The Kitchen Department

In U.S. dailies, few staffers exert more direct influence on readers than the food editor; only the front page and the comics have a bigger readership. Last week 133 of these influential newshens (130) and newsmen (three) gathered at Chicago's Drake Hotel for their tenth annual meeting, where they ate their way through as many as nine meals and snacks a day, dutifully reported on them for their papers. No one was more conscious of their influence than the 31 U.S. food companies who set the tables for them, filled them with food, and garnished the meals with compliments. "It is you who took the lumps out of oatmeal," glowed Wilson & Company Inc.'s President James D. Cooney, "and showed the housewife there can be something to a meal besides broiled meat and fried potatoes. You have been responsible for making eating an adventure." Food Columnist Eleanor Richey Johnston of the Christian Science Monitor knew the compliment was deserved. "It's quite clear," said she, "that a great number of women use us as bibles."

Food Aflame. The food columnist would also rightly take much of the credit for the revolution in the American kitchen--the use of more herbs and spices, cheeses for dessert, "bowling" salads in open view of the guests, barbecuing almost everything. The New York Herald Tribune's Clementine Paddleford. whose Sunday This Week column appears all over the U.S., reported that housewives in her home territory, Manhattan, Kans., are turning to gourmet dishes barely a step behind amateur cooks in her adopted town. "Everybody wants to do flame cooking," said she. "And in Chicago, they want the flame three feet high. I always look for a fire escape."

Other food trends noted by Columnist Paddleford: the elimination of an appetizer at dinner parties ("It's no disgrace at all to serve dinner without a first course"); filling guests awaiting dinner with cold soup from a cocktail shaker; casserole dishes that "don't spoil if the crowd gets a little high."

Out of This World. Wartime travel, the food editors agreed, whetted men's palates for new tastes, brought demands for dishes grandma never dreamed of. "When they telephone us," said the Dallas Times-Herald's Dorothy Sinz, "they ask for specifics. Grandma's recipes aren't any good any more--nor, for that matter, was grandma's food ever very good." Recipes submitted by readers are also better and more precise, "no longer [say just] a 'pinch' of this and a 'dash' of that." Some papers provide their editors with elaborate test kitchens, but most food writers try their recipes at home, must be ready to answer the phone at all hours to rescue a distraught hostess trapped in mid-souffle. Says Louisville Courier-Journal's Cissy Gregg: "They call me sometimes at 2 or 3 a.m. and say 'Look, I'm making such and such and this is where I am. Now what's next?' "

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.