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.
The most entertaining of the regular departments was the Sugar and Spice letters column. The readers were passionately eager to begin a dialogue with Gourmet and each other. Almost immediately, they were volunteering some memory triggered by an article on Timbuktu or a thought on the proper brewing of tea. Even the very infrequent brickbats were turned to good account: A 1948 letter surmising that anyone capable of such "inane preciousness" and "asininity" as the Gourmet staff must live entirely on coconut creams was answered deadpan, with a detailed recipe for same.
One of MacAusland's canniest emphases during the salad days was on serialized narratives. At least one (sometimes two) would usually be unfolding at any given moment. The first and most beloved was written by Samuel Chamberlain, under the pseudonym "Phineas Beck," before he went off to war. From the magazine's second 1941 issue until October 1942, readers flocked to the story of the semifictitious Clémentine (based on two cooks that the Chamberlains had in France).
Aside from Clémentine, the hardiest perennials among the serials were the many tales by the screenwriter and all-round wordsmith Stephen Longstreet, who wrote and illustrated a slew of breezy yarns about lovable relatives and star-crossed global treks, and by the Pulitzer Prizewinning poet Robert P. Tristram Coffin, who gained a devoted following for stories—and occasionally poems—about the rhythm of the Maine seasons as lived by his hardy hunting and fishing clan.
De Gouy died in 1947, and the magazine acquired a new in-house chef: Louis Diat of The Ritz-Carlton, at that time probably the most famous French chef working in America. Samuel Chamberlain's return from the war opened the way for one great project: an ambitious region-by-region survey of French gastronomy (An Epicurean Tour of the French Provinces), which would run from 1949 to 1951.
Meanwhile, during the late '40s, the magazine began paying more careful attention to non-French cuisines. You could find systematic treatments of subjects like Italian pasta and pasta sauces, or the nuances of different curries. Recipes started to show up for Greek egg-lemon soup, Indian chapatis, and a few more Chinese dishes. Charles H. Baker Jr.'s series, South American Gentleman's Companion, opened windows on the food (and exotic cocktails) of many Latin American regions, and the magazine published Idwal Jones's many stories of the Gold Rush era.
By the close of the '40s, Gourmet spelled glamour for an eager and loyal readership. As war and the Depression faded into memory, and an era of apparently ever-increasing national affluence unfolded, the magazine was poised for several important leaps forward.
Sound Bites
The Down East breakfast is concocted under the sign of the frying pan. Hot fat is at its heart. It begins with a seething and bubbling of pork fat in the skillet or spider. Fat salt pork in chunks, not lean and feminine bacon rashers, is its base.—Robert P. Tristram Coffin, "Down East Breakfast," January 1949
But since the average so-called Mexican restaurant in the States would make any Mexican used to the real cooking of his homeland either commit suicide or murder the cook, you will find these foods a very different thing at home.—George W. Seaton, "Chili Con Sodium Bicarb," July 1941
Gloria Vanderbilt sat opposite me; General Pershing's son to my left; Charles Boyer at my right. The famous star paid little attention to the curious females who ogled him, and much attention to his food.—Iles Brody, "Spécialités de la Maison," November 1941
You would be surprised to know the number of women who smoke cigars. These are not always the little all-tobacco cigarros, but full-bodied weeds in many cases.—Isaac F. Marcosson, "Cigars and The Man," October 1941
A Martini, as God intended, is of course three parts dry gin and one part French vermouth, and anything drier than that is just a glass of iced gin.—Lucius Beebe, "Along the Boulevards," October 1948
The only thing we want for Christmas this year is a boar's head. We want it prepared in the old English way—first pickled, then roasted, and served on a solid gold platter, its tusks gilded, a roast apple in its mouth, and the whole decked with sprigs of rosemary and bay.—Gates Hebbard, "Truffles and Trifles," December 1941
From poet to gourmet is such a small step.—(author unknown), "An Eye on the Potato," May 1944
Between Pearl Harbor and V-J Day, deluxe existence became, along with taxicabs, T-bone steaks, whitewall tires, and desirable travel accommodations, in great requisition, but never entirely disappeared. The torch which set the cherries Jubilee in flames was never wholly extinguished.—Lucius Beebe, "Along the Boulevards," December 1945
The man who first put a grain of salt on a lettuce leaf and then dipped it in a mixture of wine vinegar and olive oil was one of the few true benefactors of mankind.—Ernest Lorsy, "Escoffier," January 1944