something where like anyone that grew up with red-eye gravy, it's like red eye, you know what I mean?
You know the best super salty. Yeah, the best red-eye gravy variant ever was Dave Chang's uh red-eye gravy mayonnaise, which was oh wow, yeah, seriously on point at Samba. Uh yeah. Uh all right, so like, all right, so that's something we can address. Well, we're making notes.
We're making notes. Yeah. Uh all right. Uh so in the couple of seconds we have left, which is uh zero. Um, when's it you guys are already working?
Like, what's the next what's the when's the next thing coming? When's the next edition? Uh 2031, which will be a hundred years. Ooh. Yeah.
So like, how far is that from now? Eight years, you got eight more years? Are you gonna actually try to turn it in a year in advancement? I know how hard this thing is. And what are you gonna change?
You guys start working on this book in 2010. In 2010, it was still like loved and advi and like uh considered a good idea to go very far afield worldwide culturally to get recipes. The book gets published, and then very soon after that it becomes a lot more of a hot button issue of appropriation when you're taking on recipes. This is the first one of the editions that I think in a very kind of respectful way tries to take on recipes from a lot of other cultures, but have you gotten any pushback for those kinds of recipes being in there and like how do you see that going through it into the into the future? Is this something you even think about?
Oh yeah, we definitely think about it. I mean, we we haven't gotten any pushback on it and we shouldn't, I don't think I'm not saying you should get pushback. I mean, uh, you know, it happens, but um I mean I think we will probably continue that going forward. Um, but you know, probably paying people who are maybe from those cultures to create those recipes in collaboration with us so that we are not the ones who are saying this is what this dish is. Right, because the the I mean like the 2019 edition really and people who don't understand how like working on something for a long time works, it's like, you know, it's almost a hundred years in the making, but you guys are working on it for like eight, nine years, and you know, you know, John, it's been in your family since forever, right?
Uh and so you're working on it, and it was a really kind of in between twenty eighteen to twenty twenty two, a huge thing has changed in the way cookbooks are written and how things are approached. So like that's also got to be nerve-wracking for you guys to take on something that has to stand around forever and yet, you know, like getting buffeted by the waves of what's happening. Absolutely. Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
So I feel like I've just made this made you nervous. You've haven't said anything like helpful or good. Um it's hard to know what to say. I mean, it's it's obviously a problem. It's uh it's a problem for us, and it's something we constantly have to renegotiate.
And uh, you know, I I just I just hope that we uh what we've done has been respectful. Uh and that's that's what we strive to to do in those with recipes from other cultures like that. And it felt wrong to leave them out because they feel very much a part of American cuisine and the the just a big picture of American cuisine to us. I uh would agree with that. I think it's and and I think uh I think you've uh what what do they call it?
Dividing the baby's bath water, whatever you're supposed to do. I think you guys have uh done a really good job. I'm looking forward to the 2031 uh edition, and I hope there's a freaking picture of the new squirrel method with the old boot style. Get the new squirrel method slash rabbit method with the old boot style, and please bring back, please bring back a a culturally neutral fest, you know, festival, festival level boars stuffed boars head, if you can. That's my request.
You got it. All right, thanks guys for coming on. Thank you. Cooking issues.
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