Marian Burros

Marian Jewel Burros ( Fox; June 12, 1933 – September 20, 2025) was an American cookbook author and a food columnist for The New York Times, a position she held from 1981 to 2014. Before joining The Times, Burros was The Washington Post s food editor and a consumer reporter for WRC-TV, the NBC-owned station in Washington, a position for which she won an Emmy Award.

Burros also worked for NBC Radio Network News, United Features, The Washington Daily News, and The Washington Star. After her father, Myron, a doctor, died when Marian was five, she was raised by her mother, Dorothy (Derby) Fox, who was of Russian Jewish descent and worked as a comptroller for various companies. When Marian was 14, her mother remarried, to grocery chain store owner Charles Greenblatt. Marian graduated with a degree in English literature from Wellesley College in 1954. After an early marriage ended in divorce, she wed Donald Burros in 1959.

Career With her friend Lois Levine, Burros self-published Elegant but Easy in 1954—a cookbook that they printed on a mimeograph machine and sold in local bookstores, as well as Wellesley College clubs nationwide.

In 1968, Burros became the editor of the food section at The Washington Star, where she emphasized the role politics can play in food through federal decisions impacting food safety regulations. From 1969 until 1974, she had a syndicated column through United Features, titled "Chef Marian's Dish of the Day," after which she became food editor for The Washington Post (1974 to 1981). In 2016, the Times said the plum torte was "the most requested recipe, and among the most beloved, in the history of the newspaper". She was the first to break the story of ITT Continental Baking Company's reduced-calorie, high-fiber Fresh Horizons Bread, which contained powdered cellulose, derived from wood pulp. In 1974, she was a founding member and first vice-president of the Association of Food Journalists, an organization formed to set standards of journalistic objectivity for food writers.

Burros lived in Bethesda, Maryland, and died from a heart attack at a hospital there, on September 20, 2025, at the age of 92.

She received a National Press Club citation (for food safety coverage), the American Association of University Women Mass Media Award and was a three-time winner of the Vesta Award.

Books Elegant But Easy (Collier Books, 1962) with Lois Levine Second Helpings (Collier Books, 1964) with Lois Levine Freeze With Ease (MacMillan, 1967) with Lois Levine Come for Cocktails, Stay for Supper (MacMillan, 1970) Summertime Cookbook (MacMillan, 1972) Tastemaker Award winner Pure and Simple (William Morrow, 1978) Tastemaker Award winner Keep It Simple (William Morrow, 1981) You've Got It Made (William Morrow, 1984) The Best of De Gustibus (Simon & Schuster, 1988) 20-Minute Menus (Simon & Schuster, 1989) Eating Well is the Best Revenge (Simon & Schuster, 1995) Cooking for Comfort (Simon & Schuster, 209 pp, 2003) The New Elegant But Easy Cookbook (Simon and Schuster, 2003)