Mable Hoffman, 88, a food stylist and home economist, took on the job of developing the recipes and writing the pioneering book for recipients of a popular early-1970s gift — the newly invented electric slow-cooker.
Hoffman’s test kitchen amounted to 20 slow cookers lined up in her Solana Beach, Calif., home. The resulting “Crockery Cookery” (1975) was an instant best seller.
It was “the right book” at “the right moment,” The New York Times declared in 1976, adding that 20 million Americans who had bought slow cookers “were eager for tips.”
Hoffman, who had Alzheimer’s disease, died Feb. 9 in Del Mar, Calif., said Jan Robertson, her daughter. She was 88.
The initial infatuation with such slow-cooker recipes as her simple “Round Steak With Rich Gravy” or “Mission Chicken” (with grapes and topped with slivered almonds) would wax and wane. Yet the shift in American culture that first helped popularize the gadget—the rise of the working woman—also secured its future on kitchen countertops.
“The craze from 20 years ago had died down a bit, but a whole new generation with jobs and children are finding that this very handy appliance can have dinner ready when you come home from work,” Hoffman said in 1996 after she had updated “Crockery Cookery.”
William E. Gordon, 92, an electrical engineer who conceived, designed, built and operated the world’s largest radio telescope, which has been described as Earth’s ear to outer space, died Feb. 16 at his home in Ithaca, N.Y. He was 92.
Rice University, where Gordon served as professor, dean and provost, announced the death.
The telescope, a dish the size of 26 football fields, occupies a small valley in Puerto Rico. It is big enough to emit the strongest radio waves and receive the weakest ones.
Gordon named the telescope and its observatory after a nearby town. The Arecibo Observatory has been used to make scores of landmark discoveries in atmospheric physics and astronomy, including one that garnered a Nobel Prize.
