Rombauer, Irma

Irma von Starkloff Rombauer (1877–1962), a leading twentieth-century American cookbook author, was born in St. Louis, Missouri, during the city’s nineteenth-century economic and cultural heyday. Rombauer belonged to prominent German American social circles and until middle age had only the knowledge of food to be expected of a sophisticated, well-traveled hostess and clubwoman. When she was widowed in 1930, she decided to support herself by writing a cookbook. The Joy of Cooking, published at her own expense in 1931, was initially a modest, fairly conventional recipe collection with assorted contributions from family and friends, but she shortly began planning an expanded version.