9. Martha Stewart: Raised in a garden-to-table household, the Omnimedia empress is rarely credited for preaching do-it-yourself organic gardening and locavorism long before chickens were laying eggs in Brooklyn. Her DIY craftiness is a throwback to the homestead or Great Depression days, and while she may have seemed a bit anachronistic when she first appeared on TV in the 1980s, her philosophy is right in line with today’s eco-friendly, sustainability, cloth-diaper adherents. In many ways, too, she is the direct descendant of Dione Lucas—a bit remote from her peers at first but over time clearly proving that she’s tapping into the Zeitgeist.
10. Sara Moulton: We don’t have to travel back all that far to find a groundbreaker who is still going strong on TV today. Sara Moulton pioneered the cookalong before Gordon Ramsay had his salty-tongued way with it. Her real-time Cooking Live premiered on the Food Network in 1996. Moulton also introduced the use of a kitchen-counter “garbage bowl,” now attributed to—and commercialized by—Rachael Ray. What goes around comes around, though. Will we remember who coined “EVOO” in 20 years?
Kathleen Collins is the author of Watching What We Eat: The Evolution of Television Cooking Shows.
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