1. Coyle, Patrick L. Jr., Cooks' Books: An Affectionate Guide to the Literature of Food and Cooking (New York: Facts on File Publications, 1985), p. 25Google Scholar; ad, Minneapolis Sunday Tribune, 08 27, 1950Google Scholar, sec. W, p. 3; “Betty Crocker Honors Mother of the Year,” General Mills Horizons, 06 1951, p. 12Google Scholar; Gordon, Lois and Gordon, Alan, American Chronicle: Six Decades in American Life, 1920–1980 (New York: Atheneum, 1987), p. 294Google Scholar; “Project of the Year,” General Mills Annual Report, 06 1, 1950–May 31, 1951, p. 7Google Scholar; and “Betty Crocker,” General Mills Annual Report, 06 1, 1952–May 31, 1953, p. 12.Google Scholar

2. Wickland, John, “Huge Sale Seen for Cook Book,” Minneapolis Morning Tribune, 09 2, 1950, p. 15.Google Scholar

3. “How Betty Crocker Wrote the Picture Cook Book,” promotional reprint from Journal of Home Economics (12 1956)Google Scholar, unpaginated, in General Mills Archive, Betty Crocker Food and Publications Center, Minneapolis, Minn, (hereafter, GMA); tear sheet for ad (ca. 1952), “Why it took 10 years to serve this dish,” GMA; and “Cook Book Offers 1,000 Photographs,” New York Times, 09 7, 1950, sec. L, p. 41.Google Scholar

4. Gram, Margaret A., “Seasoned with Glamour,” Saturday Review of Literature 34 (03 10, 1951): 48.Google Scholar

5. Wood, Morrison, “How to Cook the Way Mother Used to Do,” Chicago Sunday Tribune, 09 10, 1950, sec. 4, p. 6.Google Scholar

6. Block, Jean Lipman, “The Secret Life of Betty Crocker,” Woman's Home Companion 81 (12 1954): 22, 78, 80Google Scholar; “General Mills of Minneapolis,” Fortune 31 (04 1945): 118Google Scholar; “The Story of Betty Crocker,” promotional leaflet (ca. 1986)Google Scholar, GMA; and Simon, Jane, “Mix Trust, Blend Ease, Cook till Sales are High,” Compass Readings [Northwest Airlines] 21 (11 1990): 35–38.Google Scholar

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8. See, for example, the variety of such spokeswomen in a single issue of Good Housekeeping 134 (04 1952): 29, 157, 207, 220, etc.Google Scholar

9. Gray, James, Business Without Boundary: The Story of General Mills (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1954), p. 178.Google Scholar

10. “General Mills of Minneapolis,” p. 118.Google Scholar

11. The Betty Crocker recipe ad series appeared in several magazines: see, for example, Better Homes and Gardens 28 (09 1949–April 1950).Google Scholar For the 1950 Gift Box, see General Mills Horizons, 11 1950, p. 12.Google Scholar

12. For a summary of the company's television sponsorships, see General Mills Horizons, 11 1951, p. 4.Google Scholar Adelaide Hawley went before the cameras for the first time on November 3, 1951.

13. Betty Crocker … 1921–1954 (Minneapolis, Minn.: General Mills [1960?]), pp. 11–12.Google Scholar

14. Dichter, Ernest, The Strategy of Desire (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1960), p. 230.Google Scholar

15. Packard, Vance, The Hidden Persuaders (New York: David McKay, 1957), p. 78Google Scholar; and Dichter, Ernest, Handbook of Consumer Motivations: The Psychology of the World of Objects (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964), pp. 14, 21, 37.Google Scholar

16. Betty Crocker … 1921–1954, p. 13.Google Scholar

17. “The Story of Betty Crocker,” GMA. On the occasion of her next overhaul, in 1965, Betty Crocker lost fifteen years and ten pounds; she came to look like an older Mrs. Kennedy or, perhaps, a younger Mrs. Johnson, with heavily sprayed hair, a suit, and unkitcheny ropes of pearls.

18. Betty Crocker … 1921–1954, p. 14.Google Scholar

19. Spigel, Lynn, “Television in the Family Circle: The Popular Reception of a New Medium,” in Logics of Television: Essays in Cultural Criticism, ed. Mellencamp, Patricia (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), p. 76.Google Scholar

20. Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book (Minneapolis, Minn.: General Mills, 1950), pp. 2–3.Google Scholar The new kitchens were finished in 1946. For ads offering similar products for sale, see, for example, Better Homes and Gardens (28 [02 1950]: 22)Google Scholar for St. Charles Kitchens in assorted colors and (29 [October 1950]: 247) for redesigned Chambers gas ranges, also in color.

21. According to Jane, and Stern, Michael, Square Meals (New York: Knopf, 1984), p. 264Google Scholar, the classic California Dip was created in 1954, when Lipton published a recipe combining its dry onion soup mix with a carton of sour cream. But the idea predates 1954. Californian Helen Evans Brown introduced dipping foods and many other easy-eating recipes to the rest of the nation in the late 1940s; see Fisher, M. F. K., introduction to Helen Brown's Holiday Cook Book (Boston: Little, Brown, 1952), p. xi.Google Scholar

22. Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book, pp. 49, 80.Google ScholarThe Sunset Barbecue Book (1947)Google Scholar was only one of many to suggest (as Helen Brown did) that outdoor dining, buffet style, was the new norm between the Rockies and the Pacific. Douglas, Mary, in Implicit Meanings: Essays in Anthropology (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975), p. 257Google Scholar, suggests that barbecues and cocktail parties act as social bridges between intimacy and distance. They seem to blur the distinction in a particularly suburban way, making “Californian” the dining style of the housing tract.

23. “Short Cuts,” in Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book, pp. 427–28.Google Scholar For Brown ‘n’ Serve rolls, see “A Year of Customer Service,” General Mills Annual Report, 06 1, 1949–May 31, 1950, p. 3.Google Scholar For technical aspects of the process, see Gray, , Business Without Boundaries, pp. 253–54.Google ScholarVitality News, a General Mills newspaper for the commercial baking industry, pushed the invention: see “New Whole Wheat ‘Brown ‘n’ Serve’ Ups Sales by 50%,” Vitality News 17 (08 1950): 1.Google Scholar

24. Smith, Sally Bedell, In All His Glory: The Life of William S. Paley (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), p. 479.Google Scholar

25. Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book, pp. 118–19.Google Scholar

26. General Mills Horizons (11 1951): 2.Google Scholar

27. Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book, pp. 152–53.Google Scholar

28. Fisher, M. F. K., The Art of Eating (Cleveland: World, 1954), pp. 643–44.Google Scholar

29. Wilmot, Jennie S. and Batjer, Margaret Q., Food for the Family: An Elementary College Text, 4th ed. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1955), pp. 368–69.Google Scholar

30. Betty Crocker's Picture Cook Book, pp. 271, 274, 276.Google Scholar

31. Shapiro, Laura, Perfection Salad: Women and Cooking at the Turn of the Century (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1986), pp. 84–91.Google Scholar

32. Cussler, Margaret and DeGive, Mary L., 'Twixt the Cup and the Lip: Psychological and Socio-Cultural Factors Affecting Food Habits (New York: Twayne, 1952), p. 48.Google Scholar

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34. Cannon, Poppy (of Better Homes and GardensGoogle Scholar and NBC's Home show), quoted in Hess, John L. and Hess, Karen, The Taste of America, 3rd ed. (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1989), p. 154.Google Scholar

35. “32 Food Concerns, a Governor Mobilized to Entertain Editors,” Food Field Reporter 21 (10 19, 1953): 1Google Scholar; and Strasser, Susan, Never Done: A History of American Housework (New York: Pantheon, 1982), pp. 276–77.Google Scholar The imagery of containment is obvious in the examples cited: modernity is kept under control when the convenience food is stuffed into a traditional one.

36. For another view of convenience foods of the 1950s, see Levenstein, Harvey A., Revolution at the Table: The Transformation of the American Diet (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 202–3.Google Scholar

37. Ad, American Home 51 (01 1954): 65.Google Scholar

38. I am grateful to Aggie Sirrine of the Society for the Humanities, Cornell University, for teaching me the correct presentations and preparation techniques involved in several of these dishes, including chicken a la king. The research for this essay was undertaken during my tenure as Senior Fellow at the Society in 1991.

39. The cake is so described in a famous Betty Crocker motto; see Betty Crocker's Picture Cookbook, p. 115.Google Scholar

40. Written by Al Hoffman, Bob Merrill, and Clem Wats, the song was introduced in Chicago on the popular “Breakfast Club” radio show in 1950 and spent fifteen weeks on the charts; see Murrells, Joseph, Million Selling Records from the 1900s to the 1980s: An Illustrated Directory (New York: Arco, 1984), p. 62.Google Scholar

41. See “Roses-in-Snow Cake Kit for '50,” Vitality News 16 (03 1950): 1Google Scholar; “It's a Sweetheart,” 16 (01 1950): 1Google Scholar; and ads, for example, in The Baker's Digest 25 (02 1951): 46, and 25 (04 1951): 49.Google Scholar

42. Dichter, , Handbook of Consumer Motivations, p. 37.Google Scholar “Women also indicate that they turn to dessert-making when they are bored,” he added.

43. Goodman, Walter, The Clowns of Commerce (New York: Sagamore, 1957), pp. 20–28Google Scholar, describes such a session, with a framed Betty Crocker ad hung on the wall for inspiration.

44. On freezers, see “Nargus Reports to Retailers,” National Grocers Bulletin 40 (02 1953): 3.Google Scholar See also Packard, , Hidden Persuaders, p. 73.Google Scholar

45. Dichter, Handbook of Consumer Motivations, p. 15)Google Scholar comments on this avoidance.

46. Langmuir, Mary Fisher, Ph.D., “Wife Trouble? Get her a job!” American Magazine 149 (01 1950): 36–37.Google Scholar

47. For Rice, Minute, see “Wonder-quick … and oh, so wonderful!” Ladies' Home Journal 67 (01 1950): 32.Google Scholar For Readi-Whip, see Martin, Sam and Beck, Saul, “Forty Years of Quick Frozen Foods,” Quick Frozen Foods 41, no. 1 (08 1978): 49.Google Scholar For “Dinner-in-a-Shell,” see ad, Better Homes and Gardens 28 (09 1949): 73.Google Scholar For a collection of published recipes for various TV snacks and tabletop meals, see Recipes of Tomorrow by Betty Crocker (Minneapolis, Minn.: General Mills, 1954), esp. pp. 10–11.Google Scholar

48. Gray, , Business Without Boundaries, pp. 251–52.Google Scholar The popularity of the cake was not wasted on General Mills executives, who had already decided that bread would be less of a staple in the postwar period and who concluded that, to make a profit, food-processing concerns had to develop new convenience products.

49. “Betty Crocker Chiffon Cake Makes History,” General Mills Annual Report, 06 1, 1947–May 31, 1948, p. 9.Google Scholar

50. Recipe-ad, Better Homes and Gardens 28 (10 1949): 23.Google Scholar

51. Dichter quoted in Mayer, Martin, Madison Avenue, U.S.A. (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1958), p. 123.Google Scholar Batten, Barton, Durstine & Osborn built the Crocker, Betty “I Guarantee”Google Scholar campaign around Dichter's recommendations.

52. Dichter, , Handbook of Consumer Motivations, p. 28.Google Scholar

53. Dichter, , The Strategy of Desire, pp. 183–84.Google Scholar “Ready-mixes,” he wrote in Advertising Age, “are … correct psychological answers to the conflict between individuality and [the] mass mind”; see Goodman, , Clowns of Commerce, p. 112.Google Scholar

54. “Eat Your Cake and Have It, Too,” Progress Thru Research 4, no. 1 (Fall 1949): 9–11.Google Scholar

55. “Nargus Reports,” National Grocers Bulletin 40, no. 1 (01 1953): 3.Google Scholar Competition increased and sales reached a plateau and finally began to decline as the 1950s wore on. “Old Favorite Food Items Lose Ground to Newer Products, Cleveland Survey Shows,” Advertising Age 25 (01 4, 1954): 20Google Scholar, noted that Pillsbury had pulled ahead in the cake-mix wars, with 26.6% of the market, whereas Betty Crocker (21.6%) and the new Duncan Hines brand (17.5%) trailed behind. In 1957, four in ten households used mixes regularly; see “Convenience Foods Have Scant Impact on Housewife, Ag. Department Study Says,” Advertising Age 28 (02 4, 1957): 46.Google Scholar

56. Packard, , Hidden Persuaders, pp. 62–63.Google Scholar Failure potential rose as the castles of gelatin did, of course.

57. “Recipes: Too Elaborate?” Food Field Reporter 21 (08 24, 1953): 16.Google Scholar

58. See, for example, Container Corporation of America ad, Ice Cream Review 35, no. 3 (10 1951): 137.Google Scholar Red sold products to women and blue to men, according to the received wisdom of the 1950s (the red Marlboro package was the exception).

59. Seldon, Joseph J., The Golden Fleece: Selling the Good Life to Americans (New York: Macmillan, 1963), p. 90.Google Scholar

60. The fugue state that overtook shoppers in the presence of pictorial cake mix boxes is described in Packard, , Hidden Persuaders, p. 108.Google Scholar

61. “Biggest Show on Television Promotes Ice Cream,” Ice Cream Review 35, no. 3 (10 1951): 108, 110.Google Scholar

62. “Nargus Reports,” National Grocers Bulletin 40, no. 3 (03 1953): 3.Google Scholar

63. Untitled column, Progressive Grocer 33, no. 12 (12 1954): 95.Google Scholar For a similar argument, see “The Coming of Color,” Food Field Reporter 22 (01 25, 1954): 36.Google Scholar

64. Culp, Bill, “Swanson's TV Dinner: Behind the Debut of a New Product,” Frosted Food Field 18, no. 2 (02 1954): 78.Google Scholar

65. Ad, Quick Frozen Foods, 13, no. 8 (03 1951): 166Google Scholar; untitled article, Quick Frozen Foods 13, no. 9 (04 1951): 118Google Scholar; and “Frigidinner to Sell in Grocery Stores,” Food Field Reporter 21 (08 10, 1953): 28.Google Scholar

66. “Quaker State Markets Complete Frozen Meals,” Frosted Food Field 16, no. 2 (02 1953): 20Google Scholar; “Restaurant Chain Plans to Sell Frozen Dinners,” Frozen Food Field 16, no. 3 (03 1953): 1, 5Google Scholar; and “Quaker State Pushes Frozen Meals, Sees Big Market,” Frozen Food Field 17, no. 2 (08 1953): 29.Google ScholarMartin, and Beck, (“Forty Years,” pp. 51, 58)Google Scholar believe the first such product was an airline dinner in a circular dish (a “sky plate”) sold briefly in a New Jersey department store in 1946 under the name of Maxson's Strato-meals.

67. “Swanson Claims Packaging ‘First’ For Its TV Dinner's Outer Wrap,” Food Field Reporter 22 (01 11, 1954): 24.Google Scholar

68. Swanson was one of the first food companies to advertise extensively on television and the first to market poultry on a nationwide basis; see ad, Quick Frozen Foods 13, no. 7 (02 1951): 258G.Google Scholar Subsequently, television became the battleground for modern, convenience products, especially frozen foods (Morton frozen pies was a major sponsor of Dave Garroway's Today show in the mid-1950s, for example).

69. Culp, , “Swanson's TV Dinner,” p. 82.Google Scholar

70. For Armour, see ad, Progressive Grocer 33, no. 9 (09 1954): 159.Google Scholar For the TV Dessert, see “Frozen Desserts Coming,” Frozen Food Center 8, no. 2 (02 1954): 12Google Scholar; and “Packaging Notes,” Food [Great Britain] 23 (12 1954): 463–64.Google Scholar For packaged popcorn, see untitled article, Progressive Grocer 33, no. 8 (08 1954): 149, and ad, p. 220.Google Scholar Formerly a concession food, popcorn was a growth industry in the 1950s thanks to home entertainment; see “Nargus Reports,” National Grocers Bulletin 40, no. 5 (05 1953): 3.Google Scholar

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72. For the printing process, see untitled article, Frosted Food Field 16, no. 6 (06 1953): 13.Google Scholar

73. Untitled article, Frosted Food Field 20, no. 2 (02 1955): 3, 8.Google Scholar

74. “Ullman Returned, Shuns Picture Use, Hails the Unusual,” Food Field Reporter 20 (10 5, 1953): 41.Google Scholar

75. “Cake Mix Gallery of Pictures Steals Story From Brand Names, Nash Tells Conclave,” Food Field Reporter 20 (10 5, 1953): 43.Google Scholar

76. See note 55. On cake mix packages, see also Seldon, , Golden Fleece, p. 152.Google Scholar

77. “Betty Crocker Cuts Its Cake Mix Prices,” Food Field Reporter 23 (04 5, 1954): 38Google Scholar; and “Red Spoon Is Selected As Betty Crocker Sign,” Food Field Reporter 23 (05 17, 1954): 31.Google Scholar The spoon was designed by Lippincott and Marguilies of New York City.

78. Untitled article, Advertising Age 28 (03 11, 1957): 21Google Scholar; and “Armour Tests Dial Soap in 5 New Colors in 2 Midwest Cities,” Aduertising Age 28 (04 1, 1957): 1.Google Scholar

79. Weiss, E. B., “Packaged Meals Pose New Problems for Advertisers, Merchandizers,” Advertising Age 25 (01 18, 1954): 66.Google Scholar

80. “Who Started It, Anyway?” Advertising Age 28 (09 2, 1957): 62.Google Scholar