Irma S. Rombauer

Irma Starkloff Rombauer (30 October 1877 – 14 October 1962) was a German-American author of The Joy of Cooking. It is one of the world's most-published cookbooks, having been in print continuously since 1936. She graduated from the all-girls preparatory school Mary Institute in 1901 and later attended Washington University in St. Louis. Rombauer privately published The Joy of Cooking in 1931 in St. Louis, Missouri. It was illustrated by her daughter Marion Rombauer Becker, also a graduate of Mary Institute (1931) and at the time an art teacher at local private school John Burroughs School. The Rombauers self-published early editions of the book; it was picked up by a commercial printing house, the Bobbs-Merrill Company, in 1936. In...