Cecily Brownstone

Brownstone was also a consultant to Carl Sontheimer, president of Cuisinart, a physicist, entrepreneur, and founder of the food processor industry in America. With Sontheimer, Brownstone edited the highly regarded magazine, Pleasures of Cooking, and wrote Classic Cakes and Other Great Cuisinart Desserts in 1994.

She also wrote a book for children, All Kinds of Mothers, illustrated by her niece, the artist Miriam Brofsky Kley. In 1972 she came out with Cecily Brownstone’s Associated Press Cookbook.

In 1954, Brownstone had the opportunity to travel to Denmark at the invitation of the Danish government. On this tour, Brownstone was invited to tour palaces, dairies, fish canneries, ham factories, and other food plants. Among the other eleven food authors who were invited was Toronto Star’s Margaret Carr.

Cecily Brownstone (18 April 1909 – 30 August 2005), was a food writer, who wrote several cookbooks and articles about food over a period of 39 years. Canadian-born, Brownstone was the Associated Press Food Editor from 1947 to 1986—for thirty-nine years. During that time she was the most widely published of syndicated food writers. The five recipe columns and two food features she wrote for the Associated Press each week appeared in papers all over the United States, in addition to a number of other countries. Brownstone’s personal papers and cookbook collection is the unique expression of her personal interest in and encyclopedic knowledge of American culinary history and cookbooks, and her career in the food field.

She was born in Plum Coulee, Manitoba, in 1909, growing up in Winnipeg, the fourth of five sisters. She attended the University of Manitoba and came to New York City to pursue her studies and to work. She lived in Greenwich Village, appropriately enough in a brownstone house, in a duplex apartment that included a spectacular test kitchen, and that housed her large cookbook collection. Early in her career as a journalist, Brownstone was the Food Editor of Parents magazine and the Child Care Editor of Family Circle magazine.