In 1954, two women printed a cookbook on a mimeograph machine (remember those?). They sold it locally in Connecticut until it was picked up by Macmillan Publishing in 1960. Eventually, it sold half a million copies, and Marian Burros was on her way to becoming a highly successful food writer.

“Elegant but Easy,” written by Burros and her friend, Lois Levine, was the start of a long career in food. She has been credited as one of the pioneering food writers of the 1970s, as she applied investigative journalistic standards to the field. She became the food editor for The Washington Star and wrote a syndicated column called “Chef Marian’s Dish of the Day” for The Washington Post from 1974 to 1981.

She joined the New York Times in 1981. Her recipe for plum torte was adapted from a recipe by

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