It’s as much a part of our classic Kiwi summer as jandals, barbecues and a scoop of hokey pokey ice cream on a hot day.
But trying to convince Rosemary Mount that her invention of the Kiwi onion dip in the late-1950s is worthy of a magazine story is a little harder for the humble nonagenarian to accept.
“It makes me chuckle that people would find it interesting because I never really thought about it,” says Rosemary from her Auckland retirement village. “It was just my job at the time and it’s incredible the dip is even still around today.
“I do love it when the young ones say to me, ‘I make your dip!’ I guess it means I’m still relevant,” she grins.
Her culinary claim to fame began when Rosemary – whose maiden name was Dempsey – was working as a home economist for Nestlé. A year into the role, the then- 27-year-old heard onion soup sales were on the decline.
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In charge of heading up the company’s fledgling test kitchen, her job was to develop recipes using Nestlé products in an effort to increase sales.
“Serving dips at cocktail parties had just come in to fashion,” she recalls. “And we needed to get into that market. So, over a couple of days, I first tried mixing the onion soup with cream and evaporated milk – pretty awful. I don’t know why I didn’t think of reduced cream to begin with, but of course it worked!
“I’d go to a sales meeting at least once a month and it was so exciting to see my baby’s sales figures go up and up.”
Then, while Rosemary was working at Nestlé, the NZ Herald asked her to become its first food editor for a new cookery section.
She still remembers some of the long and exhausting photoshoots she had to do.
“In those days, you had all these hot lights to deal with,” she explains. “I can remember doing some work for Tip Top and instead of using real ice cream in photos – which would melt under the lights – we used powdered milk mixed with common salt and a bit of glycerine to make it shine. It looked like ice cream. We did cheat.”
But growing up in Taranaki, Rosemary – who turns 92 in May – was more interested in ballet than cooking, and says she fell into both a broadcasting and culinary career by accident.
The master at work!
“After finishing school at St Mary’s Diocesan School for Girls in Stratford, I became a ballet teacher and one of my pupil’s mothers was 1ZB radio personality ‘Marina’ [Joscelyne Parr], who hosted the Women’s Hour.
“She told me that with my voice, I should be in broadcasting,” tells the spry grandmother-of-five. “So I moved to Auckland, where she took me under her wing and I became one of her protégés.
“Then George Wooller – who brought the black and white Pye TV sets into New Zealand – was advertising for someone to be a continuity person in television at the Easter Show.
“I auditioned by reading a list of composers’ names and got the job. From there, he mentioned he was looking for a home economist for Sunbeam appliances. I thought, ‘That would be interesting’, so I went and studied under the company’s home economist in Australia.
“I just always seemed to be in the right place at the right time,” she reflects. “From then on, food became my thing. I loved it and enjoyed creating new recipes so much.”
One of her first freelance jobs was with the NZ Woman’s Weekly under the helm of long-standing editor Jean Wishart. Back then, this magazine’s last page was dedicated to featuring a different recipe each week.
“I recall we did a column on cooking with local foods, such as pūkeko. I had to make a pūkeko stew and take it into the office to be photographed.
Rosemary in the Weekly’s test kitchen.
“They had a pūkeko sent up from Rotorua and it was a bit smelly by the time I got it. My niece was staying with me, so she sprayed room deodoriser while I cut it up. I had never cooked pūkeko before and I never will again. It was very tough and tasted very gamey.”
Rosemary went on to present a television cookery segment on NZBC afternoon show On Camera in the late 1960s.
These days, though, she enjoys whipping up gourmet treats with her youngest grandson, 12-year old Gus, who has inherited her love of cooking.
Grandson Gus prepared onion dip for Rosemary’s 90th birthday.
“He said to me recently, ‘Do you know, Grandma, I told my friends that my grandmother invented the Kiwi onion dip and they thought I was lying.’ I told him, ‘Well, sometimes I find it hard to believe myself!'”
