In the 1950s, Americans were looking for ways to spend less time in the kitchen. Generations of home cooks, the overwhelming majority of them women, had made food preparation the focus of their day; historians estimate that in 1900, an average household spent 58 hours per week on housework. But a few decades later, postwar innovations such as affordable appliances created more free time — and so did a new wave of commercially prepared and processed foods, an emerging industry fueled by scientist