The Nancy Drew Cookbook – Fifty Years of Clues to Good Cooking

The Nancy Drew Cookbook:

Fifty Years of Clues to Good Cooking

Nancy Drew, intrepid sleuth, always up for a bold and daring adventure. Dark alleys. Musty old attics. Skeletons popping out of wardrobes. Bound and gagged and locked in closets. Kidnappings. Threats to stay off the case, OR ELSE! Or else, what? Kitchen conundrums and measuring tips? Possibly exciting for those of us who like to cook and whip up some tasty treat, but for Nancy Drew and some of her fans, that must have been a bit…deflating all considered. 

Nancy had Hannah Gruen – master baker – who could whip up the most calorie-laden snacks at the drop of a hat. Comfort food after a midnight stakeout or Drew home burglary appeared with a flourish! Cocoa, cookies, pies, cakes, oh the bane of poor Bess Marvin’s constant diet plan. However, with a little Sleuthercize, they mostly all stayed “slim and attractive.” 

In 1973, on to the market came not one of Nancy’s most exciting mysteries. Not one of her more baffling puzzlers. No, it was The Nancy Drew Cookbook – Clues to Good Cooking. Nancy was serving up some recipes for brunch, lunch, dinner, even picnics – all categorized by time of day. Then there were holiday recipes and international delights. Giveaway treats too. Every section had tips for the young cook like tasty substitutions, tangy twists, and the saucy “tart touch.” The introduction commanded readers to come up with a “mystery ingredient” of their own.

I did not originally own this cookbook as I was born in 1973, the year it came out. I eventually collected it as an adult when I transitioned into a full-blown collector of all things Nancy Drew. I proceeded to roast it a bit in a section of my Nancy Drew Sleuth website as some of the recipes definitely have some sinister ingredients! Some recipes are not too bad and have turned out to be pretty yummy. The Nancy Drew Sleuths have had several occasions to test recipes and try them out. The cookbook was even re-released by Penguin in 2007 with an updated look. I have acquired several Nancy Drew Cookbooks signed by Harriet Stratemeyer Adams as Carolyn Keene. They are definitely treasures and she would even put in cute quips with her inscriptions like “Here’s to good cookin’!”

As a nostalgia piece, it’s kitschy though the cover is not very mysterious in the typical Nancy Drew vein. Throughout the cookbook there are many line drawings of various food items to illustrate the recipes which are named after characters or mysteries that Nancy solved. What’s lacking are recipes based on foods from the books themselves which would have made for a more interesting tie-in to the books.

How was this cookbook received by fans? It was marketed to kids in the usual age set of the Nancy Drew mysteries. Grosset & Dunlap advertised on the backs of the regular Nancy Drew Mystery Stories editions with a stylized cookbook ad. Order forms inside the book afforded each reader the opportunity to send off for it among other books in the series. But what about older fans and their reception? My guess is the more critical reception likely came from older fans of the books, who might have felt that this was rather out of character for their heroine Nancy Drew. To be fair, Nancy did do some cooking in the Nancy Drew series on her own – assisting Hannah from time to time and even making a fabulous walnut-studded chocolate cake in the revision of The Secret of Shadow Ranch, though this revision was from the 1960s. The original Nancy Drew – who broke the mold thanks to ghostwriter Mildred Wirt Benson in the 1930s and 1940s – wasn’t generally in the kitchen. She was out rounding up crooks and having adventures. Throughout the classic series between 1930 to 1973 when the cookbook debuted, generally speaking, cooking wouldn’t have been considered Nancy Drew’s signature skill. It wasn’t her cooking skills that had inspired generations of fans to do so much more in their lives. Reviews in newspapers ran the gamut from generic reviews to more critical askance and puzzlement over this new direction. Some brought up feminism and bemoaned Nancy’s fate. The Hardy Boys had their own Detective Handbook – published in 1959. Where was Nancy Drew’s Girl Detective Handbook?  

Why a Nancy Drew Cookbook? That’s the real puzzler. It's the historical background behind items like this cookbook that are always fascinating to me and how these kinds of projects came about and the Stratemeyer Syndicate files at the New York Public Library reveal some clues. What we can learn about this Nancy Drew Cookbook is rather interesting. Did this come from the Stratemeyer Syndicate – Harriet to be exact? Like Nancy Drew, Harriet was not really known for her cooking skills. In fact, one contribution she did make to the cookbook was A Keene Soup – a peanut butter based soup. She is said to have “horrified” her personal chef with her foray into the kitchen to come up with the recipe. So, who was behind this project and how did it come to fruition?

Grosset & Dunlap had apparently been throwing around the idea of doing a Nancy Drew Cookbook - likely using the Nancy Drew name and brand to sell something novel, much like the Nancy Drew “Favorite Classic” volumes they put out using Nancy Drew as a selling point to market various classic literature tales. By the summer of 1970, Harriet noted in an August 26 letter to her sister Edna Squier, that “the idea has been pro and con for some time but now Grosset & Dunlap are planning to go ahead with the project.”

Everyone always loves a good Carolyn Keene unmasking. It turns out, that the ghost behind this cookbook was a woman named Patsy Bogle. By November 1970, a memo between Harriet and partner Andrew Svenson discusses a meeting with Bogle that Harriet had. We find out that Bogle was a cook book editor for Fuller and Dees, who among other business ventures, sold cookbooks. Harriet notes in the memo, "I met with Patsy Bogle, Cook Book Editor for Fuller and Dees and had a most enlightening conversation with her. This is the information I gleaned: A loose leaf cook book would be 100% better than the regular story-book binding. Mrs. Bogle foresees a general cook book to be followed by one on cookies and candies, then perhaps on other specialties.” Bogle had quite a vision for Nancy Drew – one that didn’t pan out past this cookbook. Bogle had been an avid reader of Nancy Drew as a child. Harriet added, “Mrs. Bogle thinks a Nancy Drew Cook Book could be great."  Bogle’s price for doing it? She'd charge $1,000.00 for 200 recipes in children's language to be edited by the Syndicate instead of the publisher. Bogle signed a release on November 20, 1971 for providing the recipes and content, for the consideration and payment of $1 and other “considerations” – she had provided 104 recipes. Harriet had taken up Bogle’s suggestion that the cookbook be a spiral bound one and urged Grosset & Dunlap to do that. Of course, as we’ve seen, the cookbook was bound like the regular Nancy Drew books.

By 1971 they had a full green light on the cookbook as Grosset & Dunlap were asking for twenty sample pages before giving a final go-ahead. In a September 28, 1972 letter from David Lande, Vice President, and Director of Marketing at Grosset & Dunlap, he told Harriet very enthusiastically that “I think this can be a real winner and we are very enthusiastic about the sales possibilities.”

Aside from these and other perfunctory back and forth communications on the cookbook, there was quite a storm brewing. While kids and their families were learning clues to good cooking and noshing on 99 Steps French Toast and Old Clock Ice Cream Pie, the shenanigans behind the scenes were about as sinister and stinky as the Tolling Bell Tuna Rolls. About as flimsy as those Leaning Chimney Cones. 

By 1973 when the Nancy Drew Cookbook was published, Harriet had some rather unflattering things to say about it. In a March 28, 1973 letter to Grosset & Dunlap President Harold Roth, she noted, that she was relieved to know that changes would be made to the cookbook for the second edition and that she was “ashamed of the first edition." She had planned to give many as gifts to friends but because she was ashamed, she couldn’t bear to do that.

Then she really let him know how she felt. "The book is a disaster and unworthy of being a companion to the Nancy Drew series. The fault rests with the Art department and the layout person. From the beginning I was disappointed with the picture situation. I did not want sticks of butter or disproportionate milk cartons but sketches with some originality and cute quips, some of which we supplied but they were brushed off.” She refers to comments being sent into the Syndicate – likely from readers and journalists lambasting it in various articles that were coming out - and includes some examples with her letter, telling Roth to “read them and weep” as she has been doing. "My dream of a ND super duper cookbook ended in a rude awakening." I’m picturing Sally in the It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown special after she’d been cheated out of tricks or treats and like Sally, Harriet was a woman scorned and on the warpath with her pen. Harriet definitely felt cheated, the cookbook was not what she felt like she’d been promised.

Still on a roll with Grosset & Dunlap, Harriet sent a zinger off to the art department at Grosset & Dunlap in an April 25, 1973 letter to Kay Ward. She pointedly asked, “I am wondering why the art work on the Nancy Drew series has been deteriorating in the past couple of years. It seems to me that Grosset & Dunlap would want the best selling juveniles to have superior, not inferior pictures." To Harriet, and frankly the rest of us really, the book illustration figures of this time period looked more like “fashion manikins than live people” and are “expressionless.” Rarely are any Syndicate suggestions followed, she noted. "You have heard how aghast I was at the sketches in the Nancy Drew Cookbook. Having been promised by Mr. Paturzo and yourself that the pictures would be original and whimsical…it was an added shock to see the cookbook with mundane flour sifters and egg boxes which any third grader could have drawn." 

She noted that editor Doris Dunewald had said the second edition would be “greatly improved” and she hoped it would be “a far better looking one than the original.” She felt complaining was regrettable, but it was necessary.

So how did the second edition fare? Unfortunately, not so great. A comparison of the first and second editions shows some spacing differences in layout, some titles or chapter names being moved around or disappearing and then the exact same pictures – those not-so-whimsically third-grade level flour sifters, egg boxes, milk cartons and more just appearing and disappearing in various places as if they were playing musical chairs. Nothing whimsical about it whatsoever. It was as if the much-maligned art department at Grosset & Dunlap just wanted to sneak into Harriet’s home and “short-sheet” her bed, move her furniture around and gaslight her. Figuratively of course, just a test of wills in the cookbook instead. Whether Harriet was pleased with these…efforts…or not, we don’t know for sure, but I imagine it rankled her quite well. Did she deign to give out the second edition to any family or friends? Another mystery to be solved…

Aside from this drama with the layout and images and what was promised but not delivered, how does this cookbook fit overall logically with being related to an infamous mystery loving, adventuresome sleuth who trailblazed her way through generations, doing the opposite of the usual norm for women, especially back in the 30s and 40s? Does it align more with the nesting and domesticity of the 50s housewife? How does it sit with all the second-wave feminists in the 60s and 70s who claimed Nancy as a standard bearer? 

A reviewer for the August 3, 1973 Daily News, Georgia Smith, gave her intriguing opinion in “Nancy Drew, Detective, Moves into the Kitchen.” She interviewed Harriet for this piece and noted, “Instead of cracking secret codes, our plucky girl…has been reduced to cracking eggs and stirring up things like ‘Sleuth Soup’ and ‘Hidden Biscuits.’” She was a little disappointed to see Nancy Drew being so…domestic. Harriet credited publisher Grosset & Dunlap with the cookbook idea. Harriet stated that the recipes were developed in consultation with three of her 11 grandchildren at home on her “cow farm.” I’m not sure if Patsy Bogle was an “honorary” grandchild in her version of the story, but to be fair, Harriet was in keeping with the usual story about her being Carolyn Keene, I suppose. Harriet also thought the cookbook was “dandy.” Publicly, Harriet was very praiseworthy and the perfect cheerleader, even though behind the scenes, things were not so grand.

Even Eric Svenson, youngest son of Syndicate partner Andrew Svenson who ran bookstores in the Carolinas, wrote to the Syndicate on April 30th of 1973, a little dismayed about the cookbook. He noted, "I think the Nancy Drew Cookbook is a cute idea and we are selling them here in Charlotte. But I also think, from women's liberation point of view that we may be relegating the famous girl detective to the kitchen. I feel that a better selling book would be a Nancy Drew Detective Handbook type of project." He even suggested a title for it, "How to Become a Girl Detective."

Eventually of course Nancy Drew had her own sleuthing book, aptly named The Nancy Drew Sleuth Book: Clues to Good Sleuthing, published 6 years after the Nancy Drew Cookbook debuted. In it, Nancy Drew forms her own Detective Club of girl detectives in her circle of friends. They learn all sorts of good sleuthing tips from fingerprints to identifications, to palm prints and even palmistry and solve mysteries on various subjects in each chapter.

As a cook and someone who likes good cooking, I find the cookbook to be charming and retro and some of the recipes have turned out to be quite good. I think some of the fuss over Nancy Drew having a cookbook was a little dramatic, because mystery or no mystery, a family must eat – so says Hannah Gruen! But I suppose considering the trailblazing Nancy Drew had done for decades, considering her talents at mystery solving and how much she inspired kids and was a role model for self-reliance and forging one’s own path out in the world and getting things done, having saddled her with a cookbook, rather than a Sleuth Book could be seen as relegating her to the kitchen, as Svenson put it. I think though, that kids should learn to cook and those kinds of skills are very important as we grow up. Perhaps Nancy Drew wasn’t the one who should have been used to help kids forge those skills. But you have to wonder, as much of an inspiration as Nancy Drew was to her fans, did she inspire others in the kitchen to solve recipe mysteries with all her clues to good cooking? I suppose it’s not a huge stretch to think she might have. After all, one of her famous fans, Martha Stewart, went on to make cooking and domesticity a trendy artform.

Resources used:

The Nancy Drew Cookbook: Clues to Good Cooking

New York Public Library: Stratemeyer Syndicate Archives.

James Keeline – research and documents in his collection and image of Patsy Bogle.

Are you Game to get Clues to Good Cooking? 

As we celebrate the close of 2023, here’s a good holiday recipe from the Nancy Drew Cookbook. Hang up your magnifying glass, hop in the kitchen, kick off your shoes and make someone the Haunted Bridge Log on page 102. It’s delicious, and the hint about mint, it’s a keeper!

Ingredients:

1 package chocolate wafers (round type for icebox cake)

1 pint heavy whipping cream

2 tablespoons sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla flavoring

Green food coloring

Directions:

Whip cream until it forms peaks. Fold in sugar, vanilla, and a few drops of green food coloring.

Stack 3 or 4 wafers together at a time, putting a teaspoonful of green whipped cream between each one. Save one wafer for later. Place the stack sideways on a dish to form a log. Cover the log with the rest of the cream.

Crumble the wafer you have saved and sprinkle on top. Refrigerate for at least 3 hours. Cut diagonally at a 45 degree angle.

Serves 10.

A Mint Help:

Add a teaspoon of mint extract to the cream while whipping.