Duncan Hines was a real person.
Stroll through the baking aisle at any grocery store, and you’ll likely find instant cake mixes and containers of frosting emblazoned with the Duncan Hines name. But unlike other boxed mix competitors (looking at you, Betty Crocker), Hines was a real-life food personality whose name was once synonymous with fine dining. For a man who couldn’t cook, Hines became a surprisingly well-trusted authority on American cuisine for nearly three decades, all thanks to an iron stomach and fearless forays into restaurant kitchens.
Born in Kentucky in 1880, Hines worked as a traveling salesman from the ’20s through the ’40s, a life that didn’t allow for regular home-cooked meals. While putting anywhere from 40,000 to 60,000 miles on the road each year, he kept a meticulous journal of his dining experiences, listing noteworthy restaurants that provided budget-friendly dishes. But Hines didn’t just review meals — at a time when health codes and food inspections weren’t yet standard, he went so far as to audit kitchens himself, monitoring food safety practices, cleanliness, and even examining the garbage.
Flooded with requests from fellow travelers, Hines attached a list of 167 restaurants to his 1935 Christmas card. A year later, he self-published Adventures in Good Eating, a comprehensive compendium of U.S. eateries that was updated annually until 1962. With each edition, Hines solidified his reputation for honest critiques, in part because he refused payment for good reviews (though he did profit from renting signs bearing his stamp of approval to restaurants, and once accepted a gifted Cadillac from a happy restaurant owner). By 1949, Hines had teamed up with businessman Roy Park to launch Hines-Park Foods, which sold under the Duncan Hines label — moving the reviewer’s name from print to the containers of more than 250 grocery items. The brand’s iconic boxed cake mixes debuted in July 1951 in just two flavors — vanilla and devil’s food. Today, the cake mixes are beloved by many, even if the man who originally helped create them has been forgotten.
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