The Many Lives of Prize-Winning Cake

It has taken me a while to grow accustomed to each successive change in the makeup of The Times Food section, but I eventually become comfortable with them.

Now I especially enjoy Russ Parsons, always look forward to Marion Cunningham, and like Donna Deane, Barbara Hansen and Charles Perry. Rose Dosti’s “Culinary SOS” is a must read as many of the reprints are familiar to me. (I first began reading the Food pages in my mother’s kitchen when I was 11 and enrolled in my first home ec class in school.) I particularly enjoyed Amy Pressman’s cover story, “The Easy Baker” (June 24). Please let’s have more of her!

May I comment on the Culinary SOS recipe for Prize-Winning Brownie Cake With Chocolate Nut Frosting (June 24)? It sounds like a winner, but I think it more than likely that Ingrid Rodgers’ mother baked one of Irma Rombauer’s custard cakes. In the 1931 edition of “Joy of Cooking,” it appears on Page 236 as Chocolate Custard Cake-Devil’s Food; in 1946 on Page 542 as “Chocolate Devil’s Food III (Custard Cake),” and in 1975 as “Devil’s Food Cake Cockaigne,” Page 676.

MARDI BRADY

Venice