Helen Evans Brown (1904–1964) was an internationally known food expert and a prolific author not only of magazine articles, some as contributing editor to Sunset Magazine, but also of cookbooks. Helen Brown’s most stunning literary achievement was the classic book on Pacific coast food, West Coast Cook Book (1952). West Coast Cook Book documented and collected the best recipes of the Pacific states and employed tools not widely used in food writing at that time: historical detail, bibliographic reference, and social commentary. The book awakened Americans to the rich bounty of the Pacific coast and bridged the gap between the earlier chatty, nonscholarly voice in such American cookery books as Joy of Cooking (1931) and the later, more authoritative voice heard in books like James Beard’s American Cookery (1972).
