The American day in the 1960s was organized around three regular meals — breakfast, lunch, supper — centered on the “balanced” meat-and-potatoes plate (a meat, a starch, a vegetable, often canned). Added to this were two daily institutions: the brown-bag lunch (a sandwich carried in a kraft paper bag) and percolated coffee, drunk endlessly from morning to night. The evening family meal and the buffet of colorful jellied salads for entertaining framed this highly regimented week.

Postwar American cuisine is the cuisine of industrial convenience: canned tuna, tinned vegetables, Jell-O gelatin in a packet, vacuum-packed ground coffee. Saving time in the kitchen to devote more to the laboratory — that is the true signature of this era and this woman.