Duncan Hines - (1880-1959)
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Sycamore High School, Ohio
I. Biography
Remember on those special occasions when a cake would be made from that delicious Duncan Hines box mix? The recipes on those boxes came from a professional eater named Duncan Hines. Hines was the youngest of six children in his family, and was born on March 26, 1880 in Bowling Green, Kentucky (Currie). At the age of four, Hines' mother died. After her death, his youngest brother and he spent their summers at their grandparents' farm in the country. It was here where Hines first gained his knowledge of quality cooking and cleanliness (Currie).
In 1905, he entered a printing and advertising business in which he
made up creative printing ideas and sold them to industrial firms. Hines worked as a traveling salesman (Schwartz) for 33 years (Currie). Traveling around the country caused Hines to dine at many different
restaurants. He realized that there were many places that served poor food. "The library paste served as gravy in some short order places was a personal insult."(Schwartz). In Cheyenne, Wyoming, Duncan
met a young woman named Florence Chaffin. Keeping in touch with her, Duncan finally moved to New Rochelle, New York, and the two were married in September 1905. After realizing the great amount of
shabby restaurants along the roads, Duncan and his wife Florence began compiling a list of superior places to eat. This list of 167 preferred restaurants was sent out to all of their friends in place of
Christmas cards in 1935. (Currie). After that, there were many requests for copies of that list from people they had never heard of. He did not have the idea of publishing books
until he was 52 years old. This led to the publishing of Hines' first book, Adventures in Good Eating. Due to the book's popularity, Duncan Hines later had another similar book published entitled
Adventures in Good Cooking.
After resigning from being a traveling salesman,
Duncan became a full time traveler and author, traveling all over the country taste-testing food. He claimed that there was "hardly a hamlet or a crossroad in the United States that [he has not] visited." He even
traveled to Hawaii, Mexico, Canada, and seven countries in Europe (Hines 25). Florence usually traveled with him, and they kept notebooks critiquing the restaurants visited (Hines 26). The things that
mattered most to Hines were how clean the hotels were and the quality of the food served to him. At the height of his popularity, Hines was better known than the Vice President of the United States, Alben Barkley
(Bowling Green Jr. Women's Club).
In 1947 Roy Park, a public relations representative for a midwestern food co-op talked to Hines about starting a line of food products under the "Duncan Hines" name (Bowling Green Jr. Women's Club). Hines was not in favor of the idea at first, but they soon began the Hines-Park Foods, Inc., in New York. Hines successfully marketed food items, baking products, cookware, and small appliances (Currie). Procter and Gamble later bought the "Duncan Hines" name. In 1985 "Duncan Hines" was only getting 10% of Procter and Gamble's annual food and beverage sales of $4.1 billion (Harrington), so in 1998, Aurora Foods bought the "Duncan Hines" name from Procter and Gamble, and featured it as a main product (Bowling Green Jr. Women's Club).
Duncan Hines published five more books before his death in March of 1959 (Aurora Foods, Inc.).
II. Writing Habits
As Duncan and Florence traveled around from restaurant to restaurant, they "made a game of filling the notebooks as well as themselves," (Schwartz). They kept lists and took notes about each restaurant they visited (Schwartz). When they first began their traveling and eating, they "began jotting down notes about our favorite eating places: general quality of the food, the sanitation (most important of all), the service, and 'specialties' of the house," (Hines 26).
III. Published Works
1935- Adventures in Good Eating
1938- Lodging for a Night
1939- Adventures in Good Cooking
The Art of Carving in the Home
1942- Adventures in Good Eating
1948- Duncan Hines Vacation Guide
1955- Duncan Hines' Food Odyssey
Duncan Hines Dessert Book
IV. Critical Reviews
Restaurants were praised if Duncan Hines enjoyed his meal. "The highest compliment a restaurant or motel could receive would be 'Recommended by Duncan Hines,'" (Bowling Green Jr. Women's Club). Many people enjoyed Hines' books and used them when traveling on the roads searching for a decent place to stop and eat.
V. Works Cited
Aurora Foods, Inc.
About Duncan Hines. 13 Feb. 2001. <http://www.duncanhines.com/history.asp>
Bowling Green Junior Women's Club. History of Mr. Duncan Hines. 15 Feb.
2001. <http://www.duncanhinesfestival.com/history.htm>
Currie, Stephen. "Americans." American History. Feb. 2000 v34 i6 p14. Infotrac. 7 Feb. 2001.
<http://web7.infotrac.galegroup.com/itw/infomark/345/929/26629859w3/purl=rc1_EAIM_0 _A58447715&dyn=4!xrn_1_0_A58447715?sw_aep=plch_main>
Harrington, Jeff. "Procter Mulls Sale of Duncan Hines." The Cincinnati Enquirer. 30 Aug. 1997. 7 Feb. 2001.
<http://www.enquirer.com/editions/1997/08/30/bus_duncan.html>
Hines, Duncan. Duncan Hines' Food Odyssey
. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1955.
Schwartz, David M. "Duncan Hines: he made gastronomes out of motorists." Smithsonian.
Nov. 1984 v15 p86(8). Infotrac. 7 Feb. 2001.
<http://web3.infotrac.galegroup.com/itw/infomark/350/95/26643985w3/purl=rc1_EAIM_0_ A3497502&dyn=4!xrn_2_0_A3497502?sw_aep=plch_main>
This essay was submitted by a student of Breen Reardon, an English teacher at Sycamore High School in Cincinnati, Ohio.