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Joy of Cooking: 1930s cookbook has brought decades of culinary staples

By KERRY MCCRAY, The Modesto Bee

MODESTO -- After a career as a dancer, you'd think Jane Fenton's prize possession would be a memory of the stage -- pointe shoes from her days in the corps de ballet at Radio City Music Hall, perhaps, or a program from her stint in the Broadway musical "Oklahoma!" But the thing the Modesto woman treasures most isn't dramatic at all. It's an old, battered cookbook, held together with rubber bands, that has been a fixture in her life since before she could plie.

Fenton, 81, has what looks to be an original "The Joy of Cooking." And, like every good performer, she has a story to go with it.

Growing up in St. Louis, Fenton lived with her mother and her grandparents. Her grandfather conducted the St. Louis Symphony. Her grandmother had a reputation as a fine cook, a skill she picked up from older, well-to-do ladies in the city's German community when she was first married.

Her specialty? Baked goods. "For breakfast, I'd wake up and there were caramel rolls or crumb coffee cake," Fenton said. "When I came home from school, there'd be homemade cookies or doughnuts." One of young Jane's earliest memories is of holding her grandmother's hand, walking down the street to a dark and dreary apartment building. There, her grandmother and the woman who lived there would pore over recipes while she played on the floor.

The woman? Fenton believes it had to be Irma Rombauer, the author of "The Joy of Cooking." The timing is right. Fenton was a toddler at the time, so the gatherings likely took place in the late 1920s. Rombauer self-published her book on a shoestring budget in St. Louis in 1931.

Irma S. Rombauer

Fenton's grandmother was renowned for her abilities in the kitchen. It makes sense, Fenton said, that a cookbook author would consult her grandmother before a book went to press. The association could explain the presence of "The Joy of Cooking" in Fenton's life. Believed to be one of 3,000 first editions, the blue-covered volume was in her family when, at age 17, she asked to go to New York to audition for dance roles.

Her mother came along, and so did the book. Fenton landed the gig at Radio City Music Hall, then went on to play the Girl who Falls Down in a five-year run of "Oklahoma!" Her mother made sure she had a hot meal after the show.

"Mother always had the cookbook with us," Fenton said. "When we went on tour, we would rent a little apartment. She took care of my food." Fenton finished high school by correspondence and went on to act and dance in more productions. She married, divorced, then married again. As a young mother, she lived in Los Angeles and acted in television commercials.

By this time, the cookbook had been passed on to her. She wowed her husband's Jewish family with dishes like sauerbraten (beef shoulder steeped in vinegar and spices for a week, then cooked) and tiny dumplings (made with cracker meal to ensure their lightness).

"My grandmother always told me, 'Never make anything bigger than this,'" she said, making a circle with her thumb and forefinger. "She'd say, 'That's fine cooking.'" Fenton and her husband, Bob, moved to Modesto when the couple bought radio station KFIV. She still uses "The Joy of Cooking," but prefers the book's lighter recipes.

Like peach ice cream. She uses her food processor to combine the peaches and cream -- something Rombauer could never have imagined. Another thing that would surprise Rombauer, who died in 1962: Pristine first-editions of her book are worth up to $5,000, according to Maggie Green, who writes a blog on "The Joy of Cooking" Web site, www.thejoykitchen.com. Green wrote about Fenton in her blog.

Fenton's copy of the book is well-loved -- the cover is falling off. Pages are stained with drippings from long-ago meals. "I'd be lucky to get 5 cents," she said. "But I wouldn't trade it in for anything."