Our very own kitchen queen

Old Mother Hubbard

Went to the cupboard

To get up a classy spread;

And what she found there

Made a menu quite rare –

“It’s Dorothy Dean’s,” she said. –

The Spokesman-Review,

June 4, 1939

Homemaker extraordinaire Dorothy Dean was introduced to the Inland Northwest 70 years ago this week. Though she would go on to become as “real” as Betty Crocker, Dorothy Dean was simply a pseudonym used to identify The Spokesman-Review’s new Home Economics Department.

Though the newspaper closed the department more than two decades ago and ended the monthly subscription service that sent recipe leaflets out to thousands, Dorothy Dean is still delivering. Many of the thousands of recipes created in the kitchen reign among local families’ favorites. And people still call or write to the newspaper asking for Dorothy Dean recipes to be pulled from the archives.

Dorothy Dean – represented by seven women and dozens of assistants over her 45-year career – became a trusted friend to many.

“I think they thought it was a live person,” said Margaret Heimbigner, the last of the seven women to lead the Home Economics Department. “I go to meetings now and they still introduce me as Dorothy Dean.”

According to a newspaper article published in 1973, the same year Dorothy Dean became a registered trademark, “The name was chosen because it was fairly simple and easy to remember.”

Similar to Betty Crocker, whose fictitious life started 14 years before Dorothy Dean’s and was kept secret for decades, each Dorothy Dean had a staff of home economists who helped her create and test recipes and answer phone calls from homemakers.

People knew to just “ask Dorothy Dean,” said Rayleen Merman Beaton, who served as Dorothy Dean from 1957 to 1967.

Heimbigner added: “Before Thanksgiving Day we probably had 500 to 600 calls. We had three lines coming in. We never planned anything else for those days.”

Until the 1950s, Dorothy Dean and her staff held weekly matinees, food demonstrations and style shows. According to a Spokesman-Review article dated June 4, 1939, some 23,000 women visited the Dorothy Dean staff in 1938, and the staff fielded more than 8,000 telephone calls.

But the Dorothy Dean legacy is ingrained in the monthly recipe subscription service. (The same article from 1939 reported that more than 48,000 leaflets were distributed in 1938.)

“It was a unique thing,” said Marvel Carlson, whose mother-in-law, Karin Carlson, worked in the Dorothy Dean department on and off for several years. “You would get three pages of recipes every month for 11 months. Then the 12th month would be an index to all of the recipes.

“It was like getting a brand new cookbook every year.”

Each year’s recipe collection was identified by a letter of the alphabet, with each month receiving a number. When the service reached Z, it started over resulting in nearly two complete sets of the alphabet. Each double-sided leaflet page typically featured between eight and 10 recipes. The leaflets were three-hole punched and kept in green binders.

Leaflets often followed themes tied to holidays or seasonal foods. Some included menus for special occasions. The recipes were simple and short. “It was certainly a beginner’s cookbook,” Heimbigner said.

Beaton added: “People knew when it was a Dorothy Dean recipe they could trust it.”

Many of the recipes came from the home economists who pulled ideas from their own heritage, such as Karin Carlson, who as a Swedish immigrant provided many of the popular recipes bearing her name, including Karin’s Orange Rolls and Karin’s Spritz Cookies. Others were created in the Dorothy Dean test kitchen using new products being promoted by food companies. Still others came from the many contests Dorothy Dean sponsored, seeking favorite recipes from readers.

“Every recipe we ever published in my term was tested in the department,” said Heimbigner. “They were good recipes. We had very few failures.”

Indeed, area residents gush with praise for Dorothy Dean recipes, often describing them as “tried and true.”

“The recipes came out just the way they were supposed to,” Carlson said, adding that she has 26 years of Dorothy Dean leaflets. “Very seldom does it repeat itself,” she said. “I come across different stuff all the time.

“I have recipe books like you can’t believe, and I subscribe to Bon Appetit and Cooking Light and I go back to (Dorothy Dean) so many times.”

Even Beaton still uses her Dorothy Dean recipes, but admits she’s adapted some of them. “Shoot, when I was Dorothy Dean we didn’t have a microwave.”

Some of the recipes were published in Dorothy Dean newspaper columns that continued to run for several years after the department closed in 1983. The service was discontinued because it became too expensive and there were concerns that it was becoming outdated, said Shaun O’L. Higgins, The Spokesman-Review’s director of sales and marketing. “At the time of Dorothy Dean, people called in with questions. We served the world the Internet now serves. There was no way for people to get that information themselves.”

Higgins said although newspaper executives continue to discuss the idea of choosing the best Dorothy Dean recipes and updating them for a new audience, it hasn’t been done.

But Dorothy Dean favorites have continued to circulate among friends and family. A few have even made the leap to the Internet, popping up on recipe-exchange sites. Many Dorothy Dean recipes still appear in the IN Food section in the Cook’s Notebook column and in other stories.

Copies of the recipes have been handed down through families. Even Heimbigner’s children use Dorothy Dean recipes. “My daughter calls once or twice a week if she can’t find something for dinner.” And Heimbigner’s sisters have copies, too. “I’m big fans of theirs, also,” she said, chuckling.

What makes Dorothy Dean stand out?

“Every cookbook has a baking powder biscuit recipe,” Heimbigner said. “Every one isn’t going to have Karin’s Orange Rolls or Mom’s Meatloaf.”

Beaton credits much of Dorothy Dean’s success to all of the women who worked in the department over the years. “We really had a lot of fun in the Dorothy Dean department.”

Almost every day provided a good laugh, like the time a woman called for advice on cooking a wild rabbit. The staff told her to soak it in salt water overnight. The woman called the next day to report that despite bathing the rabbit in salt water all night the fur was still on, Beaton recalled.

“You had to have a good sense of humor to be Dorothy Dean,” she said.