Spoonbread + a Q&A with Milk Street’s Chris Kimball - No. 387

I WALKED INTO A CREATIVE writing class last Thursday, something I’ve been taking for the last two years, and on the table were back issues of Cook’s Illustrated magazine.

I knew those covers. Anyone who lived and cooked in 1980 recognizes the iconic covers with still-life food paintings so beautiful they could be framed or at least collected for future reading. Indeed, back issues are sold today on eBay.

And on the pages inside, Cook’s had equally serious recipes that appealed to both beginners who needed hand-holding and more seasoned cooks who reveled in details. I’m guessing every family has at least one cooking nerd who has subscribed to Cook’s.

In the early ‘80s I studied spoonbread in great detail for a Cook’s magazine assignment, perfecting a basic recipe and then going off in different directions to see if the recipe would allow a handful of cheese, shaved fresh corn, shredded zucchini, or chopped ham to be incorporated. (The answers are yes, yes, yes, and yes.)

But those old magazines weren’t at my class to help me venture down memory lane. One of my fellow writers is Nashville artist Elizabeth Brandon who painted Cook’s covers from 1999 to 2007, and she had brought them to share. Elizabeth said she submitted a watercolor or oil sketch to art editor Amy Klee for approval and then created the oil. “She made some crops to fit the vertical format of the magazine image when needed,” Elizabeth added. “We always did a red cover for December which is what Chris wanted.”

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Chris is Christopher Kimball, the bow-tied founder of Cook’s, who at 28 was enough of an entrepreneur to know that if he was interested in the how-to of cooking—not just recipes—other people might be, too. He had worked with a small publisher in New York and presented marketing seminars before founding a food magazine combined with direct mail catalog in 1980 in the basement of his Weston, Connecticut home.