Blurb:

In 1911 my Viennese great-grandmother Malvine Löb Iranyi took over a cake-mix company that had been started by her sister-in-law, Rosa, in 1908. This essay explores the significance of cake-mix in a culture of famous cakes where recipes are the result of a process to standardize traditional cooking practices. Olga and Adolf Hess’s famous Wiener Kuche appeared in 1913, a few year after Rosa established the cake mix company. This may indicate that there was a general desire in Vienna to standardize traditional kitchen know-how and define Viennese cuisine in a series of, if not rules, specific directions that will “lead to a particular outcome.” Could it be that cake-mix, by virtue of its goal of taking the guesswork out of baking, replaces a the “rules” of the recipe–whether handed down through kitchen knowledge or found in a recipe book– and erases that recipe?