Duncan Hines: The Man, The Mix

Plus, 2 easy chocolate cake recipes that even the fastidious Hines might approve of. Might.

Welcome to the first in The Secret Life of Cookies Brief Histories.

Today’s ramekin-sized biography is of Duncan Hines.

Hines and his wife Clara in 1957, two years before his death. (photo from the Western Kentucky University collections)

Before Duncan Hines was a cake mix, he was a well-known actual human being, famous for travel guidebooks that led people to the best quality meals, lodging and vacation spots. He pioneered the restaurant rating system.

Originally a traveling salesman, it was out of necessity that he became an expert on where to find decent food, a decent cup of hot coffee and a place to stay. With the increased number of cars on the roads in the 1920s and 30s, more American started exploring the country by automobile. Diners and roadside barbecue stands sprang up in response. But Mr. Hines didn’t just dine anywhere, cleanliness was paramount. “The kitchen is the first spot I inspect in an eating place," he wrote. "More people will die from hit or miss eating than from hit and run driving.

This quote, from Hines’ Adventures in Good Eating, speaks to me.

Duncan brought attention to restaurants across the country, one of which, you are undoubtedly familiar with: The Toll House Inn. Yes, they of cookie fame. Located in Whitman, Massachusetts they were famous for inventing the chocolate chip cookie, but the Inn was also a favorite wayside stop for well-known people headed to Cape Cod, such as Frank Sinatra and Eleanor Roosevelt. When Duncan Hines called the Toll House “one of his favorite places to eat,” Americans listened. In the early 1950s, the Toll House served 1,500 to 2,000 customers a weekend. Anyone who entertained thoughts of enjoying their famous classic New England Thanksgiving dinner would need to reserve in May.

From Duncan Hines’ Adventures in Good Eating cookbook.

Other popular menu items with visitors included a split, broiled Maine lobster, Lobster Thermidor and Hawaiian chicken (a combination of white sauce, pineapple and chicken all cooked in a coconut shell). Duncan Hines was partial to the Indian pudding: “It makes my mouth water to think of the baked [pudding] as it is prepared at Toll House...That’s the kind of dessert that makes a fellow wish for hollow legs.” 

By 1946, eight years into his new line of work, he racked up 55,000 miles as he criss-crossed the country scouting the best wayside lodgings and clean eateries. He didn’t do it all himself, though, and had friends and acquaintances also write reviews for his vaunted guide.

If you were out and about and saw an inn or roadside restaurant with a sign that said “Recommended by Duncan Hines,” you knew it was a suitable place to stop. Hines was detailed in his reviews, noting everything from air conditioning to his notorious check of the garbage out back. Hines was also a savvy businessman. He self-published the popular guidebooks and sold them for only $1.50 a piece. He made his big money selling colorful tin “Recommended” signs to the restaurants listed in his guide for $38.00 a year, which netted him around $40,000 a year at a time when the median yearly income was $1,400 (1945).

In 1952 he saw a money-making opportunity and lent his name to ready-to-eat foods, including a full-fat, ultra-rich ice cream brand, and of course, a line of cake mixes, By 1955, his line, which included everything from pickles to stoves, brought in 50 million dollars, and he earned royalties off each things sold.

There is an interesting, glowing biography of Hines written by Louis Hatchett, but my takeaway was, Mr. Hines was a priggish, sexist egomaniac. His second wife also divorced him for “cruelty,” and those that worked with him often found themselves on the receiving end of his flash temper tantrums.

According to a profile of him in a 1948 Life magazine, his favorite tipple was a concoction made of “the juice of watermelon pickle, a whole egg, cream, gin, grenadine, orange blossom honey and lime juice. You can drink a dozen of them,” Hines contends, “and they wouldn’t hurt you.”

I think I’ll just take his word on that. And stick to making cakes from scratch.

That said, I do enjoy having fun with a boxed cake mix now and then. There’s the Brownie Bundt Cake with Raspberry Cream Cheese Filling that uses not one, but two different mixes, and an Emergency Cake that can get you from cake-craving to warm chocolate cake in under an hour. Which is precisely way you should always keep a boxed cake mix in your pantry. It probably wards off zombies, too.

In case of emergency, open box of cake mix.

Are you a fan of boxed cake mixes? Is there a family favorite recipe that no one knows is secretly from a box? Let me know. Also, tell me what other potted histories you’d like of food people, places and things.

Duncan Hines’ cookbook Adventures in Good Cooking (Famous Recipes) and The Art of Carving in the Home really makes you grateful Mr. Hines isn’t coming for Thanksgiving with comments like this:

(from the 11th printing, 1945)