Cook's Best Celebrates Life! 

To know our story is to know why. In many ways the delivery of this product to you is the end result of a series of remarkable events. Fate, good fortune, God's will or perhaps a little bit of each has brought the ingredients of this product and this story together. Beginning in 1912 when a teenage Sophie Haydu traveling on her own from Budapest to the United States decided to take another ocean liner out of London to New York instead of the ship that left earlier that day: the Titanic. During the 1940's when Ernie Cook, a G.I. home on leave, served as Best Man in the wedding party of his best friend and caught the eye of young Irene Haydu. They formally met at a picnic seven years later and were married. The Cook girls' earliest memories were of Grandma Sophie and Poppa Ernie filling their kitchen and senses with the sights, sounds, tastes, and smells of Hungarian cuisine. At a very early age the importance of good food in their many family celebrations was apparent. Throughout the 1950's, 60's, and 70's the Cook household was alive with three generations of Hungarians, elbow to elbow, at the kitchen stove. In the late 1970's when Kathy Cook attended her best friend's wedding and first crossed paths with her future husband David, who was also in the wedding party, she refused his invitation to dance. Seven years later they were properly introduced at a dinner party thrown by the wedding couple and later married. Kathy's move to Midwest in 1990 was planned because of a position David held at the time of their wedding. The day they returned from their honeymoon he found he had no job. Despite this uncertainty Kathy left all she knew in Connecticut and moved to Cincinnati with no clear sense of what the future held. During the next ten years Kathy worked tirelessly to develop and refine the sauces and foods, which would become the Cook's Best line of gourmet products. The first of which to be bottled and sold commercially is our Barbecue Baste. The enthusiastic support of the many good people she has met in Cincinnati, as well as her family's encouragement and her faith in the Lord have all brought this product from our kitchen to your table. Enjoy!