Contrary to later opinion, January of 1941—the tail end of the Great Depression, the eve of America's entry into World War II—was a fine moment to launch a magazine that celebrated civilized and even luxurious dining. Hardship (and later the war) fostered a taste for images of a happier past and perhaps a happier future. Besides, magazines were still part of the cultural cement of the nation. The time was ripe for what gourmet represented in its inaugural year: not a food magazine as such, but something more like a general-interest magazine with an emphatic take on one of life's great pleasures.
The idea for the magazine had been conceived in the mind of Earle R. MacAusland, a 50-year-old magazine-publishing veteran. In the late '30s, MacAusland began transforming his vision into reality by approaching Samuel Chamberlain, a Boston-area artist reputed to be a "fin bec" (epicure) with a deep love of France, and asked whether he would like to edit a new magazine on gastronomy. Chamberlain agreed to come on board, though not on staff at first. He would prove to be MacAusland's greatest asset: an accomplished drypoint engraver who could also sketch, photograph, and write. MacAusland's other key collaborator was Louis Pullig De Gouy, a professional chef of long experience who had his own cooking school in New York and had written some much-admired cookbooks.
In December of 1940, these three (with initial editor Pearl Metzelthin) unveiled the magazine's first issue. A 48-page affair with a cover illustration of a massive roast boar's head, it contained, among other articles, a copiously illustrated piece by Chamberlain on the foods and wines of Burgundy and an editorial declaring that the word Gourmet was "a synonym for the honest seeker of the summum bonum of living."
In the first blush of the magazine's youth, MacAusland (known as Mr. Mac to his staff for the 40 years he ruled the magazine) put together elements sometimes only tangentially related to food. Early issues offered hunting and fishing tales; salty travel and adventure writing; light verse; the occasional black-and-white photograph; know-your-onions culinary quizzes; cartoons; theater reviews; information on products, equipment, or stylish accessories; and food-related advice that was usually more concerned with the love of the thing than the technicalities of cooking. It was a wonderfully eclectic combination of ingredients, and MacAusland was rewarded with a remarkable wartime esprit de corps among the embryonic community of Gourmet readers.
Yet today, looking back at the lively pages of the first issues can trigger considerable culture shock. Lurking behind many of the stories was a mentality that suggests an American idea of a prewar London gentlemen's club. Attitudes toward non-European cuisines and peoples veered sharply between enlightened curiosity and coarse derision, while black Americans generally showed up as semicomic stock figures in stories of the Old South. The actual writing was done in a more or less made-up style full of tortured word order and stilted flourishes. But it must have provided a bond for editors and readers, in much the manner of kids' secret-society codes.
Early recipes present another admixture of the familiar and the jarring. What MacAusland was after was chiefly a blend of American—especially New England—culinary patriotism (he wasn't terribly interested in the Far West) and reverent coverage of all things French. Seldom did any Asian dish more exotic than egg foo yung or chicken chow mein appear, and it is clear that Mexico and the rest of Latin America were terra incognita to the editors, although knowledgeable writers did turn up from time to time.
In those days, serious cooks took "fine cooking" to mean almost exclusively "French cooking." It was an era of unlimited enthusiasm for savory mousses and creamy sauces, with plenty of variety meats, from brains to tongue to kidneys, and an enormous amount of space devoted to fancifully named cocktails. Pasta, on the other hand, was mostly represented by macaroni, and the turtle soup course generally came from a can. Some of the dishes the magazine proudly presented in those first years are beyond resurrection for 21st-century palates. Others are as solid, unphony, and attractive as they must have been in the early '40s: a German-style herring and beet salad in the inaugural issue; a rousing chili con carne from a 1942 paean to cowboy grub; or creamed mushrooms and ham on toast (see page 106) from a 1945 story about Katish, a Russian cook.
In addition to recipes, a general lineup of other contents soon fell into place. Regular features included a Henry Stahlhut gouache cover painting; Clementine Paddleford's Food Flashes, touting innumerable products from grass juice to wartime substitutes for whipped cream; chef profiles with accompanying menus; and wine and spirits coverage by a shifting roster of columnists (Frank Schoonmaker being the most eminent). A column called The Last Touch usually concerned itself with sauces and garnishes; Gastronomie Sans Argent, despite the name, showcased motley assortments of dishes with little regard to affordability. Truffles and Trifles was an amiable mishmash of anecdotes and light verse conducted by Gates Hebbard. You Asked for It, a column of recipes requested by readers and vetted by the Gourmet staff, started in 1944.
The two liveliest features of those early days couldn't have been more different. One began in 1942 as After Dinner, a theater column by the critic George Jean Nathan. But shortly thereafter it fell to the professional exquisite and wit Lucius Beebe, surely the magazine's best prose stylist of that era. After Dinner soon morphed into Along the Boulevards, a wide-ranging vehicle for Beebe's views—proffered with imperturbable crispness and ineffable hauteur—on Broadway, men's fashions, Gotham glitterati doings, and the rise of the rabble as represented, along with the twilight of civilization, by the posterity of the New Deal.
Pinterest
