Salesman, Connosieur, Entrepreneur, Author, Critic, Philanthropist, Culinary Personna Extroadinaire! He did not, however, invent the cake mixes that bear his name. He and his wife were not professional cooks, but they did try out many of the recipes they were given. What was Duncan Hines favorite food and did he look like?
"Two or three times a week during the tourist season, travelers pull up in front of a neat, Colonial house on the edge of [Bowling Green, Kentucky] and inquire. 'How soon will dinner be ready?' They're attracted by a sign on the lawn: 'Home Office, Duncan Hines.' Mr. Hines who has built a nationwide reputation by telling people where to dine, doesn't serve any meals at his combination office and home here. But he concedes it is flattering that people think of him when they are hungry. 'Every day in this country, more than 70 million people eat out,' he explains. Helping them decide which restaurants to choose is the foundation for a prospering enterprise that first started in 1936. In that year, Mr. Hines compiled his first directory of recommended restaurants throughout the U.S., 'Adventures in Good Eating.' Since then the book has become a sort of Baedeker of American Cuisine. Through the years Mr. Hines has added three other guides--'Lodging for a Night," "Adventures in Good Cooking," and 'Vacation Guide.'...Much of his time is spent in updating the guides to eliminate establishments that have fallen below his standards. He adds new discoveries when he runs across them. To help him keep track of the 2,500 eateries...on his recommended list, he enlists a corps of 600 friends scattered across the country. When a place changes hands, they report whether it still qualifies for a Hines approval. So far, Mr. Hines hasn't found any eating place in his native Bowling Green that he can recommend. He hasn't endeared himself to fellow Kentuckians by his comment that much of the locality is cursed with 'greese cooking.'...A public eating place, to get on the Hines list, must pass a rigorous inspection. He admires well-polished silver and white table cloths in the dining room. Often he insists on visitng the kitchen to inspect garbage disposal and dishwashing. Mr. Hines got to know the good and bad of roadside hashing when he was a salesman of printing and advertising for Rogers & Co., of Chicago. Friends began asking him for recommendations. Mr. Hines mailed out a printed list of his favorites as a gift before he realized the project might have commercial possibilities. Books are only a part of the present-day enterprise. Perhaps the biggest moneymaker is a line of 150 foods which bear his name. Hines-Park Food, Inc., of Ithaca, N.Y., packages the victuals. Mr. Hines receives a royalty on each package sold. He's looking for sales of around 24 million packages of Duncan Hines cake mix this year and will collect one-half cent royalty on each. Under a separate agreement, some 94 firms make Duncan Hines ice cream. Mr. Hines maintains a testing laboratory at Bowling Green to keep it up to specification...The money from all his books goes into the Duncan Hines Foundation which provides scholarships for seniors taking courses in restaurant and hotel management at Cornell University and Michigan State College. The National Sanitation Foundation also shares in book profits."
---"Duncan Hines' Love of Good Food Becomes Publishing, Cake Mix, Ice Cream Business," James Garst, Wall Street Journal, November 5, 1952 (p. 7)
[NOTES: (1)"Baedeker" was a popular hotel/travel rating guide. (2) FoodTimeline library owns a copy of Adventures in Good Cooking.]
In Mr. Hines' own words:
"My interest in Wayside inns is not the expression of a gourmand's appetite for fine foods but the result of a recreational impulse to do something 'different,' to play a new game that would intrigue my wife and give me her companionship in my hours of relaxation from a strenuous and exacting business. Upon purchasing our first car, we decided to see as much of America as possible, to test its outstanding food, to met interesting people along the way and bring home with us from each trip a lot of pleasant memories that we could keep stored away in our minds to feast on in later years. The idea appealed to Mrs. Hines for she apparently liked to 'go places' with her husband better than anything else...My first discovery was that the highways were crowded with gasoline pilgrims whose main interest seemed to be the relative merits of inns. They fairly oozed informatino about the places we ought not to miss. Of course, I took careful notes on this information--that being a part of the game we were playing for our own amusement. Most of these tourists produced private lists of 'best places' and nearly all of them remarked that there ought to be a reliable directory of the most desirable inns available to discriminating motorist. This idea intrigued me. After years of travel over the highways I found I had the names of several hundred inns, scattered over the country, the desirablility of which was enthusiastically vouched for by those who had patronized them. So we set out to visit as many as possible to check up on reports given us, for you know there is not accounting for tastes in food any more than there is in clothing, printing or marriage."
---Adventures in Good Eating, A Duncan Hines Book [Adventures in Good Eating Inc.:Bowling Green KY] 1939 (p. vii)
Did Duncan Hines and his wife also cook?
Yes! Several of their recipes appear in Adventures in Good Cooking and the Art of Carving in the Home: Tested Recipes of Unusual Dishes from America's Favorite Eating Places. Sample here:
Fudge Squares
Ingredients
1/2 cup butter
2 oz. bitter chocolate
or
1/3 cup cocoa plus
1 tablespoon butter...Melt Butter and chocolate
1/2 cup cake flour
1 1/4 cups sugar
1/8 teaspoon salt...Sift twice and add to above
3 eggs--beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla
3/4 cup chopped nuts (walnuts or pecans)...Stir into mixture and bake in 350 F. to 375 F. oven for 25 minutes.
---Duncan Hines, Bowling Green Kentucky, Adventures in Good Cooking and the Art of Carving in the Home, Duncan Hines, recipes from the original 1933 edition edited by Louis Hatchett [Mercer University Press:Macon, GA] 2002 (un-paginated).
What was Duncan Hines' favorite food?
"What is my favorite food? Well I think that my day-in, day-out favorite is ice cream which I sometimes enjoy for breakfast as well as lunch and dinner. There are times, of course, when I much prefer other good things to eat, but over the long run, ice cream remains my all-time preference."
---Duncan Hines' Food Odyssey, Duncan Hines [Thomas Y. Crowell Co.:New York] 1955 (p. 252)
[NOTE: Mr. Hines does not express his favorite flavor or type of ice cream dish in this book.]
"The best meal I ever ate was an order of ham and egs in a frontier cafe where the click of the roulette wheel in the back mingled with the clatter of dishes at the front counter. That was in Cheyenne Wyoming, about 1899, and no gustatory experience that I have had since that time has dislodged that platter of ham and eggs from its secure position as my best remembered dinner."
---ibid, (p. 1)
[NOTES: (1) The restaurant serving this meal was Harry Hynds's Restaurant. (2) The story behind this meal is a great read. Happy to scan/send upon request.]
The Food Timeline library owns these books authored by Duncan Hines. Happy to share recipes; let us know what you need.
Adventures in Good Cooking, facsimile 1933 edition (2002), original 1939 & 1952 editions
The Duncan Hines Dessert Book (1955)
Duncan Hines' Food Odyssey (1955)..autobiography with selected recipes. Fun read!
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