Crockery Cookery

Mable Hoffman (1922-2010) was a food stylist and home economist. In the early 1970s, she received a gift of the newly invented electric slow-cooker. Unsure of what to do with it, she decided to write a cookbook. Hoffman’s test kitchen amounted to 20 slow cookers lined up in her Solana Beach home. The resulting “Crockery Cookery” (1975) was an instant bestseller. It was “the right book” at “the right moment,” the New York Times declared in 1976, adding that 20 million Americans who had bought slow cookers “were eager for tips.” The initial infatuation with such slow-cooker recipes as her simple “Round Steak with Rich Gravy” or “Mission Chicken” (with grapes and topped with slivered almonds) would wax and wane. Yet the shift in American culture that first helped popularize the gadget — the rise of the working woman — also secured its future on kitchen countertops. A prolific and award-winning cookbook writer, Hoffman published 18 cookbooks over 25 years, working with her husband, Gar, and daughter Jan. Only a third were dedicated to the slow cooker, and two books emphasized speed — “Cookies in Minutes” (1993) and “Pasta in Minutes” (1994).