Norwell's 'Betty Crocker House' is for sale: https://t.co/J953SkOyXgpic.twitter.com/V03vXZcSVc
— Boston Magazine (@BostonMagazine) July 21, 2016
Betty Crocker was designed to be the image of the perfect homemaker, a fictional avatar of good food and the nuclear family. Many of Crocker's recipes were produced by Janette Kelley, who ran General Mills' test kitchen and made many of the brand’s famous recipes in her Norwell, Massachusetts home, about 25 miles southeast of Boston.
That home, according to Mass Live, which is known locally as the “Betty Crocker House,” is now up for sale. Built in 1681 (albeit with modern updates), the house is on the market for $675,000.
It was there that Betty Crocker was partially born, a prototypical homemaker figure first created in the 1920s. As her character grew and evolved, introducing Betty Crocker Coupons and America’s ubiquitous cooking bible, the Betty Crocker Cookbook, more people became involved, and there are a number of real world figures who could be labeled the “real” Betty Crocker. Kelly was one of these people.
A nutritionist and entrepreneur who lived in the Massachusetts house in the 1930s and '40s, Kelly is thought to have developed a number of the recipes that would later become staples of American home cooking.
Which means that, for the right price, you as well can recreate some of the home-cooking magic.