UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON ARCHIVES
ORAL HISTORY PROJECT

Interview #247
NICHOLS, NELL

NICHOLS, Nell Beaubien (b. 1896)1
Graduate Student, Home Economics; Staff, Journalism Department
At UW: 1916-1919

Interviewed: 1978	
Interviewer: Unknown
Length: 1.5 hours

Early education; Undergraduate work in home economics at Kansas State University; Master's work in nutrition at UW; Influential professors; Soybean research; Position in Journalism Department; Early freelance writing; Field editorship with Farm and Fireside; The Farm Cook and Rule Book; Work at Women’s Home Companion; Foods editorship with Farm Journal; Developing recipes; Cookbooks for children; Recent works; Future plans.

Tape 1/Side 1

00:00:01	NN grew up on a ranch in Dodge City, Kansas and began cooking when she was 	eight years old.  Her high school was located on Boot Hill.  She went to college 	in 1912.

00:01:34	NN studied languages extensively in high school, including four years of English, 	four  years of Latin, and three years of German.  Her high school class consisted 	of twelve students, six girls and six boys.  Seven of them went on to university 	after graduation.

00:03:11	NN discusses the education of her various family members.  Her mother was a 	teacher.  NN attended Kansas State and majored in home economics.  She had 	wanted to minor in journalism so that she could be a newspaper reporter, but she 	was told she had to have a base area of knowledge first.  She graduated in 1916.

00:06:06	In September 1916, NN moved to Madison in order to pursue a master’s degree.		She had been looking for a college that had a good reputation in both home 	economics/nutrition and journalism.  

00:08:34	She discusses the development of her interest in nutrition.  She had been engaged 	to an editor in Topeka, and he encouraged her to pursue her studies in home 	economics.  

00:10:01	NN attended UW in order to study both home economics and journalism.  One of 	her professors—Abby Marlatt—offered significant encouragement and urged NN 	to pursue her writing as well as her home economics studies.  At Kansas State 	there had been a big division between the women in home economics and 	journalism.  

00:12:32	NN took two semesters of feature writing with Willard Bleyer and one writing 	course with Andrew Hopkins in the College of Agriculture.  The first story she 	sold was to Successful Farming and it was about how to plan meals including the 	seven different food groups.  She sold a second story to the Milwaukee Journal 	about wearing a pedometer around the University’s home management house in 	order to measure how many steps were required in specific household chores.  

00:16:14	NN majored in nutrition and studied under Amy Daniels.  She discusses her four 	most interesting professors at UW—Miss Marlatt and Dr. Daniels in home 	economics and Mr. Hopkins and Dr. Bleyer in journalism.  For her major course 	of research in nutrition, she fed soybeans to rats in order to determine the potential 	nutritious properties for infants.

00:20:10	NN discusses her expenses in Wisconsin and the ordeal of traveling to Colorado 	and Kansas for school breaks.  

00:21:51	The home economics students worked on a book of wartime recipes, creating 	wheatless, sugarless, and meatless meals developed by the students themselves.

00:23:52	NN discusses the specifics of her soybean/rat research, which was later published 	in the Journal of Biological Chemistry.  She was married in Kansas in the 	summer of 1917, and after her husband volunteered for the armed services in 	World War I, she was offered a job in the Journalism Department at UW.  Her 	job involved interviewing people in the College of Agriculture, and the press 	releases of the interviews were sent to a number of Wisconsin newspapers.

00:28:54	She made $100 a month working at UW, but she supplemented her income by 	selling stories to magazines, averaging about one story a week.  Knowledge of 	nutrition was really beginning to reach people in the 1910s, but there were not 	many cookbooks available at that time.  

00:31:17	After working for one year at UW, NN returned to Topeka and continued freelance writing.  In 1919, she sold an article about milk testing to the Ladies Home Journal.  In 1920, Farm and Fireside hired her as a “field editor,” which required her to write four stories a year about food.  While being a home economist helped her a great deal in her writing, she did not write much about nutrition at first, as her editors insisted that “women aren’t interested in nutrition.”

00:35:31	In 1922, NN decided to write a cookbook that would include both recipes and 	nutritional information.  The Farm Cook and Rule Book was published in 1923, 	and it included both food and general household recipes.

00:37:43	The Farm Cook and Rule Book included a special section on cooking for the sick, 	since at the time most ill people did not go to the hospital.  She also included a 	section on beauty secrets that she learned from interviewing older farm women. 

00:45:33	Since people of many different nationalities settled in Wisconsin, NN was able to 	sample foods from different cultures.  In 1924, she published a story on laundry 	that subsequently received 10,000 inquiries.  She was asked to join the staff of 	Women’s Home Companion in 1929.  

00:48:20	NN discusses her work with Women’s Home Companion and her three-year 	assignment “The Nell Nichols Report.”

00:56:20	After Women’s Home Companion closed, NN joined the staff of Farm Journal as 	the foods editor and moved to Philadelphia for four years for the job.  She had 	planned on retiring after the appointment but continued to freelance for the 	magazine.

00:58:04	End of side.

Tape 1/Side 2

00:58:05	NN discusses her method of determining potential candidates for Farm Journal interviews.

00:59:57	After her editorship with Farm Journal, NN began her career as a cookbook editor.  She comments on the increasing popularity of cookbooks. 

01:03:36	Readers often submitted recipes, so she and other writers began test kitchens to perfect the recipes and compile them into cookbooks.

01:05:52	NN explains her recipe writing style, primarily following the Home Economics Association standard.  She developed ideas for recipes by eating at numerous homes and restaurants and through the contributions of her readers. Her testers would try many variations of the same recipe and then test them on their families.  

01:12:47	NN did not gain much experience in publishing or photographic technology and regrets never learning to type “correctly.”  She developed two books for instructing children how to cook—Let’s Start to Cook and How to Bring Up a Good Cook.

01:16:59	At one point, NN considered writing a cookbook specifically for men, and she acknowledges the problems with cooking for one.  She remarks on the improvements made in using food for its nutrients as well as for its taste. 

01:20:23	NN comments on her most recent books, including one regarding nutritional homemade snacks.  Dr. Ruth Leverton, the nutritionist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, was one of the sources for the book.

01:26:42	NN recently developed a syndicated column for Farm Journal called “Cook It Your Way,” in which a recipe is given, along with instructions for preparing it with varying equipment—range, pressure cooker, skillet, etc.

01:28:31	At 82, NN plans to write her autobiography. She also has plans to travel, beginning with California.

01:31:00	End of side.  End of tape.   

END