Karen Hess (1918–2007) was an American culinary historian who brought a scholarly rigor to the field and helped to define it. Born Karen Victoria Sørenson Loft in the Danish community of Blair, Nebraska, she learned to cook as a child. She was proud of her Scandinavian roots; her name is pronounced CAR-inn. While attending colleges in California, she cooked for her board, maintaining a passion for the craft and the history of cooking. She met her husband, John L. Hess, when he was a reporter in Salt Lake City. They had three children before moving to New York, where he joined the staff of The New York Times as a clerk in 1954.
