Gourmet Magazine

Launched in January 1941, Gourmet started “not a food magazine as such, but something more like a general-interest magazine with an emphatic take on one of life's great pleasures,” according to a history published on its Web site. Earle R. MacAusland, a publishing veteran, ruled the magazine for its first 40 years. The first few issues covered topics that were related to food only tangentially: hunting and fishing stories, travel writing, theater reviews, and articles about savoring food instead of the technical aspects of preparing it. French cuisine took center stage, along with American; topics like Asian or Mexican foods were considered too exotic to cover at the time.