biography
| name: |
Rudkin, Margaret
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| |
née Fogarty
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| sex:
| female
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| lived:
| (1897–1967)
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| biography:
| Businesswoman, born in New York City, USA. She worked in a brokerage house in New York, and in 1923 married one of the firm's partners. In 1929 the Rudkins developed an estate in Connecticut, naming it Pepperidge Farm after its black gum trees. In 1937, to help her asthmatic son, she began baking bread using stone-ground whole wheat and other ‘pure’ ingredients. Her son improved, and the allergist's suggestion that she bake for other patients began a mail-order business. By 1938 she was selling 4000 loaves a week of Pepperidge Farm Bread, and she later opened bakeries in Pennsylvania and Illinois. In 1960 she sold Pepperidge Farm to Campbell Soups, continuing to run the farm as an independent subsidiary. She published The Margaret Rudkin Pepperidge Farm Cookbook in 1963 and, with her son installed as president, retired three years later. |
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