But instead of wallowing in grief, the 54-year-old widow found meaning in a project-writing a cookbook she titled The Joy of Cooking: A Collection of Reliable Recipes with a Casual Culinary Chat.
Her husband, who'd long suffered from depression, committed suicide.
When the stock market crashed in 1929, Irma's spirit was put to the test. Although never employed, she thought of herself as an "artist of life," a renaissance woman who aspired to live vibrantly and suck the marrow out of every moment. After enjoying a brief tryst with novelist Booth Tarkington, Irma settled down and married an attorney, with whom she raised two children. Louis and the elegant port city of Bremen, Germany. She was born in 1877 to wealthy German immigrants and spent her teenage years shuttling between her hometown of St. Irma Rombauer's young life was uniquely charmed. And while the lemonade concoctions and tuna casserole recipes were delicious, the real secret of the cookbook's success isn't that it soothed stomachs it's that it catered to hearts and minds. More than 18 million copies have sold since the Great Depression-when a Midwestern widow named Irma Rombauer published her recipes and anecdotes in the hope of lifting America's spirits.
The ubiquity of the Joy of Cooking is staggering. If you really want to put your finger on the pulse of American culture, just flip through an edition of the Joy of Cooking. Forget magazine clippings and newspaper headlines.
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