In 1949, the Pillsbury Company launched the Grand National Recipe and Baking Contest and announced that the winner would receive $50,000 as a grand prize award. Finalists would compete at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City.

If you submitted your recipe, the only required ingredient was Pillsbury’s Best Flour. The contest, which was conceived as a way for Pillsbury to celebrate its 80th birthday, allowed regular cooks across America to submit their favorite recipes with the chance of winning big prizes.

By 2013 the 46th contest, now titled Pillsbury Bake-Off, was held in Las Vegas, Nevada, and the grand-prize winner went home with $1,000,000— plus many extra prizes such as appliances and cookware.

The story behind this cooking event, which is 60-odd years old, takes you on a journey through all these years on how amateur cooks have set trends in American cooking. A good example is the winning recipe of the 1966 Bake-Off winner who u...