Mable Hoffman, slow-cooker recipe book pioneer, dies

Food stylist and home economist Mable Hoffman had been married a good 30 years when a wedding gift caused her career to take an aromatic detour.

The recipients of that early 1970s present - a Crock-Pot - were newlyweds unsure of what to do with the newly invented electric slow-cooker. But the bridegroom's family owned a publishing company, and he proposed a cookbook featuring the appliance.

The job of developing the recipes and writing the pioneering book went to Hoffman, whose test kitchen amounted to 20 slow cookers lined up in her Solana Beach home. The resulting "Crockery Cookery" (1975) was an instant bestseller.

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 at an assisted-living facility in Del Mar, Calif., near San Diego of complications due to a seizure and pneumonia, said Jan Robertson, her daughter. She was 88.

A prolific and award-winning cookbook writer, Hoffman published 18 cookbooks over 25 years, working with her husband, Gar, and daughter, Jan.

She was born Mable Simpson on July 26, 1921, in Buckingham County, Va. While at the University of Maryland, she became aware of regional differences in food. Later in life, the outgoing Hoffman nurtured this interest by traveling with food writers to faraway places.

Gar, her husband of 52 years, died in 1993.

Besides her daughter Jan, of Encinitas, Calif., Hoffman is survived by another daughter, Linda, of Cape Coral, Fla.; five grandchildren; and one great-grandchild.