Радость готовки: История американской кулинарной книги.

the cookbook
Book by Irma S. Rombauer

Joy of Cooking, often known as "The Joy of Cooking", is one of the United States' most published cookbooks. It has been in print continuously since 1936 and has sold more than 20 million copies. It was published privately during 1931 by Irma S. Rombauer (1877–1962), a homemaker in St. Louis, Missouri, after her husband's suicide the previous year. Rombauer had 3,000 copies printed by A. C. Clayton, a company which had printed labels for fancy St. Louis shoe companies and for Listerine mouthwash, but never a book. Beginning in 1936, the book was published by a commercial printing house, the Bobbs Merrill Company. With nine editions, Joy of Cooking is considered the most popular American cookbook. encouraged her to compile her recipes and thoughts on cooking to help her cope with her loss. Rombauer spent much of the summer of 1930 in Michigan, creating the first drafts that would later become Joy of Cooking. With the help of her late husband's secretary, Mazie Whyte, Rombauer began writing and editing recipes and commentaries while searching for more recipes in St. Louis. During the autumn of 1930, Rombauer went to the A. C. Clayton Printing Company, a printer for the St. Louis shoe manufacturers. She paid them $3,000 to print 3,000 copies of The Joy of Cooking: A Compilation of Reliable Recipes with a Casual Culinary Chat in November 1931.

In 1931 Rombauer self published The Joy of Cooking: A Compilation of Reliable Recipes with a Casual Culinary Chat with more than 500 tested recipes and related commentaries. The book was illustrated by Rombauer's daughter, Marion Rombauer Becker, who directed the art department at John Burroughs School. Working weekends during the winter of 1930–31, Marion designed the cover, which depicted Saint Martha of Bethany, the patron saint of cooking, slaying a dragon. She also produced silhouette cutouts to illustrate chapter headings. By 1932, a majority of the 3,000 copies printed by A. C. Clayton were sold. The company had limited experience with publishing cookbooks, and Irma Rombauer, similarly inexperienced in dealing with publishers, performed the negotiations herself without an agent or lawyer. The resulting contract, in which Bobbs Merrill was granted the copyright not only for the 1936 edition but also for the original 1931 version, resulted in many years of conflict between the author and the publisher. The 1936 edition differed from other commercial cookbooks of the era by its retention of the author's folksy comments and anecdotes, and its layout of the recipes. These innovations, along with an aggressive marketing effort by Bobbs Merrill, resulted in good sales. By the end of 1942, the second edition had had six printings, and 52,151 copies had been sold. Sales of this edition were phenomenal: from 1943 through 1946 a total of 617,782 copies were sold, surpassing sales of Joy of Cooking's principal competitor, Fannie Farmer's Boston Cooking School Cook Book. This edition was also published in paperback format (most notably, a two volume mass market paperback edition); it is still widely available in used bookstores. The 1962 edition was also released as a single volume comb ring bound paperback mass market edition starting in November 1973 and continuing into the early 1990s.

The 1975 edition was the last to be edited by Becker and remains the most popular, with more than 6 million copies sold.