Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America

At the dawn of the 1950s, a woman was expected to be, in the words of Peg Bracken, "business manager, practical nurse, housecleaner, child psychologist, home decorator, chauffeur, laundress, cook, hostess -- all this besides being a gay, well-groomed companion." Something had to give. Big business chose the kitchen and the postwar food industry stood at the ready, promising to minimize a housewife's time at the stove. Hoping to rid themselves of freeze-dried army leftovers and profit from new food technologies, the industry stuck a clumsy hand into American kitchens and tried to take over the cooking. Tasteless "gourmet" horrors -- frozen bouillabaisse and pate de foie gras, dehydrated wine -- failed to convince any woman, no matter how frazzled, for very long. On the other hand, canned peaches, frozen vegetables, frozen orange juice, Spam and other indestructible lunch meats were welcomed and are still popular. No matter how handy some of these ingredients might have been, implicit in the suggestion that instant food was "the housewife's dream" was the debilitating idea that women were, and always had been, mere functionaries in the kitchen, leaving the gourmet arts to male chefs: in other words, cooking was hard, and women were not up to the task.