Sarah Tyson Rorer, also known as Sallie, was born October 18, 1849, in Richboro, Pennsylvania, to Charles Tyson Heston and Elizabeth Sagers. Shortly after her birth, the family moved to Buffalo, New York, where her father worked as a chemist. Exploring her father’s profession, Rorer became enthralled with the field of chemistry, which would later influence her choice of professions as a dietician. Rorer attended school at New York State’s East Aurora Academy. In 1870 the family moved back to the Philadelphia area where she later met her husband, William Albert Rorer. They had two sons, William Albert Rorer and James Birch Rorer, and a daughter who died very early in life.
Throughout her career, Rorer was a teacher of domestic science, a lecturer on the impact of food on health, an author, and an editor. She was a columnist for and a partial owner of a Philadelphia magazine called Table Talk and was an editor for the Ladies Home Journal for 14 years. Rorer would write cooking and health tips, but also about issues pertaining to the housewife.
She enrolled in a cooking class at the New Century Club in 1882 and shortly thereafter was solicited by the Club to teach the class and lecture at the Woman’s Medical College on pertinent health issues. Her career picked up quickly. By 1884 Rorer had opened the Philadelphia Cooking School on Chestnut Street, which she ran for 18 years and which would educate more than 5,000 students. Her teaching provided cooks, the indigent, and medical institutions with nutrition information. She continued to attend lectures to educate herself in chemistry, anatomy, and physiology. Rorer is considered to be America’s first dietician based on her work in preparing healthy meals for the sick through the approval of a doctor. Her understanding of chemical compounds allowed her to prepare meals that would best react with the individual consuming them, particularly the sick or malnourished. Due to Rorer’s influence, a new field of study and employment opened up: hospital dietetics.
Rorer became a household name, which was uncommon for a woman during the period in which she lived. According to the website Supersizing at the Fair, in 1895 Rorer was giving lectures at the concert hall of Madison Square Garden, and by 1924 she was so famous that her name was referenced in the Broadway musical Sitting Pretty, by Jerome Kern and lyricist P.G. Wodehouse. Also, she was specially honor