How to Plan the Perfect Dinner Party : Gaynor & Dorothy Maddox, American Food Journalism and the 1960s

Abstract

Gaynor and Dorothy Maddox were a couple who wrote about food for newspapers and magazines in the 1950s and 1960s. They explored topics of interest to home cooks – from diets (then called reducing) to food trends. They covered meatloaf, ice cream and pizza in their separate columns. They attended some of the annual food editor meetings, as well as judged several of the cooking competitions. They documented Americans’ changing meals and gave important advice to new cooks. They were one of the only couples in food journalism at the time and were very well known to their readers – including a record album about creating a perfect dinner party. Their stories, however, have been largely left out of food journalism history. This paper is a documentation of their careers and their impact on American cooks. Materials come from cookbooks, magazines and newspaper clips.

Presenters

Kimberly Voss
Professor, Journalism, University of Central Florida, Florida, United States

Details

Presentation Type

Poster Session

Theme

Food, Politics, and Cultures

KEYWORDS

Food History, Food Journalism, Home Cooks