Meatloaf

Not all stories about New York girls are fictional.

Margaret Fogarty was born in Manhattan in 1897, moving to Long Island when she was 12. She eventually got a job with an investment firm where she met Henry Rudkin. The two were married in 1923 and moved to Connecticut in 1926.

The Rudkins had three children; one of them, Mark, had adverse allergic reactions to the local baked goods because of his asthma. Margaret knew how to bake, so she started baking a whole wheat bread for her son. She shared it with the local doctor, who shared it with his patients, and soon, people all over town were asking for the bread, calling it by the name of the estate that she and her husband lived on, which itself was named after another common name for the black tupelo tree. “Margaret, how can I get some of that Pepperidge Farm bread?”

The Rudkins built a factory in the late 1940s, and by the 1950s, nationwide commercials were running for Pepperidge Farm products. The company was sold to the Campbell Soup Company in 1961, and Margaret took a seat on the Campbell Soup board–the first woman to do so.

While Pepperidge Farm makes a wide range of products today (notably, the cookies that Margaret enjoyed when traveling in Europe), they still do make a 100% Natural Whole Wheat loaf.

From the box of D.W. from Cedar Falls, Iowa.

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